SpaceX Planning To Launch Up To 52 Missions In 2022 (theverge.com) 39
Commercial space company SpaceX plans to launch a whopping 52 flights in 2022, a NASA safety panel revealed today during a meeting. If successful, it would be the most launches the company has ever conducted in a single year, with its previous record last year at 31 launches. The Verge reports: The impressive figure was given during a virtual meeting of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, or ASAP, which gives guidance to the space agency on how to maintain safety within its biggest programs. "NASA and SpaceX will have to be watchful during 2022 that they're not victims of their success," Sandy Magnus, a former NASA astronaut and member of the panel, said during the meeting. "There's an ambitious 52-launch manifest for SpaceX over the course of the year. And that's an incredible pace."
Spaceflight schedules are always subject to change, so there's no guarantee that SpaceX will meet the 52-launch figure. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the company was striving to hit 48 launches in 2021 but only made it to 31. So far this year, SpaceX has already launched three missions, and it has another one scheduled for this afternoon. While meeting the number would certainly be admirable, NASA's ASAP panel also warned about the downsides of having such a packed manifest. "Both NASA and SpaceX will have to ensure the appropriate attention and priority are focused on NASA missions," Magnus said, "and that the right resources are brought to bear to maintain that pace at a safe measure."
Spaceflight schedules are always subject to change, so there's no guarantee that SpaceX will meet the 52-launch figure. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the company was striving to hit 48 launches in 2021 but only made it to 31. So far this year, SpaceX has already launched three missions, and it has another one scheduled for this afternoon. While meeting the number would certainly be admirable, NASA's ASAP panel also warned about the downsides of having such a packed manifest. "Both NASA and SpaceX will have to ensure the appropriate attention and priority are focused on NASA missions," Magnus said, "and that the right resources are brought to bear to maintain that pace at a safe measure."
That is a lot of starlink satellites (Score:2, Interesting)
As the other launches will be a small fraction of those.
So I wonder when the roaming service will be a available.
Re:That is a lot of starlink satellites (Score:5, Informative)
SpaceX has 40 commercial and NASA missions in their launch manifest that are scheduled for this year. While some of those will slip to next year, Starlink is going to be a minority of missions, not the large majority you assert.
Source: https://www.teslarati.com/spac... [teslarati.com]
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I thought they were able to share capacity for starlink launches. Are you saying none of these government/commercial launches will also launch starlink?
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did they get the permission for the 36000 they were asking ? As far as I remember they have approval for 12K only for now.
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Failure rate (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Failure rate (Score:5, Informative)
I worry about making that sort of comparison especially with such small statistics on both sides. Shuttle had 2 failures out of 135 launches, and falcon 9 has had 1 out of 137. I'm not a statistician and maybe someone could provide more insight, but that 1 out of 137 could easily turn into 1/1000 eventually, we just don't have the statistics (Poisson?) to know otherwise. Or it could go the other way, maybe SpaceX has been lucky for the past 118 launches and their real rate is actually much worse.
There are also some differences between shuttle and SpaceX launch failures. The SpaceX failure was pretty early in their launches (9th dragon cargo launch, 19th falcon 9 launch, out of 137 launches), while Challenger was launch 51 and Columbia 107 (not a direct launch failure but failure upon reentry due to launch damage) out of 135. It might be useful to look at other non-shuttle launch complete failure rates:
Soyuz U: 22/786
Ariane-5: 2/112
Ariane-4: 3/116
Atlas 5: 1/91
Delta II: 1/155
Delta 4: 1/13
Proton M: 9/112
Long March 3B: 2/83
Long March 5: 1/7
HIIA: 1/45
Titan IV: 4/39
I'm sure I'm missing some there. Out of 1559 launches listed here, 47 complete failures, for a rate of 3% or 1 in 33. So both the shuttle and falcon 9 have done better than that, but again, not a lot of statistics to work with there.
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There's also the "significant differences between the rockets launched" thing. While the Space Shuttle used basically the same configuration, the Falcons (for example) are in some kind of continuous development (first stages unable to land, then able to land, then able to _successfully_ land). Also, the payload started with cargo and now it can fly passengers.
Also, the Russians infrastructure is crumbling (for several reasons I won't go into) - with first flight in 1973 it started at basically the zenith of
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There's also the "significant differences between the rockets launched" thing. While the Space Shuttle used basically the same configuration, the Falcons (for example) are in some kind of continuous development (first stages unable to land, then able to land, then able to _successfully_ land). Also, the payload started with cargo and now it can fly passengers.
While interesting, the idea that the shuttle was the same configuration is incorrect. Lot's of changes and improvements were made over time. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/m... [nasa.gov]
So yes, the numbers are very simplistic and no good prediction could be made.
I think the idea of predicting exact numbers is difficult, if for nothing other than what are people claiming as a failure. I don't think any of the spacex failure counts include the Falcon 9 that rapidly disassembled itself on the launchpad. Speaking of small samples.
But it is difficult to argue that a once a week launch schedule ap
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Considering that the purpose of the SpaceX was to be an inexpensive launch platform (at which it delivers in spades), the success rate is almost unbelievable (true, they had plenty of failed experiments - but actual commercial success rate is excellent).
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Considering that the purpose of the SpaceX was to be an inexpensive launch platform (at which it delivers in spades), the success rate is almost unbelievable (true, they had plenty of failed experiments - but actual commercial success rate is excellent).
The question is however, is the price they are charging sustainable?
I know I'll have to go into the witness protection system, but wanna know that is hard to find out? The costs of refurbishing the first stages, the costs of the fleet of ships they use to retrieve them. Most of the faithful seem to think that is all cost free, that the rockets come back, and are just refueled and launched forever. Seems like Spacex should just return the things right to the launchpad, not the target.
I take it you have t
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The shuttle was designed by committee. SpaceX can actually focus on reliability instead of focusing on making sure Wisconsin gets a piece.
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I worry about making that sort of comparison especially with such small statistics on both sides. Shuttle had 2 failures out of 135 launches, and falcon 9 has had 1 out of 137.
Two. Blowing up is still a failure even if it blows up on the pad.
...The SpaceX failure was pretty early in their launches (9th dragon cargo launch, 19th falcon 9 launch, out of 137 launches), while Challenger was launch 51
Challenger was shuttle launch number 25.
The mission name was STS-51-L, but at the time, NASA mission nomenclature was not based on the number of launches since the first one.
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Two. Blowing up is still a failure even if it blows up on the pad.
Good point, and I agree. The stats I got were from wikipedia, which considers it a "preflight failure" rather than launch failure. But I'm with you, if the payload was destroyed, that's a failure.
Challenger was shuttle launch number 25.
Also agreed. Interesting read here (but I suspect you already know this):
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/b... [nasa.gov]
Looks like they were sequential up through STS-9, then the two-digits were code for fiscal year and l
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Strictly speaking the Shuttle had only one launch failure.
The other one was a reentry failure.
Both where avoidable. The reentry had two options to avoid the failure, but NASA failed. And the ones responsible did not even face a trial.
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Soyuz U: 22/786
Ariane-5: 2/112
Ariane-4: 3/116
Atlas 5: 1/91
Delta II: 1/155
Delta 4: 1/13
Proton M: 9/112
Long March 3B: 2/83
Long March 5: 1/7
HIIA: 1/45
Titan IV: 4/39
Funnily enough, SpaceX now has multiple individual boosters with more flights each than all flights of Long March 5 ever. They're rapidly approaching having an individual first stage booster with more flights than all Delta 4 flights ever.
Anyone trying to claim SpaceX isn't a radical change and a massive improvement in the space industry is so obviously lying at this point that we should be demanding a cut of their shill money every time they do it.
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Yeah, it's hard not to see this as a paradigm shift. Also given that there are many players in this field at the moment, that only one has come out with such success shows that it's not a trivial technological feat.
Lots of respect for the company, not a huge fan of its boss.
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Shuttle had 2 failures out of 135 launches, and falcon 9 has had 1 out of 137.
The Shuttle had 2 failures out of 135 launches which killed people, but that is not the number of failures as originally defined. NASA and SpaceX are using different definitions of failure with the NASA definition for the shuttle being much more lenient.
The Shuttle regularly returned with damaged SSMEs which was initially considered a failure but was redefined as a maintenance issue, and this was one reason that refurbishment was so expensive. The Falcon does not suffer from these failures.
Re: Failure rate (Score:2)
Fair point, making SpaceX efforts more impressive (unless we find out later that there was damage that needed repair).
Wikipedia has total vs partial failure, which I'm not sure is well defined. The stats I listed are based upon their "total" failures. Personally I'm considering a failure being one in which the payload was lost due to rocket or launch problems. That would include Columbia, and as someone above pointed out would include SpaceX's explosion on the pad a few years ago (even though it wasn't duri
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Richard Feynman investigated and briefly discussed the failure issue of the SSMEs in his report on the Challenger disaster. But basically it comes down to the Shuttle being held to a different and lower standard of reliability and failure than the vehicles from SpaceX.
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That's sending up a rocket every weekend. The Space Shuttle had a failure rate of about 1/70
Yep. 135 launches, two failures.
... Over 12 years, the Falcon family has currently a failure rate of about 1/140 [wikipedia.org],
I count two failures in 137 flights: one exploded on the pad (Amos-6 launch), one failed in flight (CRS-7). So the failure rate (to date) is almost identical to that of the shuttle.
(..interesting, I didn't notice at the time, but with the second launch of this year, the number of Falcon-9 launches exceeded the number of shuttle launches).
half that of the Shuttle,
Not quite comparable. The shuttle failure rate counts both failure on launch and failures on landing. If you were to count failures on land
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Comparisons... [Re:Failure rate] (Score:2)
It should be pointed out that Columbia's disaster was actually caused *during the launch*,
Yep.
therefore it makes sense to count is as a launch failure:
Unfortunately if you categorize it that way, it stops being a useful comparison. You can ask the question "how many launches of Falcon-9 had failures that manifested on reentry", which has an answer of zero, but that is zero out of zero tries. (Assuming you don't include failures of the booster landing. If you do, the Falcon record gets a lot worse.)
...
Also, the Amos-6 incident was caused by improper manipulation on the ground. It wasn't as much a failure of the vehicle itself as of the people
Turns out that when you exclude failures where the people screwed up during some part of the process, failure rate of almost everything gets a lot lower.
who were fuelling it outside of known operational envelope.
..
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I count two failures in 137 flights: one exploded on the pad (Amos-6 launch), one failed in flight (CRS-7). So the failure rate (to date) is almost identical to that of the shuttle.
It's 2 out of 141 as of the 19th of January 2022. Wikipedia only counts it as 140, but it's 141 if you include the pre-launch explosion. And 3 mission failures if you count the failure of 1 payload (out of 2, the other being a Dragon capsule headed to the ISS) to reach proper orbit when an engine went out and NASA nixed a re-ignition attempt. But that one is tricky since we are looking at successful launch count and not payload delivery counts. They did get the primary payload delivered and it was NASA th
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plans like these will get us there.
This is the most important part: understanding that you cannot find what may fail without it actually failing once. Simulations are invaluable for finding things that may become a problem but even they have limitations which makes the real thing the only true way to test.
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Falcon 9 v1: 1 partial failure (one payload failed to make proper orbit) out of 5 launches
Falcon 9 v1.1: 1 total failure on launch out of 15 launches
Falco
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Increase.. (Score:2)
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