With today's two Falcon 9 launches, SpaceX set another record.
The first launch was from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral SFS at 3:10 AM ET this morning, 0710 UTC. The second was from SLC-4E at Vandenberg SFB at 5:35 PM ET this afternoon, 2135 UTC. That's 14 hours and 25 minutes later and a continent apart.
The milestone was the landing of that second booster, on its ninth flight, and the 200th successful landing of a Falcon 9 booster.
Screen capture from the SpaceX video.
Or you can watch this video and slide the timer until you're close to 5 or 10 seconds before the time in the picture,
I think this is noteworthy in light of the talk at the end of May about 200 successful launches, and SpaceX doubling the number of consecutive successful launches of both the American Delta family and Russian Soyuz-U. The 200th successful booster recovery means twice as many successful recoveries as those other rockets have just launched without one single recovery among them. Much like how every launch of a Falcon 9 is a new record for consecutive launches, every booster landing is a new record for that.
In both cases, there's pretty much nobody vying for those records.
I started laughing when the young lady doing the narration mentioned the "Landing Lights on the Booster".......Landing Lights on a reusable booster. That's pretty damn cool.....
ReplyDeleteI didn't even notice that the first time. Very damn cool.
DeleteWithout paying a single dollar (except to thwart gravity), Elon Musk now owns space.
ReplyDeleteEvery day SpaceX is breaking records on everything they do. They are moving at WWII production speeds and repair speeds. Or exceeding them. All out of some very unproductive production tents and buildings. What's their pace going to be once both mega-factories kick in to full mass production level?
ReplyDeleteRight now, if I was the Governor of the state where I-95 collapsed, I'd be approaching SpaceX to see if they do bridges.
They do tunnels, so except for not needing the big boring machines, "how hard can it be?"
DeleteMusk should start an Arms and Munitions Company. Clearly he could outproduce and undercut his competitors and do so at significant savings to taxpayers while improving national security.
ReplyDelete