SpaceX Launches Two Falcon 9 Rockets just 38 Minutes Apart (space.com) 17
An anonymous reader shares this report from Space.com:
On Saturday evening (Aug. 15), SpaceX set another mark, for the shortest time between orbital flights: It launched two Falcon 9 rockets just 38 minutes apart, besting its old mark — set on Aug. 31, 2024 with two Starlink missions — by 27 minutes.
The first liftoff, from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, occurred Saturday at 9:12 p.m. EDT (0112 GMT on Aug. 16) and carried eight satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO) for Louisiana-based telecom company Globalstar. All eight spacecraft were deployed successfully, separating over a six-minute span beginning 56.5 minutes after liftoff, SpaceX announced via social media. While that Falcon 9 was powering its way to low Earth orbit, another one launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, on California's central coast. That liftoff, at 9:50 p.m. EDT (6:50 p.m. local time; 0150 GMT on Aug. 16), kicked off a mission for the U.S. Space Force called USSF-366...
Both of Saturday's missions featured successful rocket landings. The Falcon 9 first stage that launched the Globalstar mission came back for a touchdown at Cape Canaveral about eight minutes after launch. It was the 14th flight for that particular booster. The USSF-366 Falcon 9 first stage, meanwhile, came back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after its launch, touching down in the Pacific Ocean on the SpaceX droneship "Of Course I Still Love You." That booster now has 18 missions under its belt.
Saturday's doubleheader brought the tally of Falcon 9 launches in 2026 to 96. The vast majority of those — about 75% — have been Starlink missions.
The first liftoff, from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, occurred Saturday at 9:12 p.m. EDT (0112 GMT on Aug. 16) and carried eight satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO) for Louisiana-based telecom company Globalstar. All eight spacecraft were deployed successfully, separating over a six-minute span beginning 56.5 minutes after liftoff, SpaceX announced via social media. While that Falcon 9 was powering its way to low Earth orbit, another one launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, on California's central coast. That liftoff, at 9:50 p.m. EDT (6:50 p.m. local time; 0150 GMT on Aug. 16), kicked off a mission for the U.S. Space Force called USSF-366...
Both of Saturday's missions featured successful rocket landings. The Falcon 9 first stage that launched the Globalstar mission came back for a touchdown at Cape Canaveral about eight minutes after launch. It was the 14th flight for that particular booster. The USSF-366 Falcon 9 first stage, meanwhile, came back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after its launch, touching down in the Pacific Ocean on the SpaceX droneship "Of Course I Still Love You." That booster now has 18 missions under its belt.
Saturday's doubleheader brought the tally of Falcon 9 launches in 2026 to 96. The vast majority of those — about 75% — have been Starlink missions.
Not that impressive (Score:1)
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Now you should focus on extending the countdown to longer than 15 seconds.
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RST launch coming up (Score:5, Interesting)
In two weeks (Aug 30) SpaceX will launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.to the Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2). In about half a decade, we're going expand knowledge about extrasolar planet population in this galaxy to an extreme degree using this instrument.
In Before The Haters (Score:4, Insightful)
In before the haters. This is great and Space X is doing amazing things.
The launch frequencies and recovery techniques are absolutely the stuff of science fiction. Yet here we are seeing it and people treating it with disdain.
Re:In Before The Haters (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope I'm not considered a hater. Love SpaceX, looking forward to Starship 14. Am fully capable of admiring Musk's achievements, while lamenting the "dark maga" thing and his half-hearted (to be generous) acknowledgement of DOGE's failures.
But what's the big deal with 38 minutes apart from two different launch sites? Couldn't they just as easily launched them 2 seconds apart?
That's hardly what Elon means by "fully and rapidly reusable".
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--
Is this “Elon” a personal friend of yours ?
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Yea, it does seem less impressive when the launch sites are 2,400 miles apart. But, it's still impressive that a single country/company is performing virtually simultaneous launches.
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Yes, SpaceX is launching every 2 days on average, and a bit more than the rest of the world put together. The low cost is what makes this possible, and not just from reusability. Quite the accomplishment.
Re:In Before The Haters (Score:4, Insightful)
It is great, I do agree, that's why it's a shame that the owner and CEO has tied himself so closely to the brand's identity and that he is a weirdo white supremacist conspiracy theorist who puts hundreds of millions of dollars into furthering the most divisive person in American history and pushes divisive and even hateful rhetoric on a platform he owns because his skin is so thick he'd rather outlay billions of dollars so people don't make fun of him so much.
SpaceX should be a shining example of not just American ingenuity but also the power of the public/private partnership (Since SpaceX got it's jumpstart from the Obama-era COTS program) but we can't say that because the idea that the government did something good is not something people can admit because of the politics pushed by the owner of the company.
So yes, this is great but that is muted by the fact the owner and face of it is going to repost some Nazi-adjacent disinfo soon and then tune his AI to make him look cool and make nudes of minors and then donate another half billion to Trump.
America, fuck yea.
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"Morality binds and blinds"- Jonathan Haidt from his 2012 book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.
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This will only get better (Score:2)