Q&A: has SpaceX F9 set new record for launches in a year?

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Is Elon correct?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1583133885696987136

Congrats to @SpaceX team on 48th launch this year! Falcon 9 now holds record for most launches of a single vehicle type in a year.

The Soviet Union certainly had quite a few years with more launches overall. I don’t know the breakdown for different launch vehicle types.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Just saw this:

https://twitter.com/alexphysics13/status/1583134434546843648

And at the current launch cadence and with current schedules the whole Falcon family will beat the Soyuz family on most launches of a rocket family in a given year which is currently at 62.

[AmigaClone]

Just saw this:

https://twitter.com/alexphysics13/status/1583134434546843648

And at the current launch cadence and with current schedules the whole Falcon family will beat the Soyuz family on most launches of a rocket family in a given year which is currently at 62.

Based on information from Jonathan C. McDowell's website, https://planet4589.org, more specifically on the data from the R-7 family on the page below, it appears that 1980 saw the most launch attempts by a rocket family at 64 attempts with 62 successes and 1 partial failure.

https://planet4589.org/space/gcat/data/launch/R-7.html

That year Soyuz-U launched 45 times.  I admit not checking independently how many times it launched in other years, but Wikipedia mentioned 47 in 1979 which might be what Elon was referring to.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/tgmetsfan98/status/1583139787283697664

The previous record was held by Soyuz-U, which launched 47 times in 1979, 45 of which succeeded.

Falcon 9 has launched 48 times so far this year, all of them successful. It is October 20.

[Vahe231991]

The Falcon 9 now holds the title of the most launches carried out by a single SLV in a year, with the 60 launches conducted by the Falcon 9 last year.

[AmigaClone]

The Falcon 9 now holds the title of the most launches carried out by a single SLV in a year, with the 60 launches conducted by the Falcon 9 last year.

Falcon 9 in 2022 came close to by itself beating the R-7 family in 1980 in terms of both number of orbital launches (60 vs 64) and number of successful launches (60 vs 62) in a year.

[Vahe231991]

The Falcon 9 now holds the title of the most launches carried out by a single SLV in a year, with the 60 launches conducted by the Falcon 9 last year.

Falcon 9 in 2022 came close to by itself beating the R-7 family in 1980 in terms of both number of orbital launches (60 vs 64) and number of successful launches (60 vs 62) in a year.

Given that so far 61 Falcon 9 launches have been conducted and several more are scheduled to take place in the remaining months of 2023, the Falcon 9 this year is on track to beat the R-7 family in terms of successful orbital launches.

[AmigaClone]

The Falcon 9 now holds the title of the most launches carried out by a single SLV in a year, with the 60 launches conducted by the Falcon 9 last year.

Falcon 9 in 2022 came close to by itself beating the R-7 family in 1980 in terms of both number of orbital launches (60 vs 64) and number of successful launches (60 vs 62) in a year.

Given that so far 61 Falcon 9 launches have been conducted and several more are scheduled to take place in the remaining months of 2023, the Falcon 9 this year is on track to beat the R-7 family in terms of successful orbital launches.

Taking into account the next Falcon 9 launch dates, the R-7 family's record of 62 successful orbital launches will be broken in a week or so.  I expect Falcon 9 to have it's 65th launch of the year by the end of the month.

I would even say that there is a chance that by the end of the year SpaceX will successfully launch more Falcon 9s carrying Starlink satellites than the 1980's R-7 record.

[edzieba]

Within the past 1 year period (i.e. not a calendar year), Falcon 9 has successfully launched 91 times. I do not have a by-date list of all R-7 launches to perform the same rolling-window analysis on.

[tbellman]

Within the past 1 year period (i.e. not a calendar year), Falcon 9 has successfully launched 91 times. I do not have a by-date list of all R-7 launches to perform the same rolling-window analysis on.

In Wikipedia's list of Falcon launches, I count only 81 Falcon 9 launches and 4 Falcon Heavy launches between September 20th, 2022, and September 20th, 2023.  I have to go back to August 19th, 2022, to get 91 Falcon launches (and back to July 24th, 2022, if only counting Falcon 9).  A quick look at skyrocket.de agrees (although it hasn't added today's launch yet).

[edzieba]

Within the past 1 year period (i.e. not a calendar year), Falcon 9 has successfully launched 91 times. I do not have a by-date list of all R-7 launches to perform the same rolling-window analysis on.

In Wikipedia's list of Falcon launches, I count only 81 Falcon 9 launches and 4 Falcon Heavy launches between September 20th, 2022, and September 20th, 2023.  I have to go back to August 19th, 2022, to get 91 Falcon launches (and back to July 24th, 2022, if only counting Falcon 9).  A quick look at skyrocket.de agrees (although it hasn't added today's launch yet).

That's odd, I pulled the data from the Wiki table too.

::EDIT:: Ah, that spits out doubled lines for each FH launch. I'll have to go back and edit the source manually and re-run things.