SpaceX progress towards a 100 launch year

[Robotbeat]

"90th flight."  This is why I concurred with meekGee's post earlier, and unincluded the Starship launch from April.

What’s the quote tweet context?

[edzieba]

Maybe SpaceX should dust off Grasshopper and perform some Falcon 9 suborbital flights before the end of the year, add some extra teeth to the debate.

[mandrewa]

Maybe SpaceX should dust off Grasshopper and perform some Falcon 9 suborbital flights before the end of the year, add some extra teeth to the debate.

24,021 km/hr 16,000 25,000

100 km/hr

Both of those are suborbital!  But they are not the same.

Now I should have predicted this.  In fact I wondered if he would do this. 

Elon Musk doesn't argue the details (when it doesn't matter).

But I know that he thinks the Starship development flights are extremely significant.  They are on his mind!

[alugobi]

"90th flight."  This is why I concurred with meekGee's post earlier, and unincluded the Starship launch from April.

What’s the quote tweet context?

Hey if we're going to maintain that SpaceX hadn't had failures in the last couple of years, then we're not counting Starships, and so we shouldn't count them in the launch rate either.

This is about Falocns. It's a continuation of similar discussions in years past, when here wasn't a Starship.

The still isn't - it is still a development. Maybe sometime late next year it'll start doing regular service. Maybe.

[Robotbeat]

SpaceX has had recent /launch/ failures (although without payloads, you can call them successful /tests/) on Starship. Not on Falcon. But the thread is about launches, not Falcon and not whether or not they were successful (the starship launches were not successful launches).

[M.E.T.]

SpaceX has had recent /launch/ failures (although without payloads, you can call them successful /tests/) on Starship. Not on Falcon. But the thread is about launches, not Falcon and not whether or not they were successful (the starship launches were not successful launches).

Orbital launches. The Starship flights were sub orbital (irrespective of their outcomes).

[Robotbeat]

Oh they definitely count as launches. Didn’t say suborbital. And in this case, they’re suborbital on a technicality.

[M.E.T.]

Oh they definitely count as launches. Didn’t say suborbital. And in this case, they’re suborbital on a technicality.

🤷‍♂️ Idle discussion either way. Point is SpaceX is dominating.

[Brigantine]

Re suborbital, what I'm primarily counting (which no one else is obliged to conform to - carry on analyzing  using whichever definitions you want) is any launches of an orbital-class stack.

SpaceShipTwo or New Sheppard or SN15 are not orbital class stacks, so wouldn't count. But a F9 that fails to reach the karman line still counts, as do B7/S24 & B9/S25. They're orbital class hardware and they launch.

No need to agree, just explaining what I think is the most interesting to track. Doesn't need to be the same as what you track or what Elon tracks. 100 is a get no matter what you have 100 of.

[Perchlorate]

Starlink 7-8 has launched.  One more....

[Brigantine]

That's a 7 day turnaround for SLC-4E. Is there a precedent for that? Not recently.

If this continues, we would see 5 Vandenberg launches this December - though on past trends there will be a 10+ day turnaround mixed in there as well.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Elon has tweeted again, which suggests to me that he’s got one eye on what the total for the year will be:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1733079147478495738

91st Falcon flight of 2023

[meekGee]

Elon has tweeted again, which suggests to me that he’s got one eye on what the total for the year will be:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1733079147478495738

91st Falcon flight of 2023

... And he's counting Falcons.  He could have said 93 SpaceX launches.

100 is still possible, but IMO unlikely. What s failure, I can see the headlines now.

[steveleach]

Maybe he wants to see 100 F9/FH launches and will push his team to achieve that, but (like most of us) would be more than happy if he has to include Starship to get the 100.

[Robotbeat]

I get estimated 100.59 SpaceX launches as of today.

I’m hoping they get to 101 as that’s what I voted for this year.

 (Partially because so few others voted for over 100, so I thought that tail probability was being under-estimated. Actually getting so close is sort of surprising.)

[AmigaClone]

The 91st flight of a LV belonging to the F9 family.

So far this year SpaceX has launched 99 F9/FH first stage boosters (87 on F9 rockets and 12 on 4 FH launches). SpaceX has recovered 93 boosters (75 on drone ships and 18 RLTS) and expending 6 (4 FH cores and 2 FH side boosters).

While I'm not sure if SpaceX will reach their goal of 100 launches, even including Starship ITFs, they will likely land over 100 first stage boosters this year.

Partial list of most orbital launches per year by the Soviet Union.

108 launches - 1982
102 launches - 1977
100 launches - 1976, 1981, 1983, and 1985
 97 launches - 1984 and 1987
 94 launches - 1986 and 1988
 93 launches - 1975
 91 launches - 1971 and 1978

[edzieba]

The 91st flight of a LV belonging to the F9 family.

So far this year SpaceX has launched 99 F9/FH first stage boosters (87 on F9 rockets and 12 on 4 FH launches). SpaceX has recovered 93 boosters (75 on drone ships and 18 RLTS) and expending 6 (4 FH cores and 2 FH side boosters).

As an aside, this is only the second year that landings have exceeded launches for the Falcon family.
Every FH gives one 'excess' landing (with centre core recovery essentially dead) and every expended core is one less landing.

2023 (to date): 91 launches, 93 landings
2022: 61 launches, 60 landings
2021: 31 launches, 30 landings
2020: 26 launches, 23 landings.
2019: 13 launches, 14 landings.

[kdhilliard]

The 91st flight of a LV belonging to the F9 family.

So far this year SpaceX has launched 99 F9/FH first stage boosters (87 on F9 rockets and 12 on 4 FH launches). SpaceX has recovered 93 boosters (75 on drone ships and 18 RLTS) and expending 6 (4 FH cores and 2 FH side boosters).

..., they will likely land over 100 first stage boosters this year.
...

I know this thread is about 100 launches, but approaching the 100 booster recoveries milestone it quite impressive.
Assuming Sunday's USSF-52 FH goes well with its planned LXL recovery, that will put us at 95 booster landings, meaning we'll need 5 additional F9 flights with recoveries to make 100 landings, and that would put us at 97 Falcon family launches and 99 overall including Starship.

Also ...

...
2019: 13 launches, 14 landings.

That's a conservative count as it treats the Arabsat-6A FH center core as a loss.
Recall that it successfully landed, but was subsequently lost off the barge in heavy seas.
So you could say 2019 saw 15 landings but 14 successful recoveries.
(The August 2019 launch of AMOS-17 saw its booster intentionally expended.)

[steveleach]

The 91st flight of a LV belonging to the F9 family.

So far this year SpaceX has launched 99 F9/FH first stage boosters (87 on F9 rockets and 12 on 4 FH launches). SpaceX has recovered 93 boosters (75 on drone ships and 18 RLTS) and expending 6 (4 FH cores and 2 FH side boosters).

As an aside, this is only the second year that landings have exceeded launches for the Falcon family.
Every FH gives one 'excess' landing (with centre core recovery essentially dead) and every expended core is one less landing.

2023 (to date): 91 launches, 93 landings
2022: 61 launches, 60 landings
2021: 31 launches, 30 landings
2020: 26 launches, 23 landings.
2019: 13 launches, 14 landings.

This assumes that Falcon Heavy counts as 1 vehicle for launch but 3 for landing, right?

The things that landed (side boosters) obviously did launch, we just choose not to count that.

[spacenut]

The Soviet Unions launches included all of their launch vehicles.  Sure the R7 family got the most, but what about other styles of rockets?  Has F9/FH family beat the R7 family of rocket launches?