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Friday, December 29, 2023

Where I Come From 98 out of 100 is an "A"

Both of SpaceX's launches last night went off on time and were their usual, almost-boringly perfect missions.  The launch set for Saturday night from Vandenberg has been rescheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 2, meaning last night's launches were bringing to an end a spectacular year that's probably going to be a prelude to a more impressive year that's coming.  Stephen Clark at Ars Technica sums it like this:

On Thursday night, the launch company sent two more rockets into orbit from Florida. One was a Falcon Heavy, the world's most powerful rocket in commercial service, carrying the US military's X-37B spaceplane from a launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 8:07 pm EST (01:07 UTC). Less than three hours later, at 11:01 pm EST (04:01 UTC), SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 launcher took off a few miles to the south with a payload of 23 Starlink Internet satellites.
...
These were SpaceX's final launches of 2023. SpaceX ends the year with 98 flights, including 91 Falcon 9s, five Falcon Heavy rockets, and two test launches of the giant new Super Heavy-Starship rocket. These flights were spread across four launch pads in Florida, California, and Texas.

In September of 2022, Elon Musk confirmed he had set a goal of 100 launches for this year, a second doubling of their launch rate from 2021.  In 2022, they had 61 successful launches, tying a record from the Soviet Union back in 1980 - a 43 year old record.  Oh, and the Soviets had to launch that rocket 64 times to get 61 successful launches.  SpaceX had to launch 61 times.  Unlike the Soviets, they recovered all of the boosters from those 61 launches for later reuse.  

Just like last night; while the core booster of the Falcon Heavy was expended to get every last pound of thrust and last foot per second of orbital velocity, the two side boosters - each a Falcon 9 first stage - and the first stage from the Starlink 6-36 mission all landed successfully.  This video is timed to start just before the final landing burns of the two FH boosters, landing in the upper right quarter of the screen.

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off Thursday night from historic pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.  Image credit: SpaceX

The last number I heard as the target for 2024 is 150 launches - another 50% more than this year.  The goal of 100 launches started out as a thought experiment; sort of "everybody brainstorm how we can increase our launch cadence high enough to get there."  Expect innovation.

So now what?  It's the Friday before New Years' Weekend, how about if everyone just lays back and takes it easy?  Maybe leaves early for the holiday weekend?  Doesn't appear to be in the DNA.  Today, SpaceX Starbase static fired both Starship 25 and Booster B10, the two getting prepped for the next Integrated Flight Test.  Ship 25 was static fired already; today's test was to mock up reigniting one of the six Raptor engines - at this link on X.  Booster 10 had some problems during attempts to static fire last week, but this view from X shows what appears to be a successful test.  Both were long duration burns.  

This video from NASA Spaceflight shows multiple views of both tests.




6 comments:

  1. How will SpaceX maintain this cadence when the Star Link constellation is complete and only replacement launches are required. Is there enough scientific play loads or tourists to do 100-200 launches a year.?

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    Replies
    1. Oh yeah. Success breeds success, SpaceX schedule is *tight* because of lack of launch availability.
      Others want in on the fun. No worries.

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  2. How does that look when we're talking "Successful Space Shuttle landings"...?

    Just wondering. :P

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    Replies
    1. There were 135 Space Shuttle landings, and 244 Falcon 9 landings as of yesterday.

      Extremely, totally different vehicles, of course, but you know that. ;-)

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    2. Yeah. My point was not the 135 Space Shuttle landings, it was the 137 Space Shuttle launches.

      Delete
    3. SpaceX has had, what, 2 failures of the Falcon stage resulting in loss of cargo? But no crew deaths, yet, knock on wood.

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