It just seemed to be a matter of time, considering how routine they've
apparently made landing Falcon 9 first stages, but mark down that on Tuesday
evening, April 23, 2024,
SpaceX landed their 300th booster. As always when talking about counts of Falcon 9 boosters flown, this number
includes Falcon Heavy launches, which use three of the boosters. Note the 300
does NOT include two boosters that landed successfully but were lost at sea. A
Falcon Heavy center core and a Falcon 9 tipped over at sea after successful
landings.
Now think about this observation: at the pace SpaceX is operating, it's entirely possible they will recover their 400th booster before the end of this year.
The Tuesday evening mission was Starlink 6-53. It flew from SLC-40 (Space Launch Complex 40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 6:17 pm ET and delivered the satellites to a 43-degree orbital inclination. Just under two weeks ago, the new fleet leader of SpaceX boosters, B1062, flew its 20th mission. The booster for this mission isn't even halfway there.
The Falcon 9 that made the 300th overall landing was Booster 1078, which flew for its 9th time. B1078 made a smooth landing on the droneship ‘Just Read the Instructions,’ and is now on the way back to Port Canaveral. B1078 last flew just 29 days prior to this mission.
B1078 has now launched 4 Humans, 2 telecommunication satellites (on 1 flight), 1 classified payload, and now 6 Starlink missions.
Original X post here. You can click on the video over on X and make it full screen, just not longer duration. This 24 second video is from the landing burn through a quick look at B1078 landed and standing on JRTI
Placing SpaceX ahead of NASA's number of recovered intact boosters by only 300.
ReplyDeleteLove those crazy camera shots from the boosters as they scream down towards the landing ships.
ReplyDeleteThose SpaceX engineers really got things lined out superbly. Elon's past comment regarding developing launch vehicles as or more reliable as passenger planes comes true if they keep up the regularity of their phenomenal success rates.
Often speculate they must be running their engines and vehicles at underrated capacity, certainly be a practical sound engineering management strategy, overbuild your system then derate its performance to obtain high rates of turnover.
Like you mention a post or so ago Mr. SG, with superheavy Raptor engines. Alternate between RUD testing and longevity runs to understand how your predictions prove out.
Looking back in SuperHeavy launch one, in mission control i can just hear them talking about lettin' her run WOT, see what fails, what cascading failures show up, what limits are produced on real life test runs. They must have been lot of grins and funny comments going back and forth over the mission control comm lines. Who doesn't enjoy such a spectacular RUD?
After getting inured to the booster's downward-pointing cameras showing the landings, I am REALLY looking forward to showing the Starship coming down via the camera mounted on the front flap - the views of the plasma flowing around the Starship is priceless!
ReplyDeleteIt just keeps getting better and better.
Hear you man! How about SuperHeavy coming in for a landing on those chop sticks, how they have to line up those 6 inch diameter pins on the booster with receiver tracks atop the arms while balancing in a tail of fire. If it fails the catch the potential RUD could take out the tank farm and then its the mother of all RUD's.
Delete"the views of the plasma flowing around the Starship is priceless!"
DeleteI've been watching rockets take off and in space since the Mercury days and that was the most awesome thing I've ever seen. It's also the first time I've ever seen video of that. Could have been the first time anyone has seen that, but I kinda think there have been some missions that aren't "public information" that have seen it. No particular reason to think that, but I wouldn't be surprised.