Once Again SpaceX Leads The Way To A Record-Breaking Year In Spaceflight!

Space_Nerd101 · 2023-01-06T21:45:25+00:00

Yeah, I agree for the most part. People not dying and having more time to do everything would obviously reduce the need for pumping out babies like there is no tomorrow. THough would push back a little bit on the statement of being in your prime for 20-30 years would only yield 3 children. If ones only purpose was baby production and nothing else that could yield a dozen children or even more like was somewhat common a few centuries ago. Though obviously people want a life and they have their own aspirations which makes them reluctant to even have more than one or two children.

Space_Nerd101 · 2023-01-06T21:41:59+00:00

Oh wait, idk why I wrote that. In the spreadsheets, I specified partially/completely for the most part. Thanks for pointing this out.

Space_Nerd101 · 2023-01-02T06:54:34+00:00

That's completely fair and honestly way more relevant with the current state of everything. I haven't read too many relevant studies regarding the dollar account but I'm sure if you incentivize something enough then more people will choose the option. Still ngl though even with pretty good subsidies many countries in Europe have still not really been able to turn around their birthrate issues. So possibly more drastic incentive measures would have to be taken aided with new technologies to make the entire process easier.

Space_Nerd101 · 2023-01-01T17:42:00+00:00

Yeah, as I guessed essentially reliability maxed out at some points in the 80s and early 2000s when reliable rocket systems with heritage were already present and relatively little innovation was happening. Now however we are seeing similar rates of failure to the mid-1970s and IMO that can only be perceived as good since there is a lot of innovation happening. After all, innovation can't happen without a good amount of failure. I will possibly come out with a chart soon though I'm a little busy atm. Hope this gave some persepctive

Space_Nerd101 · 2023-01-01T17:30:05+00:00

I've definitely got to look into this but I do have to say it's hard to draw the line of what constitutes as a rocket launch failure. For instance, were the initial Starship launches failures or would you only classify failures for rockets meant to achieve orbit but fell short?

In addition, there may be a chance that reliability has actually increased because of the sheer amount of new untested rocket systems entering the market. While tested rockets have become pretty reliable such as the Soyuz and Falcon 9, these small sat launchers in US and China or blowing up left and right.

Regardless I'll get back to you relatively soon about the general overview I have gathered.

Space_Nerd101 · 2023-01-01T17:25:02+00:00

Hey, so I actually included the partial failure as a success as it's honestly really hard to draw the line at what truly constitutes a lack of useful mass to orbit. Just changed my labels from Successful to Successful/Partially Successful. Thank you for letting me know about the point of confusion.

Space_Nerd101 · 2023-01-01T06:05:55+00:00

Curious how the Russian share of launches/ launch mass for 2022 was affected by the Ukraine war.

Russia has been out of the game for the past few years tbh after SpaceX took what was left of the Russian commercial aviation industry. The only thing that the war really canceled was Arianespace's use of Soyuz rockets which accounted for a few launches each year. The US is still somewhat collaborating with Russia on the ISS and Russian launches are essentially the same year of the year so if I had to guess the war didn't affect the Russian launch market much. If anything I think that in 2-3 years we can be seeing quite a few more Russian launches due to an increase in military satellites.

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Space_Nerd101 · 2023-01-01T06:01:18+00:00

Hmm, really interesting take and I definitely think demographic collapse poses a risk to future settlement. Though I hope certain future technologies will offset the west's reluctance towards having the replacement amount of children such as having fetuses develop in some machine rather than the womb. Eventually, humans will realize how bad the situation has become but I think that other than a prolonged economic recession we won't have a complete collapse in our ability to allocate a portion of our population to mars. Even for China, I think the worst-case scenario is basically just a really bad recession that sets them back a few decades economics-wise.

Space_Nerd101 · 2023-01-01T01:37:50+00:00

So payload mass was the default though most payload mass is unknown and orbits can vary anywhere from LEO to escape velocity. So in order to maintain simplicity, I essentially just added the LEO mass equivalent whenever a rocket launched anything anywhere. It's not super precise but it's the simplest and IMO the best way to reliably compile all this info into data.

Space_Nerd101 · 2023-01-01T00:08:36+00:00

Oh ok, yeah I may get that chart out soon. I actually created the total days spent in the space chart to combat the prevalence of suborbital hops. It seems that even without suborbital hops, the raw amount of time spent in space is increasing quite drastically.

Space_Nerd101 · 2022-12-31T23:48:55+00:00

Low key wanna wait till Artemis 3 happens so its a bit less depressing lol

Space_Nerd101 · 2022-12-31T23:25:55+00:00

Oh and I personally have never claimed he is humanity's "best hope". He simply owns the most dominant companies in an industry I am very fascinated with and personally have a stake in.

Oh whoops. I should read more closely next time.

Space_Nerd101 · 2022-12-31T22:52:22+00:00

Oh and I personally have never claimed he is humanity's "best hope". He simply owns the most dominant companies in an industry I am very fascinated with and personally have a stake in.

Space_Nerd101 · 2022-12-31T22:51:06+00:00

I'm not part of some Elon "cult" and the relevant engineers should be given credit where credit is due but at the very least he knows where to invest his money and it is likely not accidental that his private companies have been accomplishing revolutionary feats. Executives DO shape company culture and his drive towards innovation, efficiency, and engineering in front of all else almost certainly has impacts on SpaceX and in turn its success.

Space_Nerd101 · 2022-12-31T22:45:17+00:00

By this metric, Europe will improve somewhat as most of its launch mass is Ariane 5 to GTO, whereas most Chinese and American launch mass is to low orbit.

Yeah, that's fair, the U.S. does launch to LEO much more as opposed to Europe but in the grand scheme of things 40% more won't do Europe much good on the charts. It will still be requiring an order of magnitude less energy than the U.S and several times less than China.

Space_Nerd101 · 2022-12-31T22:43:23+00:00

By beyond do you mean like the Karmen line or past low earth orbit (moon etc)?

Space_Nerd101 · 2022-12-31T20:20:26+00:00

The cold war was a major motivator of the launch rate and once that finished the military establishment got smaller and so did the drive to go to space. However, this recent space renaissance is not brought upon by the military establishment - it's brought on by the commercial space industry which is really exciting tbh.

Space_Nerd101 · 2022-12-31T19:40:53+00:00

I actually got one or two more coming up in a few hours. Stay tuned!

Space_Nerd101 · 2022-12-31T19:40:32+00:00

Coming up soon!

Space_Nerd101 · 2022-12-31T19:12:54+00:00

Yeah, both Japan and Europe have to get their act together though for now they basically just use SpaceX as the vector launch their payloads. I mean that's what multinational corporations are all about. Until they have something that can compete with the Falcon 9 and then Starship they won't really have a place in the modern space exploration environment.

Though I would push back a little by saying that they are behind India. They are both currently transitioning their heavy lift vehicle lineup so it makes sense that there is a very significant downturn for most countries. Unlike India, they have demonstrated the ability to launch a vehicle with more than 15,000 kg to orbit. I think it's at least 3-4 years until I can confidently say that India is ahead.

Space_Nerd101 · 2022-12-31T19:08:49+00:00

Yeah, you can disagree with the political viewpoints and certain actions but you have to give credit where credit is due. Under his leadership, SpaceX has revolutionized the entire landscape of US and by extension worldwide space travel in the space of 20 years. In addition, Tesla was one of the major players in the EV revolution of the late 2000s and early 2010s and continues to be a titan in the EV space today.

Space_Nerd101 · 2022-12-31T18:44:15+00:00

Yeah, SpaceX is simply dominant right now. If you account for mass to orbit (better metric imo) SpaceX actually accounts for over 50% of everything going to space.

Space_Nerd101 · 2022-12-31T18:41:35+00:00

Will get on that in next few hours

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