Two more SpaceX launches
SpaceX yesterday completed two launches, placing a total of 58 Starlink satellites into orbit.
First, a Falcon 9 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying 29 Starlink satellites. The first stage completed its 8th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
Four hours later, a second Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, carrying another 29 Starlink satellites. Its first stage completed its 24th flight, also landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
149 SpaceX
70 China
14 Rocket Lab
13 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 149 to 117.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
SpaceX yesterday completed two launches, placing a total of 58 Starlink satellites into orbit.
First, a Falcon 9 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying 29 Starlink satellites. The first stage completed its 8th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
Four hours later, a second Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, carrying another 29 Starlink satellites. Its first stage completed its 24th flight, also landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
149 SpaceX
70 China
14 Rocket Lab
13 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 149 to 117.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News


What is the difference between “Kennedy space Center in Florida” and “Cape Canaveral?”
Cape Canaveral is on the Air Force base. Kennedy is a NASA facility that is I think not located on the Cape, but nearby.
Also, Cape Canaveral was called Cape Kennedy until they renamed it back. From Wikipedia re: Cape Canaveral:
“Officially Cape Kennedy from 1963 to 1973, it lies east of Merritt Island, separated from it by the Banana River. It is part of a region known as the Space Coast, and is the site of the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Since many U.S. spacecraft have been launched from both the station and the Kennedy Space Center on adjacent Merritt Island, the two are sometimes conflated with each other. “
“Cape Canaveral” strictly speaking applies to the plain geographic feature – you know, the cape, which juts a few miles out into the Atlantic.
But Bob was just drawing the distinction between the two government space facilities that are on or adjacent to the cape, each of which has its own launch pads:
1. Kennedy Space Center, owned and operated by NASA – it has two launch sites (LC-39A and LC-39B).
2. Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, owned and operated by the U.S. Space Force – it has 39 launch sites, but only 7 are active.
SpaceX leases active pads in both facilities (LC-39A and SLC-40).
But the common parlance has long been to refer to all of it as “the Cape.” This is where people sometimes get confused.
Even though I was a youngster when Kennedy was assassinated, I was put off by the rush to name everything after him, especially Cape Canaveral itself! I just looked up the immediately previous name of the launch facility… “Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex”. Uninspiring to say the least.
Apparently the actual geographical feature, the physical Cape, was also initially renamed to Cape Kennedy, but after a few years of objections by locals (and historians and geographers), the name reverted to Cape Canaveral.
Oh, and curiously the fictional launch site in Jules Verne’s mid-19th century novel “From the Earth to the Moon” was Tampa, Florida, a whole 200 km away from the real launch site of Apollo 11 over 100 years later!
I think it was a Heinlein book that had a large spaceport in TX. Did he foresee Boca Chica?