SpaceX Falcon 9 Launches 48 Starlink, 2 BlackSky Satellites
CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE FORCE BASE, Fla. — On Thursday, December 2 at 6:12 p.m. EST, Falcon 9 launched 48 Starlink broadband and two BlackSky Earth observation satellites to orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
It was the 27th launch of 2022, a new record for SpaceX in a calendar year.
SpaceX has now launched 1,892 Starlink satellites since February 2018. A total of 1,732 are still functioning.
It was the ninth launch and landing of the Falcon 9 first stage booster, which previously launched GPS III-3, Turksat 5A, Transporter-2, and five Starlink missions.
23 responses to “SpaceX Falcon 9 Launches 48 Starlink, 2 BlackSky Satellites”
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And NASA has awarded 3 more Commercial Crew missions to SpaceX to cover the continuing Boeing fiasco.
https://spacenews.com/nasa-…
I hope SpaceX is making money on them
I am sure before the investors put their money in they are allowed to see the financials, and they like what they see.
Congratulations on another successful flight! And it looks like Elon Musk is hedging his bets against the FAA as well…
https://twitter.com/elonmus…
You’re amazing. Musk lays out that the base of the Starship program which was supposed to be ready for flight X 39 times is fraught with problems. And you still insist that the US government is the most significant threat to the program. As if they’re the ones standing in the way. If Elon told them the same lies he told us, then they’d have every moral right to clamp down on the program. That they are not indicates they understood the real nature of the problem. Which, you must admit, is a legitimate and morally right reason to ground the vehicle. Calling a rocket engine as experimental as Raptor a ‘disaster’ and then saying you’re going to use 39 of them on an experimental launch vehicle is just plain crazy, or the engine program is not nearly as bad off as the memo directly implies.
SpaceX having to do a new EIS will put work at Boca Chica on hold for 2-3 years, which means no Starship/Super Heavy test flights, which means no real opportunity to fix the problems. You are only able to do so much with rocket test stands and simulations as Boeing learned.
Also the Super Booster uses only 29 of the latest Raptor engines, and probably will use even fewer of the upgraded Raptor 2, saving weight from fewer engines.
From a reliability POV is there a real difference between running 29 unreliable engines vs 39?
Avoiding doing the EIS was just plain stupid. They knew that was coming. I see every indication the government is going to let the test flights go. A flight rate of every two weeks, with the water plant, and the 1/4 gigawatt power planet warrant an EIS. Those are not going forward without one. The Cape or going offshore is the only way to go to avoid those issues.
The test campaign next year will tell us everything we all need to know. It’s going to be exciting. I will say this, I’m much more reluctant to head to Padre Island for the first launch given that memo. Right now The Super is looking a lot like an N1 and will likely share its fate within the first few flights.
it seems clear to me that Elon is lying to someone…maybe himself. If he told the FAA that he was going to do 5-6 flights next year, and now wants to do one every two weeks… well the latter is not possible under any circumstances and the former is unlikely
2 Elon or someone is lying about the engine.. a guess is that they took a perfectly good engine, tried to get the last ounce/newton of performance out of it because the design needs it and broke it. or worse its never been what it was cracked up to be
in any event its hard to see how they move forward with anything. tossing 29 or more engines a flight and doing that for sometime is going to drive the vehicle cost per test (assuming they lose the vehicle up to nearly 1/2 billion a flight
and allt his makes me wonder if he really is making money on Falcon
No I wont be there for the first or any flights for a bit. if this thing blows up near BC the FAA will pull the program to a screeching halt.
it is going to be fun times ahead
Hardware always tells the truth. If they don’t fly for some extended time, we’ll know the engines were not quite ready. The extent of non readiness will determine how far into next year things don’t go. I assumed the engines were ready and thus interpreted the lack of tests and new systems being attached as indications of pending flight tests. Time will tell if I should have interpreted these non events the way I interpreted the non flights of the boilerplates as indication that they were not ready to spawn off a orbital Starship. If that memo was not an exaggeration, I’s say Starship Superheavy is a not ready for prime time player. I’m spiritually ready for a lot of nothing the next 6 months or more.
sorry for the late reply I was working 70 cm and 2 meter DX. the 70 cm was quite a surprise. I have put up a 40X50 foot spherical screen array that is good to about 1.5 ghz in reflection to do some serious geo and plane of the eliptic search…the last few days I got the 400 (360-450) broadband feed system up…and wow…I was surprised at the southern tropo signals I was seeing. its fixed of course but was working stations all the way into south America
and recieved RF noise from both Venus and Jupiter 🙂
I am not quite seeing how this is going to work. at the least one would think tht they would light off all 29 of the booster engines andi do a full static run…that in itself might be enlightening.
but if they are concerned about engine reliability well you might be right; they might be some months in doing it
the raPTOR performance on the boilerplate flights was nothing really to right home about.
but actually I think that they are running out of money. I bet so far they have spent 2 billion on the hardware and probably 1-2 on the engine…
That’s some pretty cool radio you’re doing. Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus are making for a really nice Western sky. Tomorrow will be a perfect day. Glider flying, then a flight line BBQ, and a little star party with an 8″ Celestron, and an old 10″ Parks on a Dob mount to push around and the ultra dark skies of El Tiro Gliderport.
I dont think my feed system is good enough for Saturn. there are hints of a noise rise as it flies through the pattern (and none when Neptune and Pluto fly by 🙂 ) but feedhorn optimization will prove critical. I can mount at least five feedhorns at the “node” of the focal point, but its my own mini aericibo. something I have wanted for a long long time
My real goal is to try and catch any signals from GEO orbit of older probes and look for Pioneer V
if it works when we get settled in Seattle wherever…I will try and put up a duplicate 🙂
life is good have a great time. there is a glider port in Abbotsford that I am seriously thinking of trying to tag into. anyway have fun and FLY SAFE Robert
Full-chat static fires are definitely on the agenda. As for your farcical notions about how much SpaceX spends, I’m glad you’re a pilot and not a property assessor.
hope you are well I stand by my estimates Robert
Elon Musk indicated that he is hoping to do 6-5 flights from Boca Chica. And as I pointed out it’s not possible to reach the Starlink orbits from Boca Chica. So if Starship’s going to launch Starlink satellites into space on a regular basis it will be from somewhere else, from offshore platforms or the Cape, and he is now working on launch platforms for both sites.
I also have been pointing out all along that Boca Chica was not a good decision for even Falcon 9 flights and that Starbase should have been located further north at the old Matagorda Island AFB.
I wish he would come to Matagorda we have a vacation house “near” but outside of the kill range if he was using the old base…and 10 acres. the prices would rise considerably. 🙂
I hope he makes it work this year and I am curious as to what initial config he comes to and where he goes from there
Your guesswork is as daft as ever. An entire Starship stack costs nowhere near a half-billion bucks. Knock a zero off of that and you’d still be too high. The FAA has found no problem with previous testing blow-ups. I see no basis for supposing that will change.
Raptors haven’t proven to be unreliable. Early Super Heavies are being built with 29. Starting with perhaps B6 or B7, Super Heavies will get four more engines for a total of 33. There is no basis at all for doing a multi-year EIS at Starbase. The FAA will either enter a finding of FONSI or FONSI with modest mitigations.
Oh come on Eagleson, in your world view there’s no reason to do an EIS at all. Ever, anywhere.
Super Heavies, probably starting as soon as B6 or B7, will get more engines, not fewer, with the count rising from 29 to 33. It makes no sense at all to cut the engine count to save weight. Each incremental engine contributes a trivial amount of weight compared to the incremental thrust it provides.
The “disaster” Elon declared in his now-famous memo was the production rate of Raptors at Hawthorne. If Raptor didn’t actually work, none of the prototype flights to-date would have worked either. Orbital testing may use up a lot of Raptors in the early going. The first such mission will use up 35. Elon wants to run these tests ASAP and can’t do that if production can’t keep up with requirements until the McGregor Raptor works goes on-line after mid-year 2022. You and Oler, as usual, completely misunderstand and misrepresent the actual situation.
While we ‘misread’ information, our schedules keep holding and those of you who ‘correctly’ read the tea leaves keep having your dates sail behind you as history sails on. Think about it. in only 3 short weeks any launch date you prognosticate will be within the dates ranges I was able to estimate two years ago. By your prognostications, we were supposed to be going to the Moon in the new year that’s so close.
You have 2 years and 3 weeks to win the bet against me. Fully operational by 1 Jan 2024 seems like a stretch to me. If you are right, my pessimism will cost me that dinner. By operational I mean revenue flights by reusable vehicles. 100 tons or 100 people per launch not necessary for me to concede. I’d guess operational sometime in 2025.