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.