Wednesday Morning's SpaceX Launch is Historic

Wednesday morning's SpaceX launch from Vandenberg SFB SLC-4E is going to be historic no matter what happens to it.  The launch is a group of 52 Starlink satellites for Group 2-10.  Launch time is 0602 UTC, or 11:02 PM Tuesday evening PDT (2:02 AM on Wednesday morning EDT). 

So what's so historic about another 52 Starlink satellites?  

Eric Berger at Ars Technica has the look at it.  This launch will the 200th consecutive Falcon 9 launch since their one and only explosion on the pad on September 3, 2016.  The currently accepted record number for consecutive successful launches is 100, with two (very) different rockets achieving that number. 

It's actually a bit more complicated than that.  Eric explains:

According to Wikipedia, the Soyuz-U rocket had a streak of 112 consecutive successful launches between July 1990 and May 1996. However this period included the Cosmos 2243 launch in April 1993. This mission should more properly be classified as a failure. According to space scientist Jonathan McDowell, the control system of the rocket failed during the final phase of the Blok-I burn, and the payload was auto-destructed.

When that failure is removed from the 112, the record turns into that 100 successes. 

This happens to be the exact same number of consecutive successes by the Delta II rocket, originally designed and built by McDonnell Douglas and later flown by Boeing and United Launch Alliance. Overall the Delta II rocket launched 155 times, with two failures. Its final flight, in 2018, was the rocket's 100th consecutive successful mission.

There's a really important distinction here - in the third paragraph.  This launch will be the 200th consecutive Falcon 9 launch.  The significance here is doubling the record for the number of successful launches.  In a more pragmatic view, every launch of a Falcon 9 (and based on a similar discussion a couple of weeks ago, they're not including Falcon Heavy side boosters) has set a new record for the number of successful launches, so no matter what happens, this launch sets another record.  Either it's a new record for the consecutive number of successful launches, which just so happens to be twice the number any other launch company in the world has done or they leave that record at 199, reset the counters and start over (next launch is Saturday afternoon, a Cargo Resupply mission to the ISS). 

As a side note: I think the number of successful Falcon 9 booster recoveries is 195, so SpaceX has almost recovered or landed twice as many rockets as any other company has ever launched. 

SpaceX's "Launches" page for this mission includes the following statement:

The first stage booster supporting this mission previously launched Crew-1, Crew-2, SXM-8, CRS-23, IXPE, Transporter-4, Transporter-5, Globalstar FM15, ISI EROS C-3, and four Starlink missions. Following stage separation, the first stage will land on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship stationed in the Pacific Ocean.

Hang on... gotta take off a sock to count... I get 13 previous flights for this (unnamed) booster, so this will be its 14th flight. 

May 10's launch from SLC-4E at Vandy.  Screen capture of SpaceX video.  Vandenberg is a pretty place when it's not pea soup fog and you can actually see the place.