SpaceX launches 150th Falcon 9 mission of the year

I fell asleep and missed the 2:53 AM launch this morning, but it was the 150th Falcon 9 launch of the year. It was a regular Starlink launch, Group 6-79, and the 9th mission of booster B1090. B1090 landed successfully on A Shortfall Of Gravitas to be prepared for its next mission and all 29 satellites were said to be operating as expected an hour after launch. 

I think of a booster with nine flights as "practically new" although I remember when they were openly concerned if they could get 10 missions out of a booster, and the current target is 40 launches. I don't think I'll be terribly surprised if they do the 40th flight and reset to 50 as their goal.

It's a totally new way of thinking of spaceflight. If you were going up on that rocket, would you rather be on completely new hardware like the early astronauts or would "a couple" of previous flights give you a bit more confidence the hardware will work for you. Sure the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules, as well as their Atlas, Titan and Saturn launch vehicles had several tests that never left the ground. Compare that to flying a Crew Dragon that has flown a couple of missions on a Falcon 9 that has flown 10. I think I prefer the second case.

Falcon 9 rocket B1090 carrying 29 Starlink satellites lifts off from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Saturday morning, Nov. 22, 2025. (Image credit: SpaceX)

There are 5 weeks left in the year, with a couple of extra days that will be taken off for holidays, and the average pace has been 150 launches/47 weeks or 3.19 launches/week. If they can make that pace which has alternated between east and west coasts, that's pretty much 16 more launches in 2025.  If they made that pace, it would mean 166 launches in 2025. Of course the actual total could be more or less than 166.