And they’re on track for ~130 this year.
How many already launched?
96 as of September 29 https://spaceexplored.com/spacex-launches-2024/
It’s cool that spaceX has rockets can come back and be reused.
China just fires unregulated rockets that in danger people, wild life etc. from toxic and debrid
China rocket crashes after ‘accidental’ launch
Chinese rocket debris seen falling over village after launch
Good vid from real engineering on the subject
Yes very good video, thanks 👍
I’m a Rocket Lab fan. Tons of innovation, slower progress due to not having the richest man behind, but on track to launch a reusable medium rocket, FULLY reusable and with a sensible guy at the helm.
I wish rocket lab the best and hope that one day they can have a competing heavy lift/human certified spacecraft.
However, it’s nigh impossible to ignore how much SpaceX alone has reshaped the space industry and is basically forcing everybody else to step up.
Agree, say what you want but spaceX is in a league of their own currently. Especially with the recent starship heavy booster catch, the biggest rocket ever launched caught mid air! They’re on track for a human space landing.
You taking neutron? That still has a disposable upper stage.
The best thing for humanity now would be for multiple people to develop reusable spacecraft. For greater chance that someone will land on a new innovation.
SpaceX launched about 429,125 kg of spacecraft upmass in Q1, followed by CASC with about 29,426 kg
Smaller satellites (<1,200 kg) represented 96% of spacecraft launched in Q1, 76% of total upmass
So the way I’m personally reading this is 2/3 of this is starlink launches
And launching space junk and making viewing the stars less and less clear at an historic rate.
People pay good money for that ‘junk’. A quality internet connection basically anywhere in the world, including at sea and in very remote areas, is far from junk.
Yeah I’m going to agree with you on this one. It blows my mind that as a species we have changed the night sky. When I was a child seeing a satellite dart across the sky was exciting because it was as rare as a shooting star. Now I look up and see a satellite every few minutes. That said, there have been a few times recently that Star Link was the only method of communication I’ve had in remote areas. It has been very helpful. I think as poorly of Musk as much as the next person but I can at least recognize the ingenuity SpaceX and Star Link.
Really Starlink should be absorbed into and ran by the UN. We only have so much LEO to use, one company is bound to become a monopoly and LEO is the world’s not any nation’s property.
The UN has no teeth by design and there’s a lot of money to be made privately, what makes you think it would happen?
Fuck the UN.
Seriously - when you choose a country with vile fundamental human rights abuses as the head of the human rights commission…
Perhaps not the UN, but I agree that I am uncomfortable with Elon Musk at the helm. I’d prefer to see an international non-profit take control. Even just a regular boring board of directors, at least then it would be the devil that we know.
I agree, but at what cost? When the satellites burn up, they are likely worsening the hole in the ozone layer. And even if they don’t, they are probably contributing to Kessler syndrome, which could ruin low earth orbit for generations.
Sources:
- https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL109280
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-89909-7
Edit: formatting
Starlink satellites will never contribute to Kessler syndrome. They are far too low for that
Even if they just stopped working in their existing orbit (worst case), they will burn up in a handful of years max
Sure, but that’s just Starlink. G60 was just launched at 1200 km, which will take thousands of years. OneWeb is at a similar altitude. Both are currently much smaller in scale, of course, but still potential problems. Not to mention the impact all three systems are having on astronomy.
For Starlink, I’m much more concerned about the aluminum oxide pollution. I linked the study in my earlier comment, but this magazine article does a better lay explanation: https://universemagazine.com/en/starlink-destroys-the-ozone-layer-that-would-recover-by-2066/ The worst part for me is that we might not actually see the bulk of the effects until 30 years from now when the aluminum from hundreds of tons of burnt up satellites descends into the stratosphere where 90% of our ozone is.
Out of curiosity - how many megatons of carbon has that produced, and how many billionaires will all the starships carry when they’ve exploited the earth’s resources and left all it’s living creatures to die and escape to mars?
SpaceX launches in 2023 were about 0.02 megatons of CO2 directly. I don’t know how fugitive emissions from fueling and defueling, especially on starship with methane.
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/13082/calculate-falcon-9-co2-emissions
200,000kg/launch, 100 launches.
The carbon is not the problem.
I watched the recent test of catching the returning second stage booster in the chopsticks, and had a lump in my throat. Absolutely fucking amazing, nobody is in the same league as that crew.
Damn, the absolute collapse of the European space industry…
image licensed under cc by-sa!
edit: wrong! cc by-nd!That’s CC BY-ND, not CC BY-SA
doesn’t that have a slash?
No
ooh
confusingah. thanks. edited and downvoted my comment
With ISRO coming on strong, and Russia alienating most of the world, I’m fascinated by what this could turn into in the next couple years
I wonder if elon has been testing all these rockets in a desperate attempt to escape the planet with a bunch of other billionaires now that global warming is on track to destroy us. It would help me understand why the wealthy all seem so hell bent on accelerating the destruction.
IDK. They will certainly be fine here, on earth. Even if everything else goes to shit, they will continue living in luxury.
On a spaceship / station / Mars colony though? As much as I love sci-fi, living there will be ROUGH, regardless of how rich you are.
I think it’s more an ego thing: “I want to go down in history as the first human on another planet, lest I be forgotten” combined with an unhealthy dose of not giving a fuck about other people, which is kinda a prerequisite to being a billionaire in the first place.
Fair points! Elon is already likely to go down in history, but not for good reasons.
He’s a modern day Edison. Loved by some, hated by others. Takes credit for other’s work and has sketchy morals. More a businessman than an engineer. History will ebb and flow on if he’s celebrated or destined, one decade he’s a hero, the next he’s a villain; and opinion will continue to switch.
In the meantime Arianespace divided by 3 their number of rocket launches
All those launches being subsidized and facilitated with US tax dollars while he used it to put telecom satellites up.
Most of the Falcon 9 launches are for Starlink and are paid for by SpaceX themselves. How is that “the government subsidizing them”? If you want to argue that they’re using money they got from NASA to fund those launches, is your plumber feeding their family from you subsidizing their life?
US buys launches at the same rate as everyone else. NASA chipped in a few million to get falcon 9 off the ground, but they haven’t been subsidizing for years.
Thats weird because Musk claims to be operating with “federal agency activity” for Space Force in his bid to appeal the decision in California to take away his launch license. The purpose of the planned increase in launches to 50 and 100 in the next two years? To launch the newer version of Starlink and do a small amount of testing on in-space refueling.
Yeah, space Force bought the launches? With star shield, the DOD bought space on starlink sats.
France X5 andindia X3Big respect to ISRO, but you read France’s Arianespace backwards. They were more of an X/5 situation.
You are right… my head was looking for positive changes for some reason. What happened with france?
Their primary launcher, the Ariane 5, was scheduled to be retired and replaced with the Ariane 6, but there were delays in the project. It left them with an awkward transition phase where no new Ariane 5s were being built, but Ariane 6 wasn’t ready yet, so all they could do was launch the last of the 5s.
But remember to pee in the shower itt use a bike
