SpaceX
SpaceX launched its 67th rocket of the year on Tuesday night, an astounding total for the company and its primary rocket, the Falcon 9. At that pace, a launch clip of one every four days, the company will likely launch 90 rockets or more during this calendar year.
The Starlink satellite launch was notable for several other reasons. This was the first time SpaceX had reused the Falcon 9 first stage 17 times. This booster, serial number 1058, has flown 11 previous Starlink missions alongside GPS III-3, Turksat 5A, Transporter-2, Intelsat G-33/G-34, and Transporter-6.
SpaceX conducted a fairly significant assessment of booster wear after the Falcon 9’s first stages reached 15 flights, and the company’s engineers now believe the rockets can achieve at least 20 flights. Remarkably, SpaceX has managed to push the limits of booster reusability while maintaining a 100 percent success record across the last 228 Falcon 9 launches, dating back to a platform explosion in September 2016.
As part of the maintenance process, SpaceX still performs some basic inspections and replaces engines and other important components from time to time. In addition, the company only risks its Starlink satellites with the most experienced boosters, reserving rockets that travel shorter distances for its customers.
Minimal online streaming
In its webcast of Tuesday night’s launch, “Starlink Group Mission 6-17,” SpaceX also continued its trend toward a simple broadcast approach. The company still provides hosted webcasts to external satellite customers and NASA partners for crew and cargo launches. But for Starlink, as of last month, the company now only offers video streaming with minimal audio from the launch control center. This video starts five minutes before takeoff.
This is arguably the right approach for Starlink launches, which now occur frequently and are largely the same flight profile from one mission to the next. One of SpaceX’s first employees, Hans Koenigsmann, once told me that one of the company’s goals was to remove the “magic” from the launch process. With regular launches of Starlink, the company has been largely successful in bringing out must-sees from launch.
Additionally, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has never been a big supporter of webcasting the launch. His position is largely that no one hosts a webcast when the plane takes off from the airport. So, if SpaceX is striving for airline-like operations, why should it broadcast every launch?
But Musk also understands the value of the company’s business proposition. Moreover, external clients love exposure and PR for webcasting. This probably explains why non-Starlink missions still feature hosted webcasts that are (slightly) more detailed.
And you, YouTube?
One decision that doesn’t seem defensible, from the perspective of expanding SpaceX’s reach and appeal, is Musk’s decision to remove SpaceX’s webcast from YouTube.
Instead, SpaceX now streams its webcast exclusively on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, which Musk acquired for $44 billion. Presumably, when SpaceX stopped posting new photos to Flickr, this decision was made because Musk views YouTube as a competitor to X.
This resulted in lower video resolution quality, in addition A host of other issues Which deteriorates the online experience of viewers. Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that alternative launches by NASASpaceflight.com and Spaceflight Now appeared to have larger crowds for Tuesday night’s Starlink launch.
