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Routine Spaceflight, Y’all

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
NASAWatch
October 5, 2022
Routine Spaceflight, Y’all
Falcon 9 on the Left, Starship pad on the right.
NASA TV

Keith’s note: A shiny new SpaceX Falcon 9 placed the Crew-5 astronauts into orbit this morning. The launch vehicle’s first stage then made a nominal landing on Earth for refurb and reuse. Meanwhile a Starship launch pad is under construction next door.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

5 responses to “Routine Spaceflight, Y’all”

  1. Winner says:
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    It’s just such a shame.

    Here we are with SpaceX, launching astronauts on a relatively routine mission, on a used booster, with no hiccups during this (and nearly all) of their countdowns. Access to space is becoming routine.

    Then there’s SLS, a $10+billion monster rocket, disposable each launch, with no role other than to launch a capsule to lunar orbit, at $2B/launch, with trouble even getting off the ground, with leaks, delays, with a maximum launch rate of one per year. This for a program that supposedly is for “sustainable” lunar operations.

    It boggles the mind.

    • JJMach says:
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      I thought it was $4.1 billion a launch? (per OIG audit: https://nasawatch.com/cev-c… )

      Now a Starship launch costing only $2 million ( https://www.space.com/space… ) was likely Musk being his overly-optimistic self, but even if he was off by an order-of-magnitude, it would still be incredibly cheap, and less than that of the Falcon 9, which makes the comparison with SLS all the more stark.

      If the HLS version of the Starship could be kitted out with enough fuel and additional life support for the Earth-Moon journeys, it seems like it could take over for the role of SLS and Orion and make recurring trips to the moon sustainable.

      I would be interested to see how it all pencils out taking the gravity wells into account given that the HLS would need to be refueled. (Is it more reasonable to refuel HLS in Earth orbit? If so, it seems sending astronauts with it on its Earth-moon cycles is not a huge mass addition. Could it be cheaper to fly astronauts to lunar orbit in a standard Starship accompanied by a fleet of tankers? Could you make methane on the moon?) You need an atmospheric capable Starship or Dragon to get astronauts back to the Earth’s surface, so there will always be some form of in-space docking.

  2. Terry Stetler says:
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    And 7 hours later they launched another batch of Starlink satellites

  3. missleman01 says:
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    Vigilance counts the most when things are going well. Best regards to SpaceX, don’t take your eye off the ball.

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