And they’re on track for ~130 this year.
How many already launched?
96 as of September 29 https://spaceexplored.com/spacex-launches-2024/
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
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.
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.
You taking neutron? That still has a disposable upper stage.
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?
pipe dream
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.
Stop supporting Elon.
SpaceX is more than just Elon.
As with X, I’ll support it as soon as he’s out.
If we stop doing business with SpaceX, we immediately demolish most of our capability to reach space, including the ISS until Starliner quits failing. Perhaps instead of trying to treat this as a matter of the free market we should recognize it as what it is - a matter of supreme economic and military importance - and force the Nazi fucker out.
Sure. As long as he goes, I’ll support it all day long.
People really under estimate how important he is to SpaceX.
Reusing f9 1st stage - His initiative
Landing f9 on a barge - His initiative.
Making Starship Stainless Steel - His initiative
Catching Starship booster on chopsticks - His initiative.
The list goes on and on.
Without someone like him pushing for these radical things that everyone else thinks is impossible or a bad idea we wouldn’t recognize what SpaceX would be.
Instead we have things like starliner which is a disaster, and blue origin which started before SpaceX and has never reached orbit.
SpaceX would slowly transform back into ‘old space’ if he was forced out as there are very few people willing to take the risks he takes.
Edit: and it’s even very possible that the wrong CEO takes SpaceX public too soon which would make all the risk taking and fail fast development cycle they use impossible. Think of the stock crashing when a test flight fails and the pressure from investors around that.
Are those examples actually his initiative, or him championing someone else’s idea?
Reusing f9, landing F9 on barge, and Stainless steel were his initiatives. The SS one was a particularly hard win for him with a lot of internal push back.
Catching Starship on the chopsticks might have been an idea he heard outside of SpaceX, but that he then championed, again to a lot of internal push back, I’m not 100% about it being an external to spacex idea though.
Edit clarity and below
Those are just examples though. And I’m sure there are times as you suggest that people suggest a difficult idea that he then champions as well.
That he can champion these radical things, his idea or not, is still the key point of his leadership that will be lost.
For example, someone must have suggested they use a full-flow staged combustion fuel cycle for raptor. He had to sign off on that. No one had ever designed and flown a engine like this before. The russians came closest making one, but never flew it. The predecessor to this engine in the 60s or whenever, NASA didn’t even think it was physically possible to make until the Russians made it.
I don’t think his personal accomplishments really matter in the face of his support for the far right, crushing hatred of trans people, calling people pedophiles and the absurd amount of misinformation and bigotry that he promotes on xitter.
If SpaceX needs an absolute piece of shit like him in order to succeed, then there shouldn’t be a SpaceX.
Yeah but all of that was before he stopped taking his meds.
Thankfully SpaceX is MORE than just Elon. Unlike Twitter, where he’s removed everyone and turned it to slop. He makes no money from it, so why shouldn’t he fuck with it?
SpaceX actually makes money. Elon won’t fuck it up. (Or he will, but atleast we will have learned an insane amount of things thanks to them.)
I’m sure it makes money and he may not F it up, but that’s not the point. The point is that Elon has turned into the douche of the century along with his butt-buddy Trump.
I’m all for giving Nasa the light of day again, but from what I can tell, “Its not in the American interests” to give Nasa a good budget.
Yeah yeah yeah they overspend, are bad at budgeting, and have issues. But im quite stubborn, space science and research is priceless in my book.
So, if SpaceX is owned by a shit bag narcissist, but atleast space research is advancing? Well, that’s fine with me. I feel very happy for all the jobs and scientists and aerospace engineers who have a job thanks to SpaceX.
Serious question - is it nasa over spending, or is it congress forcing certain requirements on them making things more complicated that leads to over spending?
I am by no means a good source. From what I’ve read and seen it definitely seems like that is part of the issue. I believe for a time Nasa was also hugely underselling the real cost (likely so they could get it pushed through in the first place) which also lead to issues of its own.
Ya, it’s also massive ecological damage so we can all go “ooooh ahhh!”
Go complain about fast fashion and other disposable junk. Space technology is one of the most important aspects of our future. I don’t see the logic behind people complaining about these rockets, is it because they’re in the media spotlight?
Other industries that don’t provide any meaningful value do orders of magnitude more damage.
All industries destroying the planet are responsible including fast fashion, rockets are not allowed to harm people because “they’re important”. Important to what? Important to profits, important to american military and cultural hedgemony, important to innovation of more unnecessary products to sell to even further degrade the ecosystem?
No you go fanboy over fascist rocket boy.
I assume you meant the opposite of what you wrote. Your question was answered in my previous comment.
You think we should just stop all industries then?
Sorry for the f word insult.
You think we should just stop all industries then?
We live in a capitalist world that is exploiting the planet for profit and will continue to do so until it dies, which scientists are telling us we are coming up on.
Most of the industries of the world do not exist for the benefit of humans, they exist for the benefit of those who want to rule and hoard resources. We are brought up in a culture they control that tells us their products are important and to desire them.
Ultimately, I don’t think it’s ok to cause harm to living things and ecosystems to prop up this system. Like, how many people is it ok to kill so that we have cell phones? Rockets are just a particularly egregious example way of thinking, just like fashions shows are. So yes, I think if our species expects to exist in 100 years on a planet that still has forests and whales, it will require the end most industries we know today. Degrowth of some sort is the only way forward that doesn’t end in disaster. Rocket use at the level of 2024 is simply not compatible with sustainability.
Do you like modern tech? Do you like the chips in your device you’re using to comment right now? You can thank the space industry. Without Apollo we would still be 30 years behind in integrated circuit technology.
If I was given the choice by a genie, on the one side you have your laptop, Lemmy, car, etc, but millions of people an animals suffer, or on the other hand, our tech evolves more slowly and sustainably, I’d choose the latter every time.
I’ll take being 30 years behind and still have <insert any species we’ve driven extinct>. An entitlement to the lives and well being of others for the sake of “progress” is pretty sick.
The suffering doesn’t just go away because we don’t have modern tech.
Pointless reply, not all suffering has the same cause of course, but most of the unnecessary suffering (i.e. that suffering of all sentient beings on top that which occurs due to the nature of life itself) is caused by human activity, specifically where selfish individuals have felt entitled to cause suffering in others, destroy ecosystems, extinct species, and oppress peoples in pursuit of their goals.
The world is not ours to consume.
But a very small portion of human activity is developing chips or launching rockets. Most of it is manufacturing disposable junk or building roads/buildings.
In fact, suffering increases a whole lot because medical and agricultural tech is still tech, not to mention how much life-saving and quality improvement is brought in by communications technology. Some people really think you can just click the “medical” tab in Civilization and guarantee only the benefits of the one technology you like.
All these pro SpaceX news is coming out before the election and after everyone was making fun of Musk on stage.
The people posting these images are either astroturfers or fell victim to astroturfers.
I’ll definitely boycott SpaceX now (puts “activist” in bio)
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.
The chart says companies/space agency, so I am assuming that NASA stopped launching rockets? It sounds concerning to put all the egg into the basket of private enterprises.
Indeed, NASA stopped launching rockets with the space shuttle. But that was the single best decision that NASA ever made. The space shuttle was an extremely expensive death trap. (It was damn cool, but a terrible way to get to space)
It sounds concerning to put all the egg into the basket of private enterprises.
You can blame the trump administration for that, with their commercial cargo and commercial crew programs. But the truth is, NASA has always heavily relied upon private companies, it’s just that in the past they were all defense contractors (Boeing, Northrop, lockheed, rocketdyne, ULA). The other annoying truth, these commercial programs have actually been wildly successful (except in the case of Boeing’s participation).
But it’s been wildly successful in a few respects, one of which is that nasa has been able to focus on exploration again. Without having to support the huge costs of the shuttle program, they’ve been able to put a lot of their money into landers, interplanetary probes and space telescopes. I think we have more ongoing exploration missions than ever before. The Europa clipper mission launched just yesterday (on a SpaceX Rocket coincidentally). https://science.nasa.gov/mission/europa-clipper/
I wonder if NASA would ever bring back the space plane idea they had before the space shuttle plan got co-opted by a bunch of interest groups and turned into the boondoggle that it became.
Yeah, it certainly could have been better. I believe the original plans were for both the booster and orbiter to essentially be planes able to land on a runway. It’s really a pretty awesome design, I mean can you imagine if we had a fully reusable launch vehicle in the 90s?
But the truth is, the shuttle was never really reusable, it was more like… refurbishable. It took a lot of maintenance for the heat shield and the engines after every launch. It was also amazingly complex, there were so many possible failure states, and in many of those scenarios there was just no hope for the crew. With a shuttle and with the future starship, we’ll be seriously missing the launch escape system seen in traditional crew capsules. On some level, the last thing I would want would be to lose a whole shuttle crew and two booster pilots. (Though admittedly, these days the booster would certainly be unscrewed). I do also wonder, how much potential payload mass they’d lose by adding all the additional parts they would need to make the booster a landable aircraft.
Anyway, it is possible NASA could do that again, but it would be a serious investment to get that working, and right now I think they just aren’t set up to take on a project of that complexity. Also, it would definitely distract and redirect funds from their ongoing science missions.
So yeah, they could, it would be cool, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.
put all the egg into the basket of private enterprises.
Kind of the opposite - instead of the one rocket program NASA could have done, we have ULA, Blue Origin, and SpaceX. There’s multiple baskets now
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.
