Falcon 9 Milestones raises a “stupid” approach

As Spacex Starship vehicle Collect all attention This week, the company’s backbone Falcon 9 missile Keep hitting some impressive landmarks.

Both of them occurred during relatively unknown launch operations of the company’s Starlink satellites, but nevertheless are noticeable because they emphasize the value of reusing the first stage, which Spacex It has been a pioneer over the past decade.

The first teacher happened on Wednesday morning with the launch of the Starlink 10-56 mission of Cape Canaveral, Florida. The first stage that launched these satellites, Booster 1096, was its second launch and successfully fell on Just read the instructions Done ship. Fightly, this was the 400th place that Spacex landed the landing of the drone.

After that, less than 24 hours later, the Falcon 9 missile launched the last Starlink 10-11 mission of a nearby launch platform at the Kennedy Space Center. This first stage, Booster 1067, later returned and landed on another drone, Lack of gravity.

This is a special supporter, after his first appearance in June 2021 and the launch of a wide range of missions, including two crews for the International Space Station and some Galileo moons of the European Union. On Thursday, the missile made its thirtieth trips, the first time that Falcon 9 Booster hit this level of experience.

Decade

These landmarks came about a decade after Spacex began to achieve some success by reusing the first stage.

The company for the first time entered it in the first phase of the Falcon 9 missile in September 2013, during the first flight 1.1 of the car. This has proven the ability of the fastest evacuation of the sound, which, until that time, was theoretically.

This includes igniting the nine Merlin missile engines while the car travels faster than the speed of sound through the upper atmosphere, with external temperatures exceeding 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of the frank force for this re -entry, the engines in the external roll of the missile wanted to come out, the company president, Tom Muller, told me about the book. Re -enter. Success in the first attempt seems unlikely.

Remember that he watched this launch from Vandinburg Space Base in California and monitored the re -entry as a Kamira on board ELON Musk’s private company Elon Musk, followed the missile. I made her the first stage along the way, intact.

“I remember watching the live video and watching the engine light on the ocean,” Muller said. And the holy shit, there was.

It will take a lot of tampering and experimentation, but by December 2015, the first Spacex fell on a missile along the Florida coast. It follows the first drone in April 2016.

Skoo the skeptics

Many people in the industry were skeptical of SpaceX’s approach to reuse. In mid -2010, both European and Japanese space agencies were looking to develop the next generation of missiles. Either way, Europe chose with Arian 6 and Japan with H3, and chose the traditional missiles that can be detected instead of pressure towards reuse.

As a result, each of these competitors to launch commercial satellites is now about a decade behind Spacex in terms of launch technology. If the ambitious charcoal missile succeeds, this gap may widen.