According to Space.com , last night's launch of 54 Starlink Satellites in Group 5-15 was the second attempt at the 16th mission of a Falcon 9 booster, and successful just like the previous attempt. While neither the news site nor the SpaceX launches website tells us the booster number, SpaceX's website adds the following information:
On Saturday, July 15 at 11:50 p.m. ET, Falcon 9 launched 54 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida.
This was the 16th flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched GPS III-3, Turksat 5A, Transporter-2, Intelsat G-33/G-34, Transporter-6, and now 11 Starlink missions.
Checking the first two satellite names here on the blog, this appears to be B1060. The mission video is at the SpaceX website linked above or on YouTube.
While there was a delay of the launch from late Thursday evening/early Friday morning to late Saturday evening, the mission appeared to unfold with no issues whatsoever. The abort was called by the vehicle with about 40 seconds left in the count, due to high liquid oxygen levels on one of the rocket's nine first-stage engines, SpaceX components engineer Zachary Luppen said during live commentary. It has probably been said so often that everyone has memorized it but there's a practically infinite number of ways to do a launch incorrectly but only one way to do it right. The whole purpose of a countdown is to do a very large number of tests to assure that every system will work properly.
Of course, the record for 16 successful flights isn't an old record; it was set by B1058 less than a week ago. The mission was SpaceX's 247th mission overall and their 207th orbital rocket landing. Every one of those numbers is a new record.
[This] batch of Starlink satellites stands out from the thousands SpaceX has launched to date as it is the final set of Starlink Version 1.5 satellites the company will launch, Luppen said. The company is shifting to a new Version 2 of the Starlink internet satellites, and has already launched mini-V2 versions into orbit.
I wonder what the averaged cost per flight is on the two 16X boosters?
ReplyDeleteI'd really like to know. I understand that's proprietary information and they don't want it widely known, but the cost has to be largely set by the second stage and the whole thing has to be tiny compared to other providers.
DeleteDuring the webcast, they mentioned the fairing halves were flying for the 9th and 10th times. They've mentioned that recycling them saves something like $5 million per half, so that implies the cost over 10 flights is $500k. I've seen numbers like $50 million for the whole Falcon 9, so the booster has to be most of that, so around $35 or $40 million. Spread over 16 flights it's got to amortize down to 2 to $3 million.
SpaceX, making the uncommon common.
ReplyDeleteBut I still thrill to hear about every launch. Just like I look up to see the planes fly by, or even take 10 to 20 minutes just to stop and look at the parked ones at the airport. Or watch trains, or even park and just look at railyards in action. Or watch the activity at ports...
Be real interesting if/when SpaceX gets to actually doing point-to-point passenger and freight flights. If they're ever allowed to.