Link here. The article is definitely worth reading, as it tells us that SpaceX is pushing hard to be ready to launch in early May, as Musk has promised. The article also thinks SpaceX will be able to ramp up later launches to one every two months. The article however is I think being naively optimistic about this timeline, because it naively assumes the FAA will quickly approve the launch licenses to meet that schedule. I guarantee the FAA won’t, as it has taken it one to four months after SpaceX was ready to launch to approve the licenses for the previous launches. The length of that approval ..read more

Bunny march on! SpaceX today successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. The first stage completed its seventh flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The leaders in the 2024 launch race: 41 SpaceX 15 China 6 Russia 4 Rocket Lab American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 47 to 27, while SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 41 to 33 ..read more

SpaceX today succeeded in launching another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. However, after stage separation and the ignition of the upper stage, with the rocket operating normally, the live stream from X suddenly went down. The problem was not with the rocket, as all feeds from both stages disappeared, with the entire live stream going blank. The first stage was on its twelfth launch. SpaceX has now confirmed that it landed successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The company has also confirmed as successful orbital insertion. This was SpaceX’s ..read more

The bunny flies again! SpaceX tonight successfully launched 23 more Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. The first stage completed its 20th flight, a new record for a Falcon 9 first stage, landing successfully on a droneship in the Atlantic. At this moment SpaceX is beginning to collect a fleet of Falcon 9 first stage boosters that have flown almost as much as NASA’s space shuttle fleet, which flew as follows: Discover 39 flights Atlantis 33 flights Columbia: 28 flights Endeavour 25 flights Challenger: 10 flights At present SpaceX has one booster with 20 fl ..read more

Link here. This article is a follow-up on the story I posted yesterday, about a meeting of the California Coastal Commission where locals demanded and the commission considered measures for attempting to limit an increase in launches from Vandenberg. The article provides many more details about this political battle. It appears the military, out of courtesy, was letting the commission know that it wants to raise the number of launches to accomodate not just SpaceX but other private companies. It can do so without the commission’s permission, but wishes to work with it. The commission and the t ..read more

Though Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy, in his annual letter to shareholders yesterday, touted the Kuiper internet constellation’s profit potential, he also implied that the planned first launch of operational satellites has been delayed. When Project Kuiper’s first two prototype satellites were launched last October for testing, Amazon said that its first production-grade satellites were on track for launch in the first half of 2024, and that it expected broadband service to be in beta testing with selected customers by the end of the year. Today, Jassy put a slightly different spin on that schedule ..read more

The same collection of activists who have been waging lawfare against SpaceX’s Boca Chica rocket facility have now filed a new lawsuit, this time against the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission (TPWD) in order to block an approved land swap that gives SpaceX 43 acres of a Boca Chica state park in exchange for receiving 477 acres nearby. The South Texas Environmental Justice Network, the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, and Save RGV banded together for a lawsuit filed in the District Court of Travis County on April 3. The suit alleges that Texas Parks and Wildlife violated statutory requireme ..read more

The bunny never stops! SpaceX tonight successfully launched 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. The first stage completed its second flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The leaders in the 2024 launch race: 37 SpaceX 14 China 5 Russia 4 Rocket Lab American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 43 to 25, while SpaceX by itself leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 37 to 31 ..read more

SpaceX today successfully launched 11 commercial payloads into orbit, as the first of what it calls its Bandwagon series, designed to provide launch ssatellites to medium inclination Earth orbits. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, its first stage completing its fourteenth flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The leaders in the 2024 launch race: 36 SpaceX 14 China 5 Russia 4 Rocket Lab American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 41 to 25, while SpaceX by itself leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 36 to 30 ..read more

The candidate landing zone on Mars for Starship Elon Musk yesterday gave a 44-minute update on Starship/Superheavy to his team in Boca Chica, outlining what he now expects in the next two years as well as in the next two decades. You can watch his presentation here. Musk began by once again describing his fundamental goal behind the company, to make the human race multi-planetary, for its own survival, and that Mars is at this time the best choice for doing so. He then provided some details about the on-going development of Starship/Superheavy: SpaceX will be ready to launch 4th test flight ..read more