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To: messierhunter; RinaseaofDs
Launch Schedule

Information is always good.

33 posted on 08/20/2018 1:24:32 PM PDT by NorthMountain (... the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed)
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To: NorthMountain

Indeed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_in_spaceflight#By_rocket

The US is neck and neck with China for the number of orbital launches so far this year, due mostly to SpaceX. The Falcon 9 has had more launches this year than all other US rockets combined. In fact it’s basically double all others combined. It’s more than any other type of rocket anywhere in the world, when you break out the Chinese rockets by type (they’re all Long March rockets).

In terms of private vs public, I count 16 private customers of SpaceX launches this year. Some are repeated customers from multiple launches, others are multiple customers on a single launch carrying multiple payloads. I count Northrop Grumman in that since they contracted SpaceX to provide launch services for Zuma, though the payload itself was of course government. But even counting that launch, I count only 4 missions that have involved a US government payload so far this year. 10 other missions have been exclusively private customers. 1 mission flew a mix of private payloads and the US government GRACE satellites. So it’s pretty clear that the majority of SpaceX launches are currently coming from private companies.

This has taken huge amounts of business away from Russian launches, to the point that they’re pretty much openly stating they can’t compete and won’t even try to compete with SpaceX for launch services.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/04/russia-appears-to-have-surrendered-to-spacex-in-the-global-launch-market/


36 posted on 08/20/2018 2:20:09 PM PDT by messierhunter
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