Following Sunday’s launch, SpaceX is on the verge of a historic milestone for reuse

SpaceX launched a new batch of Starlink satellites early Sunday morning, coming close to a significant milestone for rocket reuse. The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket to orbit this payload, Booster No. 1051, made its ninth flight. It has landed successfully on the Of course I still love you droneship.

Since this is the first Falcon 9 missile to launch nine missions, it offers the prospect of a first stage making a tenth flight in the near future, likely within a month or two. Achieving ten flights would achieve one of the main goals set by SpaceX with the Falcon 9 rocket, after the vehicle was optimized for reuse about three years ago.

The company debuted its “Block 5” version of the Falcon 9 rocket in May 2018 and has since completed 55 missions, all of which have successfully delivered their payload into orbit. More importantly, the changes SpaceX engineers have made to this new rocket to ensure its robustness for reuse, such as strengthening the “Octaweb” engine bay, have been largely validated.

“For those who know about missiles, this is ridiculously difficult,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk said during a conference call with reporters in 2018 to discuss Block 5’s upgrades. “It’s taken us since 2002, man, since 2002. Sixteen years of extreme effort and many, many iterations, and thousands of small but significant developmental changes to get to where we think this is even possible.” He paused, then added, “Crazy hard.”

At the time, Musk set two main targets for the Falcon 9 missile’s first stage. He wanted to fly each vehicle 10 times before needing significant maintenance. And he hoped to get to the point where a Falcon 9 missile could be flipped over and flown again within 24 hours.

SpaceX appears to have made good progress towards the first goal. While the company hasn’t disclosed how much maintenance it does on Falcon 9’s early stages between launches, or how often a Merlin engine is replaced, the cores have proven to be reliable and robust. Numerous first stages of the Falcon 9 have now flown more than five times.

The company remains far from a 24-hour lead time. While it has cut the initial inspection and refurbishment time between flights from about six months to its current record of 27 days, it seems likely that SpaceX will not meet its 24-hour turnaround time with the Falcon 9. what it has learned from flying and reusing the Falcon 9, and transferring this pursuit of ultra-fast reuse to the spaceship SpaceX is currently developing in South Texas.

Thanks to this ability to quickly reuse the Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX has been able to achieve a high number of launches in recent months with a fleet of less than 10 active boosters. So far by 2021, the company has been launching an average of every nine days, a remarkable cadence for a large orbital rocket. Another launch of the Falcon 9 may come this weekend.

SpaceX’s need to put thousands of Starlink Internet satellites into orbit – Sunday’s flight marked the 21st launch of operational Starlink satellites – is the driving force behind the company’s manifesto. Six of the company’s eight launches to date in 2021 have each carried 60 Starlink satellites.

Astronomers have expressed concern about the effect of these satellites on the night sky, and satellite experts are concerned about collisions between so many vehicles in low Earth orbit. However, there is no doubt that the technique required to get so many satellites into orbit so quickly is impressive. Musk listed on Twitter this weekend, SpaceX delivered twice as much payload in orbit in 2020 than the rest of the world combined and could travel the world three or even four times by 2021.

Listing image by SpaceX