On 2024-07-12 3:36 a.m., Snidely wrote:

Thursday, the twice postponed Starlink Group 9-3 launch went up from Vandenberg at the beginning of the window (no jellyfish for SoCal on
this one), and the booster (B1063 on its 19th flight) worked and was recovered.

"Its 19th flight", and B1062 has flown 20 times. I think that is great.
I wonder how much work needs to be done on those boosters for this. I
know SpaceX says they don't need to be refurbished between flights. But
an ICE car needs an oil change after something like 5000 km. I assume
Falcon boosters have some kind of maintenance schedule of their own.


Alain Fournier

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On 27/07/2024 20:42 Snidely <[email protected]> wrote:

Snidely explained :

Snidely used thar keyboard to writen:

Thursday, the twice postponed Starlink Group 9-3 launch went up from
Vandenberg at the beginning of the window (no jellyfish for SoCal on this >>> one), and the booster (B1063 on its 19th flight) worked and was recovered. >>>
But the second stage could be seen in the downlink to be shedding more ice >>> than usual from the insulated "bag" above the nozzle, and fell way short of >>> 200 km (152 km than down to 139 km after "stage 2 in terminal guidance" >>> was announced). SpaceX terminated the feed after "MVac shutdown" was
called out, about 38 min into the youtube relay by Spaceflight Now.

SpaceX's web site says "the second stage engine did not complete its second >>> burn .... satellites were deployed into a lower than intended orbit.
SpaceX has made contact with five of the satellites so far and is attmpting >>> to have them raise orbit using their ion thrusters."

/dps

Broken sense line. Return to flight successful on July 27, lift off at 1:45 >> EDT (Florida local time) from KSC, satellite deployment normal.

Two more Starlink launches this weekend, using the other two F9 launch sites:
CCSFS and Vandenberg.

A link to Eric Berger's article: <URL:https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/07/spacex-roars-back-to-orbit-barely-two-weeks-after-in-flight-anomaly/>

/dps

--
https://xkcd.com/2704

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4829/1

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/07/spacex-just-stomped-the-competition-for-a-new-contract-thats-not-great/

These articles are even more interesting, although I don't like the suggestion that it somehow SpaceX's fault
that other launch providers are faltering. Their competitors simply aren't able to perform and are therefore losing
more and more NASA contracts.

Yes, it's a bad thing that NASA is becoming a mono-culture, but it's not SpaceX who's to blame.

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