SpaceX Launches 29 Starlink Satellites on Memorial Day (spaceflightnow.com)
- Reference: 0183389356
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/05/25/177229/spacex-launches-29-starlink-satellites-on-memorial-day
- Source link: https://spaceflightnow.com/2026/05/24/live-coverage-spacex-to-launch-29-starlink-satellites-on-a-falcon-9-rocket-from-cape-canaveral/
> This was SpaceX's 60th orbital flight of the year, consisting of 59 Falcon 9 rockets and one Falcon Heavy rocket...
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> Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, [Falcon 9 first stage] B1078 landed on the drone ship, 'A Shortfall of Gravitas,' positioned in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina. This was the 151st landing for this vessel and the 614th booster landing to date for SpaceX.
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> Meanwhile, the second stage shut down eight minutes and 39 seconds into flight and entered a coast phase, before short second burn at T+52 minutes. The stack of Starlink satellites deployed 61 minutes and 26 seconds after launch.
On X.com SpaceX shared [2]footage of the booster rocket landing , and a [3]longer video showing Starship's 12th test flight Friday.
[1] https://spaceflightnow.com/2026/05/24/live-coverage-spacex-to-launch-29-starlink-satellites-on-a-falcon-9-rocket-from-cape-canaveral/
[2] https://x.com/SpaceX/status/2058939047662244226
[3] https://x.com/SpaceX/status/2057843818859209147
Say what you will re: free trade or protectionism (Score:4, Insightful)
but one of the big reasons the US has a world-leading space launch and satellite services industry is that it is just flat out illegal to outsource or off-shore it.
ITAR is an absolute pain in the ass, but it seems to be worth it on the whole and in the context of the hollowing out of everything else industrial in the country.
Re: Say what you will re: free trade or protection (Score:1)
Been going on since the 90s. Didn't change a thing.
Re: Say what you will re: free trade or protection (Score:2)
What launch service could he even offer? Russia is so far beyond bankrupt that resuscitating roscosmos doesn't belong anywhere on its radar right now. That's also ignoring the fact that its technology is horridly out of date, and more importantly, its government funded business can't even compete price wise with the American private sector.
Right now their only priority should be begging Ukraine for forgiveness. They can't even afford to defend themselves anymore, let alone project power. After that they'll
Re: (Score:1)
If you weren't a moron, you'd be hypothetical around a dictator that actually can offer launch services. That isn't Putin.
Re: (Score:2)
But the counterpoint is that we'd likely have moon bases and be on Mars by now. Elon has stated that SpaceX would have been able to evolve much faster without ITAR, well at least he did in the era before he went full MAGA: [1]https://www.instagram.com/reel... [instagram.com]
[1] https://www.instagram.com/reels/DYSQIFwx5oj/
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know where you buy your clothes, but mine appear to have been made in S America, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Vietnam and I'm not sure where else. I've had made-in-US clothing before but the quality was pretty poor, probably because they were having to match prices with countries where wages were way lower. I suppose the same applied with clothing made in the UK, although it's been a long time since M+S dropped their "Buy British" policy.
Re: (Score:3)
> but one of the big reasons the US has a world-leading space launch and satellite services industry is that it is just flat out illegal to outsource or off-shore it.
What are you talking about? Many US space projects use non-US launch facilities. The James Webb Telescope is a prominent example. And there are all the rides hitched by US astronauts on Soyuz rockets between the retirement of the STS and the rise of alternatives like SpaceX Dragon.
Re: (Score:2)
> The James Webb Telescope is a prominent example.
Tell us you don't know what we're talking about without telling us.
The JWST is not space launch or service industry. It's a single product, and there's no limit of who can launch it.
The JWST is also not "US". It's an international joint project by multiple countries (including agencies like the ESA, CSA and NASA) collaborating to develop a telescope.
By the way there is one good example in the JWST of what we're actually talking about: The JWST was launched on an Ariane-5. The Ariane-5 is wholly manufactured
Re: (Score:2)
I read RightWingNutJob's post as saying that a US space project cannot use a non-US launcher because it is " flat out illegal to outsource or off-shore it." "It" being the space-launch and satellite services.
Well, JWST is a US space project. Sure, it had international participation, but the US is the lead. CURIE and GOLD are other examples. Even the military used a non-US launcher, for example the US Air Force STP-S26 being launched by India.
And if you mean it the other way around, that the US can't launch n
"A Shortfall of Gravitas" (Score:1)
title of the next Musk bio?
Re: (Score:1)
SpaceX launched the mission using the Falcon 9 first stage B1078, making its 28th flight. Some of their rockets have done 33-34 launches, that is absurd amount of costs savings vs using a new rocket each time. Analyst estimates peg the annual replacement and expansion cost at around $1.5 - $2 billion, while the service generates approximately $11 - $16 billion in annual revenue. The initial cost of building out the network is relatively large. The cost of keeping it running is going to be relatively small
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I'd be more than happy to invest in SpaceX, the space company. Sadly the company has been poisoned with X and xAI. Looking at the market valuations of each of those individual companies, that doesn't seem to be like a big deal at first glance. But in the IPO filing, the company points out that their addressable market opportunity isn't space, it is almost all AI. Around 3/4ths of their spending in Q1 has been on AI. If you buy into the SpaceX IPO, you're buying into an AI company. Maybe they want us to
How would you make your money back? (Score:2)
Go watch the two Patrick Boyle videos on the subject he covers it in detail but they have basically maxed out their addressable market
Basically anyone who needs launch services is already either using SpaceX or somebody else and there is no additional people who need launch services on the horizon except maybe starlink except that starlink has all the customers it's going to get because there's only so many people in the world who have $100 a month for high-speed internet and don't already have wired or
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> Maybe they want us to believe that they will be a vertically integrated AI provider with data centers in space. I am highly doubtful about the latter; there certainly are business cases for having AI datacenters in space, but they are edge cases.
I have yet to hear of a remotely plausible business case for putting data centers into space. The only benefit is 24/7 solar power, but that benefit is more than offset by the cost of launching everything into orbit, plus the cost of keeping everything properly cooled, plus the cost of radiation-hardening everything, and finally the cost of maintaining hardware in space (or, more likely, the cost of periodically having to write off the entire investment and build and launch new replacement hardware).
Unless
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> I have yet to hear of a remotely plausible business case for putting data centers into space
Low latency AI edge computing. There's several military applications, such as directing drone swarms or even providing AI to individual drones.
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> Low latency AI edge computing. There's several military applications, such as directing drone swarms or even providing AI to individual drones.
Perhaps, but I suspect Starlink (etc) already fills most of that use-case, and for the rest, they'll want that compute to be physically located inside the drones themselves, because otherwise the drones will be susceptible to jamming or spoofing.
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> Because they eventually come back down. That is a huge problem because it becomes a very large Capital cost to keep starlink in business.
Oh no, did no one at SpaceX realize that Low Earth Orbit is not permanent and they will have to replace satellites over time?
They have already built a constellation of 10k. As some of the first ones are deorbiting, they are still launching new ones at a rate that the constellation is still growing. Yet somehow they are making money. With the recent S1 filing we have our best view into SpaceX finances. $11.4 billion in Starlink revenue. $4.4 billion in operating income. Even after accounting for massiv
More enshitification (Score:2)
> Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
Since when did they desecrate Cape Canaveral by adding war mongering to its name?
Re: More enshitification (Score:1)
Before it was a space force installation, it was an air force installation. The air force was split off as an independent service in 1947, having previously been a branch of the Army under the War Department. The Navy was its own cabinet level department, dating back to the days of the Confederation Congress. They were merged in 1947 under a single department.
Would a cape canaveral war station be more to your liking?
More pointless space junk (Score:2)
Not to mention the pollution from the launches. Counting down the years until Kessler kicks in.
Re: (Score:2)
> Not to mention the pollution from the launches. Counting down the years until Kessler kicks in.
That's nothing compared to ignorance on the topic. Starlink satellites re-enter the atmosphere within about 5-6 years. They leave zero space junk and don't contribute to Kessler Syndrome. They are in too low of an orbit.
Also give the low orbit, the relative efficiency of spacex launches, and the number of satellites in a payload per launch it turns out each Starlink satellite produces 340/25/5 = 2.72 Tonnes CO2 / year, or about half as much as your car. The entire Starlink program produces less emissions th
Re:Patriotic (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it was another successful Starship _test_...