Posted on 08/31/2024 5:30:17 PM PDT by george76
SpaceX carried out back-to-back launches of Falcon 9 rockets carrying Starlink satellites into orbit early Saturday, just hours after U.S. officials lifted a temporary ban on the rocket fleet.
The company first launched the Starlink 8-10 mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 3:43 a.m. EDT, and quickly followed that just an hour later with another Falcon 9 launch of Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Together, the flights delivered 42 Starlink satellites, including 26 with Direct to Cell capabilities, to low-Earth orbit,
Thank you for the information.
SpaceX launches back-to-back Falcon 9 rockets within 65 minutes and aces 2 landings days after a failed booster touchdown (video)
By Tariq Malik
published 2 days ago
https://www.space.com/spacex-back-to-back-rocket-launches-landings-after-booster-touchdown-failure
Blastoffs! SpaceX launches two Falcon 9 rockets in 65 minutes, nails landings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JhRj0-9lR4
replays:
Starlink (Florida, landed on robotic barge)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO0iQq20Nu8
NROL 113 (spy sat) California, landing on robotic barge)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGUkhL4FCIQ
The NROL shot booster makes it 20th round trip; hit max-Q at 68 seconds because lighter load; night launch, night landing.
List of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches
“Due to continued design improvements, this Falcon 9 carried its highest ever payload of 17.5 tons of useful load to a useful orbit” [early 2024] (that’s with a propulsive landing)
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1762019803630563800
(the cargo Dragon has a payload capacity to the ISS of about 3645 pounds; the entire development cost of the Falcon 9 has been under $400 million)
(the Space Shuttle’s payload capacity to LEO was just a nudge above 30 tons; to the ISS, 12 tons; per launch cost was about $500 million)
Isn’t that 500 million “price per launch” of the Space Shuttle a bit low?
I know the Space Shuttle “launch interval was very long. They seldom were launchedcwithin 3 weeks of each other, even when two different Shuttles were used.
A half billion per launch is actually a bit high, in the dollars of the time, it was a bit north of $400 million per launch. NASA estimated that shuttle launches were going to run under $10 million per launch, so, they were off by a factor of about 40.
“Musk should turn off starlink to Brazil.”
That would be helping the out of control government. Maybe you meant he should turn of the government’s access.
Good point - The tremendous “multipliar” of what the actual cost per launch was, compared to what we told to expect to pay; and how rapidly the turnaround times were “supposed to be” is probably what I remember.
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