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SpaceX is crushing it in satellite launch.

As measured by mass to orbit...

In 2022 Q2, SpaceX launched approximately twice as much mass to orbit, as all other launch providers combined!

ULA's Delta IV Heavy just launched from the West Coast for the last time. It has two more launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on its manifest, the last in Q1 2024. Both will be spy satellites. Then it will be history.

I'll be sad to see it go. It was a beautiful rocket, powerful and unique. Roughly in the same payload class as SpaceX's Falcon Heavy (actually more upmass if the FH retains fuel for booster recovery), it was America's most powerful rocket after the retirement of the Space Shuttle. It remains the biggest rocket ever to launch from Vandenberg (where the photo below was taken).

Powered by liquid hydrogen, it became famous for lighting itself on fire at launch and rising from a fireball. The explanation is that it uses liquid hydrogen to chill down its engines for ignition, which creates a hydrogen cloud around the rocket that the engines ignite.

https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/157...8481628163

I'm posting this SpaceX photo just because it's so great. Taken from a camera on a payload fairing, it shows the terminator separating the day and night sides of the Earth, the Falcon 9 second stage exhaust contrail up above while the Falcon 9 booster conducts its entry burn down below.

Walking on the Moon isn't easy

https://twitter.com/historyinmemes/statu...6907409421

SpaceX is experimenting around with cams in unusual places. In addition to fairing cam above, here's starlink cam. A group of recently released starlinks is visible before they gradually disperse. Of particular interest is a little white speck-like object in the upper right that suddenly accelerates and gets out of dodge. It isn't a UAP (quiet down MR). It's the Falcon 9 second stage performing its deorbit burn that will take it down into the sea between Perth Australia and Antarctica.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1578111446696828928

Halloween spectacular coming up the morning of October 31: A three-barrelled Falcon Heavy launch! The first since June 2019!

It's a US Space Force mission called USSF-44, which will deliver two satellites to geosynchronous orbit, a larger satellite whose name and purpose haven't been disclosed and a small satellite called Tetra-1 which will "test systems procedures" for the US military.

The three boosters will be B 1064, B 1065 and B 1066 all on their first flights. They will launch from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. The center core (1066) will be expended while the two side cores return to a land landing at Cape Canaveral's landing zones 1 and 2. It should be spectacular with two boosters coming in for simultaneous propulsive landings..

October 31, 2022 (Halloween!!) at 6:44 AM PDT/9:44 AM EDT.

https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/1151

SpaceX photo of the business end of USSF-44

SpaceX has this year passed Boeing to become NASA's second biggest contractor. ($2 billion in contracts for FY 2022) First biggest is Cal Tech, which runs NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the people who produce NASA's interplanetary space probes and landers.

It isn't surprising given the extensive use that Falcon9's get, plus Crew Dragons (currently America's only operational human spaceflight vehicle) and the ISS supply flights.

(Graphic by Irene Klotz of Aviation Week.)

(Oct 24, 2022 02:02 AM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]Halloween spectacular coming up the morning of October 31: A three-barrelled Falcon Heavy launch! The first since June 2019!

It's a US Space Force mission called USSF-44, which will deliver two satellites to geosynchronous orbit, a larger satellite whose name and purpose haven't been disclosed and a small satellite called Tetra-1 which will "test systems procedures" for the US military.

The three boosters will be B 1064, B 1065 and B 1066 all on their first flights. They will launch from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. The center core (1066) will be expended while the two side cores return to a land landing at Cape Canaveral's landing zones 1 and 2. It should be spectacular with two boosters coming in for simultaneous propulsive landings..

October 31, 2022 (Halloween!!) at 6:44 AM PDT/9:44 AM EDT. 

https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/1151

USSF-44, the Falcon Heavy launch originally scheduled for Halloween, has been pushed back a day and is now scheduled for Tuesday, 11-1 6:41 AM Pacific, 9:41 AM Eastern.

USSF-44 rolling out to Pad 39A today (humans for scale)

The Falcon Heavy has gone vertical within the last hour at Pad 39A

https://twitter.com/MarcusHouse/status/1...4110756864

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1587442127214034944

https://twitter.com/considercosmos/statu...9677633537

For everyone who grew up on science fiction, this is how it's supposed to be done! (Mark "Forger" Stucky who filmed this is the retired Virgin Galactic chief test pilot/commercial astronaut who has flown SpaceshipTwo to the edge of space and one of the subjects of the book Test Gods.

https://twitter.com/Stuck4ger/status/158...3724803072

And here's really closeup video by Jenny Hautmann. There's no way that they would let her be right at the edge of the landing pad like this, but they let her set up her remote camera there. The rocket blast of one of the landing boosters knocked over her camera at the end. Way to go Jenny!

https://twitter.com/JennyHPhoto/status/1...7358641154

(Photo by Jenny Hautmann's remote camera at the edge of the landing pad before it got blown over.)