Tag: Falcon 9

Capitalism in space: An American billionaire has purchased an entire SpaceX Dragon flight and Falcon 9 launch, set for sometime in October ’21, with the goal of using the publicity of the flight to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Besides fulfilling his dream of flying in space, Jared Isaacman announced Monday that he aims to use the private trip to raise $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, half coming from his own pockets.

A health care worker for St. Jude already has been selected for the mission. Anyone donating to St. Jude in February will be entered into a random drawing for seat No. 3. The fourth seat will go to a business owner who uses Shift4 Payments, Isaacman’s credit card processing company in Allentown, Pennsylvania

This flight means that SpaceX is likely going to have at about five commercial manned flights in the next year, three by NASA, one by Axiom to ISS, and Isaacman’s above. Moreover, none include the flights by various entertainers and reality show producers who have been rumored as being interesting in buying tickets. Nor does this include the tourism flights the Russians are planning in the next year.

All told, these flights strongly suggest that there is a very healthy market for commercial manned spaceflight, a market that can only grow once Boeing finally enters the market with its Starliner capsule.

I must also add that we have been waiting for commercial space tourism flights for almost sixteen years, since Richard Branson began promising them on his suborbital SpaceShipTwo back in 2004. Never happened, and now seems very second class in comparison to the pending orbital flights. As the article at the link says disparagingly about Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin’s suborbital craft, they “will just briefly skim the surface of space.”

Both Branson and Bezos had a window to make suborbital space tourism pay off. Neither stepped through it.

Capitalism in space: SpaceX this morning successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket carrying a record 143 smallsats into orbit.

As I write this they are in the process of deploying the satellites, which will take time as the upper stage circles the Earth. This launch of 143 satellites beats the former record of the most satellites deployed on a single launch, 104, set by India in 2017.

The first stage landed successfully, completing its fifth flight. They also recovered both fairing halves.

The standings in the 2021 launch race:

3 SpaceX
1 Rocket Lab
1 Virgin Orbit
1 China

The U.S. now leads China 5 to 1 in the national rankings.

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully completed its 25th orbital launch in 2020, using its Falcon 9 rocket to put an American spy satellite into orbit.

The first stage successfully landed at Cape Canaveral, completing its fifth flight.

Not only is 25 launches in a single year a new record for SpaceX, it is also four more launches than the company predicted it would achieve in 2020.

This was also the 40th successful American orbital launch in 2020, the first time since 1968 that the U.S. has had that many launches. In 1968 the launches were almost all dictated by the government, on rockets controlled by the government. Today, the rockets are all privately designed and owned, with the small number of government launches occurring with the government merely the customer buying a product.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

33 China
25 SpaceX
15 Russia
6 ULA
6 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 40 to 33 in the national rankings. The rankings also should not change significantly in the last two weeks of the year, as the U.S. has no more scheduled launches and China and Russia only one.

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched a new commercial radio satellite for Siruis.

The first stage was making its seventh flight, the fifth in 2020. It successfully landed on the drone ship. The fairings were also both previously flown.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

33 China
24 SpaceX
13 Russia
6 ULA
5 Rocket Lab
5 Europe (Arianespace)

The U.S. now leads China 38 to 33 in the national rankings. The U.S. has also completed the most launches in a single year since 1968. Unlike 1968, all the launches this year were flown by private companies, either for commercial customers or for the government, with rockets owned by the companies. In 1968 almost all the launches were for the government, and the rockets were controlled by the government, even if built by private companies.

Note that this very successful year occurred during a year when many businesses were forced to shutdown due to the Wuhan panic. It appears many rocket companies decided this was not a reason to cease operations.