SpaceX (Vol. 2)

[Beati Dogu]

They’re rattling them off now. 18 so far this year. There’s another one next Tuesday.

[anonymous-user]

Beati Dogu said:

They’re rattling them off now. 18 so far this year. There’s another one next Tuesday.

It’s gone beyond simple impressiveness.

[Hill92]

garyhun said:

Beati Dogu said:

They’re rattling them off now. 18 so far this year. There’s another one next Tuesday.

It’s gone beyond simple impressiveness.

Just 5 days (10th) after the previous launch.

There is then one scheduled 5 days after that (16th) and another five days after that (21st) and yet another just 4 days after that (25th).

There's then a gap to 7 June but only because they don't announce Starlink launches that far ahead...

[Beati Dogu]

SpaceX is also 20 years old today.

[Flooble]

So they've achieved all that as a teenager!

[Beati Dogu]

Flooble said:

I can't keep up with their launch cadence, it's incredible. 21 day turnaround is amazing too, getting close to what was promised for the Space Shuttle.

It took their refurb people only 9 of those 21 days to turn it round apparently.

[Halmyre]

Flooble said:

So they've achieved all that as a teenager!

NASA put a man on the moon in 11 years (OK, various caveats...)

[Beati Dogu]

There was a Starlink launch late last night from Vandenberg. It landed for the 6th time out at sea and deployed its 53 satellites ok.

There’s another one from Cape Canaveral tonight at 9.40 pm UK time. This will be the 20th launch of the year already.

[MartG]

Live here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFDkWL2Hmh8

[Hill92]

Everyday Astronaut (Tim Dodd) has just uploaded another Elon Musk interview and tour of Starbase.

https://youtu.be/3Ux6B3bvO0w

[Flooble]

Beati Dogu said:

There was a Starlink launch late last night from Vandenberg. It landed for the 6th time out at sea and deployed its 53 satellites ok.

There’s another one from Cape Canaveral tonight at 9.40 pm UK time. This will be the 20th launch of the year already.

And another one done, plus that's another booster added to the fleet. It will be interesting to see if they maintain a 28-day (or lower) cadence on that booster - presumably being new and not having been used for a NASA or Crew launch (i.e. not requiring a frozen design) it will have had the opportunity to incorporate some learnings on how to improve recycle times.

[Beati Dogu]

It would be interesting to know if they have made changes to the none-crew rockets. Probably not I suspect. Although they’re ~85% vertically integrated according to Eric Berger, that's a big chunk of stuff they keep in house.


The next Starlink launch is Wednesday 18th at 11.20 am UK time.

[MartG]

Video link for this morning's launch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQTgX40R-IQ

[MartG]

I never noticed before how much Falcon sways when the strongback retracts

[Beati Dogu]

Nice launch and landing footage. You could really see how it swerves in to land on this one.

[Beati Dogu]

The Transporter 5 SpaceX rideshare mission is expected to launch on Wednesday, 25th May

Launch time is 7.35 pm UK time (2.35 pm local) from SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida

This was originally going to launch from Vandenberg, but was moved to Cape Canaveral instead. Presumably it will head south and drop the various satellites off on a sun-synchronous orbit. The booster should come back to Landing Zone 1.

The booster is B1061 and this will be its 8th flight.

[MartG]

Youtube 'live in' timer went from about 15mins up to 81 mins and now back down to 12 mins, all in the space of 5 mins...

[Beati Dogu]

I didn't notice that, but I was watching it on the TV (via Amazon Fire TV Stick).

Launched, landed and all 59 little satellites deployed OK.

landing footage:

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1529533876707950...

[Florida_Man]

Definitely felt the house shake a little from the sonic boom in Orlando when the booster landed

[Beati Dogu]

It's impressive how far sonic booms travel. That's about 50 miles away?