from the one-little-two-little-three-little-rocket-launches dept.
SpaceX launches three rockets in 36 hours:
SpaceX launched three missions in just over 36 hours, including two from Florida's Space Coast with most recent a two-stage Falcon 9 early Sunday.
The third rocket lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 12:27 a.m. carrying a communications satellite for Louisiana-based Globalstar.
Earlier, the company founded by billionaire Elon Musk launched 53 Starlink internet satellites at 12:09 p.m. Friday Eastern time from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida and then sent into space a radar satellite for the German military from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 7:19 a.m. Saturday Pacific.
Sunday morning's launch was Space X's 26th this year and ninth for this particular Falcon 9 first stage.
Ten minutes after liftoff, the first stage went back to Earth, landiing vertically on the SpaceX droneship "Just Read The Instructions" in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast.
Globalstar did give details about the launch of its spare satellite before liftoff, and SpaceX also didn't mention the payload.
In the other flight from Florida, the Falcon 9's first stage landed on the "A Shortfall of Gravitas" droneship.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 19 2022, @11:28PM
Afternoon delight! I love it when my rocket launches!
Fly away bird away away away it does not look back
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 19 2022, @11:31PM (6 children)
Another 3x 60-80 tonnes of carbon emissions,...
...all while YOU "eat less red meat", "drive less", "pay more in fictional carbon taxes", etc
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 19 2022, @11:47PM
That's like a lot of carbon emissions, right? /sarc
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 19 2022, @11:52PM (3 children)
All these launches carried useful satellite payloads to orbit on re-usable rockets. There currently is no 'green' way to get these in orbit. Finally if all rocket launches were stopped worldwide, the CO2 reduction you achieved would not even be detectable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 20 2022, @03:21AM (2 children)
I was wondering how many lifetimes I would have to drive my fairly modern and efficient car to even reach ONE tonne of C emissions?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 20 2022, @03:37AM
0.007 lifetimes.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 20 2022, @04:43AM
C12 - 2x O16 = 44.
If your tank was filled up with methane (the least polluting carbon form - 75% by mass), you'd emit 44/12*0.75=2.75 mass units CO2 for every mass unit of fuel.
If you were to fill your tank with pure octane, the ratio becomes 352/114 = 3.088.
Somewhere around 3.1 is a good still conservative approximation.
With the above, you should be able to answer yourself that burning question.
(Score: 2) by oumuamua on Monday June 20 2022, @06:38PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/19/world/europe/germany-russia-gas.html [nytimes.com]
This decision far outstrips the CO2 produced from rockets.
They were forced to do it you say? Well they could have chosen the green option of restarting the nuclear plants they closed down less than 6 months ago, just before the war.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/correction-germany-nuclear-shutdown-story-82051054 [go.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by MostCynical on Monday June 20 2022, @12:32AM (6 children)
Mr Musk maybe the 21 Century's version of Howard Hughes, but SpaceX has managed to achieve an extraordinary amount - especially compared to the US (or even the Russians - at least they are getting stuff into space occasionally)
Drone ship recovery is now just.. a thing.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Monday June 20 2022, @01:34AM (5 children)
After Starship flies things will get really interesting. Full reusability, a vast improvement in $/kg, larger payloads and volume, and in-orbit refilling. Implications of the last one include faster travel (lower exposure to radiation), and the ability to get massive payloads to almost anywhere in the solar system.
Falcon 9's partial reusability led to moderate cost savings on an already cheap launcher, and it has allowed SpaceX to work at a faster pace since it has lots of used boosters available. But the true revolution has yet to come.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 20 2022, @05:10AM (4 children)
is hard not to hate the man, but what he apparently put in motion will be lauded beyond his lifetime for sure.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday June 20 2022, @05:08PM (3 children)
'eh, it'll be historic, if nothing else. Lauded, not so sure.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 21 2022, @02:11PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 21 2022, @02:42PM (1 child)
That assumes a lot. For one, enough useful pieces of everything to make living off Earth a "reasonable" experience. We're just talking basics here, Food, Water, and Air. Let alone all of the "nice things" about living in an environment that's generally hospitable for humans to live. Everything we do off Earth for the foreseeable future will be hard. Assuming that faster than light travel isn't a thing, we will be stuck here for a very long time. Even, if we could travel "faster than light", but only say 2x times. We are so far away from anything that could be usable as an Earth 2.0, it's unrealistic to assume otherwise. That's also assuming that a habitable planet is "close by". We'd likely have a much better chance at terraforming Mars in the next 1000 years. That's assuming a lot of things about Mars that we don't know. As in, is there enough of the resources you would need to actually terraform Mars. Water is the big one, but other things would be necessary as well. As you couldn't import everything from Earth that you would need for a project of that scale. Maybe, you could get lucky and crash several mountain sized Asteroids into Mars with the right resources? Okay, maybe crashing mountain sized resources into Mars could be a bad thing. I really don't know.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 22 2022, @02:52PM
Actually, there is plenty of water on Mars, in form of underground ice deposits, tons in Valles Marineris alone, supposedly. Creating an atmosphere will bew a challenge, but the biggestr obstacle to living there might be .38 gravity. Time will tell.