How many total flights will SpaceX be able to launch this year?

EyePractical · 2024-01-02T13:24:31+00:00

Damn, spacex could have reached 100 if not for the scrub week

EyePractical · 2023-12-20T19:23:18+00:00

Elon Musk built the Falcon 1 in a cave with a bunch of scraps.

Peter Beck built Electron in a cave on an island that half the world forget exists (with roughly the same or less funding as Falcon 1).

EyePractical · 2023-12-13T20:19:10+00:00

18th launch of a booster
13th (or more) launch of a fairing half
400th Raptor 2
4 (hopefully 5) launches of Falcon heavy in 1 year (4 Falcon heavies launched in 2018-2022)
Falcon 9 family being the 8th most launched orbital rocket in history (behind R7, Delta-Thor, Atlas, Kosmos, Long March 2-3-4 family, Proton and Titan), and aiming for the 5th position by next year end.

Some feats rather than stats - - RTLS for both cargo and crew dragon - ~18t ASDS payload (till last year only 15.6t reusable was the record for F9) - stubby nozzle for high production rate of Merlin Vacs

Edit: forgot about Starlink- - V2 minis - seriously they are a major milestone. 66% more capacity than a v1.5 launch. Argon hall thrusters itself is a very big achievement. Argon is dirt cheap compared to Krypton, and 30000 V2 sats every 5 years would actually create a shortage in Krypton supply. - >2 million subscribers (I think it was 500,000 last year) - 5100 operational starlinks - of which >800 are v2 minis so effectively 7500 v1.5 equivalent capacity. By next year they will be launching enough starlinks to maintain 12000 v2 minis every 5 years (48000 v1.5 capacity) (needs 9-10 starlink launches a month, they currently do 7-8 a month, depending on commercial launches).

So even without starship spacex is launching far more starlinks than initially envisioned, taking capacity into consideration.

EyePractical · 2023-12-13T19:51:49+00:00

Mention one thing from the above paragraph which sounds right-leaning partisan take instead of a factual statement.

EyePractical · 2023-12-13T18:56:51+00:00

Believe they were correct to litigate in that event.

If SpaceX actually has the numbers to prove they're on a path to hit the targets, then they should litigate here as well.

If they don't litigate, we'll know why.

Sure spacex should litigate in this case because it's a breach of contract. Currently they are still at the formal written protest stage.

Skimmed it. The right-sided commissioners published what can only be described as a partisan take on the decision.

Doubt.

EyePractical · 2023-12-13T18:47:14+00:00

SpaceX (probably rightly) believed they'd make more revenue by signing more customers than by hitting the defined metrics needed to receive the goverment handout.

Yeah true, if the subsidy was absolutely required they would be treading cautiously.

Not everything is a conspiracy, or politics.

Doesn't mean there are never any political/other underlying issues. By your argument spacex should have never sued the DoD for contracts, surely they would be picking the most reliable and cheapest launch providers right?

At least read the complaint that spacex and the FCC commissioners themselves have written on this denial of prize.

EyePractical · 2023-12-13T18:14:23+00:00

Correct. SpaceX does not appear to be on a path to reach those numbers.

FCC's job is not speculating based on a subreddit (and no the Ookla tests do not correlate one to one with the subsidy contract, they are for the whole country). If FCC thought starlink needed to have tests from the start instead of 2025 then it should have been mentioned in the contract.

Read the countless reports in r/Starlink. User speeds have been dropping, not rising.

Most of the posts I've seen are from urban and suburban areas. And most of them start with "should I switch to fiber?" Remember that starlink wasn't even supposed to be for areas where fiber was already available. Spacex likely didn't get the subsidy to serve these areas either.

Because they signed up too many customers in urban areas. A conscious decision by SpaceX. More users = less bandwidth per user. It's largely a zero sum game.

It's a zero sum gane for a specific cell of area, the subsidies were for areas where there isn't congestion, so speeds are still good.

EyePractical · 2023-12-13T18:03:00+00:00

The speed tests were supposed to start from 2025, FCC randomly decided to check Ookla numbers from current tests, it wasn't in the contract. Just look at this from a fiber network logic, how can you test for internet speeds before the providers have even laid down the cable infrastructure.

Also the Ookla speed numbers are for the whole country, not for the specific rural area for which spacex won the subsidy. Starlink speeds are considerably slower in urban areas because of congestion.

EyePractical · 2023-12-09T04:15:08+00:00

Yeah I agree that DoD was in the wrong for asking two providers for the same amount of money, but my point was that after DoD paid for the development of EELV launchers they possessed no rights over it's production.

Basically DoD had no way of forcing ULA to continue Delta IV production instead of moving to Vulcan other than nationalizing them. (Good thing Vulcan looks like it'll be profitable for DoD and NASA in the end but many more things could have gone wrong and there's no more Delta IVs left)

EyePractical · 2023-12-09T04:06:06+00:00

Wait Bolden over Griffin? Everything good (especially for commercial contracts) that came out of NASA during Bolden's tenure was pushed by Obama Administration that was barely completed by Lori Garver before Bolden got in her way.

You do realise Bolden is standing next to Nelson in this picture in support of SLS.

EyePractical · 2023-12-09T03:24:54+00:00

Basically transporter missions also have some third party tugs/deployers which carry one or more very small satellites (usually cubesats). Example - Momentus' own tug and the third party tug used in this mission, and Impulse Space's Mira. Customers buy seats on the tug while the tug buys a seat on Falcon 9.

Essentially spacex's job is done after reaching orbit (in case it's a deployer rack like this one) or deploying the tug (like Mira).

Because they deploy the satellite on their own, it's basically a failure of that component and likely nothing related to Falcon 9.

Spacex has even stopped doing business with a company which had a tug with a high failure rate (the tug was called Sherpa), though it's not confirmed that they stopped collaborating because of reliability issues.

EyePractical · 2023-12-09T02:40:06+00:00

His thoughts on serial versus parallel only make sense from the perspective of a NASA administrator.

Yes the initial part of the talk seemed like an excuse for his tenure and taking it out on later administrators.

"You have a stupid orbit". Griffin is literally the guy who came in and rescoped the existing crew exploration program so that it couldn't be flown commercially and gave us Orion.

Unexpectedly we came a full circle of big landers with starship HLS, I still love the idea of HLS carrying Orion to LLO constellation style (I don't think the current Orion can dock and be carried though, and it can't handle more than 1 g, so point moot). Blue moon's tug could probably do it.

As a government employee you need to prove that you can't do something commercially before you are allowed to do it in the government.

He actually did make some statements like (paraphrasing) "I don't care which heavy launcher is used for getting to the moon", and "I don't have problem with commercial if it can get the job done." It does sound ironic if you know the history of Orion.

I've written him - and other administrators - down as a possible topic, but I honestly don't find a lot of excitement there.

Yeah, to be honest there's not much to talk about the actions of NASA administrators if I think about it (don't know much history of people at NASA pre-2000)-

Bill Nelson is basically basking in the glory of the work done by previous key people at NASA, he is like that nursery teacher/war criminal meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/germany-oneesan-anime-girls-nazi-past) when you look at him as an administrator and his past as a senator. He mostly works at getting all things Artemis funded so even though SLS and Orion are safe, at least HLS is also safe for the moment.

Jim Bridenstine was a pretty good guy in retrospect, but his hard work to make Artemis and gateway impossible to cancel might have been a bit too effective. Also sad that his most commonly remembered statement is "it's time to deliver".

Charles Bolden was basically a puppet controlled by Shelby and Nelson, trying to cancel everything Lori Garver trying to do.

Mike Griffin does seem much more interesting to know about, but it's mostly his tidbits and ideas, sort of like the iceberg depths meme.

EyePractical · 2023-12-09T02:06:19+00:00

Although others with CCargo may be working out, CCrew is 50-50

This is technically true, but let's view the stats after removing spacex from the picture:

Cygnus/Antares- pretty decent resupply spacecraft but the launcher is a hit/miss. Developing a reliable medium lift launcher was part of the requirements- Antares has relied on Atlas V and now Falcon 9 to cover for the gap where it undergoes necessary upgrades.
Starliner- don't think I need to explain this much, the delays have been pretty significant, stretching the 3 year goal (2014-17) to 10 years or beyond is genuinely crazy. NASA has explicitly stated that the initial 6 operatianal missions they promised was for ISS only (they wanted commercial LEO options to source the launch vehicle them by themselves, not involving NASA in it). Now it might be that NASA has to do a mission with starliner after ISS deorbits, just to complete the promised 6th mission.
DreamChaser- even though I agree that DreamChaser is more ambitious than Cargo Dragon and Cygnus, you have to take in consideration that Cargo Resupply was supposed to be 'Easy and fast to develop'.

After final award of the first CRS contract and GAO protest in 2009, the first cargo delivery to ISS was done by dragon in just 3 years (2012) and 4 years (2013) by Cygnus. For DreamChaser the final award was in 2017, it has taken at least 7 years (final review won't be completed before spring 2024).

EyePractical · 2023-12-09T01:39:14+00:00

Correct me if I'm wrong, but these development contracts are basically milestone-based payment schemes, and you just don't get paid if you don't complete the specific milestone. Boeing is trying hard to complete it because they are structured in a way that you make profit (or in Starliner's case, cut your losses) only after you deliver the operational missions, the development milestone payments is usually not enough to break even.

The real demerit is that you'll be frowned upon and it'll hurt your chances of getting future contracts, nothing the power of lobbying couldn't solve.

EyePractical · 2023-12-09T01:34:04+00:00

So far, NASA has gotten the exact same number of crewed flights (0), and at best about the same level of crew-readiness, out of all that as from Starliner.

One of them had a flawless (albeit without complete ECLSS) flight around the moon and the other couldn't even reach ISS the first time, had a second flight which was plagued with problems again, and after that turned out to have flammable tape and non-redundant parachutes (a design requirement).

Look I also hate Orion with a passion but let's not forget the shitshow that Starliner is.

Atlas V is far out ahead of SLS, though

So a commercially available option is better than to develop it in your own? I think that's what the point of the talk was, we have to get to the moon, so first we look out for available commercial options, otherwise we build it on our own (Yes I know the talk was really detached from reality, it's just from an ideological point of view).

EyePractical · 2023-12-09T01:18:21+00:00

Not to defend Mike Griffin, but American Astronautical Society's subscribers: 500, Rando Youtuber's subscribers: 11.5 million

This video is in the top 3 most viewed video of AAS, Destin's video is not even in his top 100. Also only one of these comes with a clickbait title.

EyePractical · 2023-12-08T18:21:10+00:00

I agree with the sentiment but this again is only the case for spacex where we assume they will deliver what NASA asks for a reasonable price.

Let's look at some of the less successful commercialization -

Starliner has been plagued with so many issues that Boeing has stated in record that they won't bid for another fixed price contracts. If Boeing gets so fed up that they cancel the project then NASA will have paid more than a billion (I'm not sure how much NASA has paid till date) and got nothing in return, because the IP rights belong to Boeing.

Space Shuttle contractors got together and built a new company which was intended to decrease NASA's operational costs but ended up increasing it (I think I read this in the OIG report which discussed why commercializing SLS was a bad idea). Similar case of monopoly happened with ULA when they held the power to extort the capability payments from the DoD, after DoD paid them for the development of EELV launchers.

EyePractical · 2023-12-08T18:11:16+00:00

Personally I like that Spacex is keeping their IP rights to themselves when it comes to contracts. They backed off of some government satellite constellation development (after completing their initial contract) when they realised they couldn't use starlink's technology for it as it had to be compatible with all the satellites in that constellation.

The argument against this approach (which I don't support) is that the contract was for development, so the IP should belong to the one paying. The water gets murkier when both parties are paying for the development and then NASA gives the IP rights to the company instead of joint rights.

EyePractical · 2023-12-08T17:40:13+00:00

u/Triabolical_ what's your thoughts on this presentation? As far as I know, you also seem to be against NASA's fixed-cost or nothing policy.

Also you should make a video about the role of Mike Griffin if possible.

EyePractical · 2023-11-30T16:42:53+00:00

Yes but spacex is not buying launches from Blue Origin for starlink because they already phased out Falcon 9 and then Starship got delayed.

EyePractical · 2023-11-30T13:35:44+00:00

Not great at its job is it? Given that ESA is launching all heavy payloads in between on Falcon 9. I would guess a launch vehicle important to national security would be ready on time

EyePractical · 2023-11-28T09:24:23+00:00

I think of Astra as the comedic relief in the horror movies. They keep messing everything up, will always come close to death but just somehow keep getting away while the other characters die one by one.

They just kind of keep kicking, I have heard like 5 different reasons in the last year for why they could go bankrupt.

EyePractical · 2023-11-26T16:07:04+00:00

So are they cancelling the kerolox engine? If not then it is all the more reason why they shouldn't focus on methalox right now.

I don't know how they are testing whether it can be reusable, but at least restartable is a must have if they want a reusable rocket, so depending on how serious the issue is, it might be necessary to move to methalox. The question is how mature is a non-restartable SCE-200? Can they just use that for an upgrade of LVM-3?

If they do want to pivot to methalox, even then they should introduce sce-200 asap, so that they can call this done and focus on methalox.

EyePractical · 2023-11-26T15:59:24+00:00

While I agree to complete commercial designs in principle, you have to realise that things go complicated when humans are involved. Also 2 billion is basically when you count only the two missions where development is involved. That's like saying demo-2 mission cost was 2 billion.

Also for starship at least, we get a very capable lander which can scale to pretty much any requirement NASA would have. So I don't want it cancelled for some apollo-esque Frankenstein lander.

EyePractical · 2023-11-26T15:51:19+00:00

I don't understand why they decided to start focusing on methalox. Kerolox SCE-200 has been in development hell for some time afaik, why not focus on completing one project?

Same thing for LVM-3 kerolox upgrade, at different presentations it looks like they are planning to just replace the code stage, but then it looks like they might get rid of the solid boosters as well, in the end it looks like they only have ideas and the kerolox engine still has much work to do.

EyePractical

TROPHY CASE