What SpaceX & Elon Musk JUST DID is SHOCKING the entire space industry!

Can you believe that one day seeing a rocket land becomes a very normal sighting, similar to that of seeing airplanes landing every hour? Sounds ridiculous, right? But that's exactly what SpaceX is doing now, and this definitely comes as a shock for the entire space industry. Why a shock? Well, hang on till the end of this video, and we'll explain more about all the reasons. Let's get started. Well, it's hard to make a profit in space. Moving stuff from Earth into space is a very expensive process, but it's because we haven't learned how to recycle rockets yet. Since the launch of Sputnik started the space age over 60 years ago, most of the spacecraft that have been launched are expendable launch vehicles, or ELVs, which fly only once. After delivering their payload, they either come crashing back down to Earth, burn up in the atmosphere, or simply remain in orbit as space junk. Every time a new payload needs to be sent to space, a new ELV has to be built, costing millions of dollars. Imagine how much an Uber would cost if the driver had to buy a new car for every trip. It might seem that the obvious solution is to reuse rockets. The idea of reusable launch vehicles, or RLVs, isn't new, but reusing rockets has proven tricky in the past. The first real attempt at making an RLV was NASA's space shuttle program. The space shuttle fleet was meant to lower the cost of space transportation by being partially reusable, but rather than lowering costs, the program increased them. The complexity and risk of the space shuttle fleet made maintaining and operating them expensive. And when the 30-year program ended in 2011, it may have seemed like the argument for RLVs ended with it. But proponents of RLVs were undeterred. A few months after the final space shuttle flight, SpaceX, a startup company founded by tech billionaire Elon Musk, announced a plan to make its Falcon 9 rocket reusable. SpaceX began working on ways to recover and reuse the Falcon 9's booster stage, the largest, most expensive part of the rocket. Two years later, the company began trying to recover used boosters by having them make controlled descents into the ocean after completing their mission. After some spectacular failures, SpaceX successfully recovered a booster for the first time in late 2015. Over the next 15 months, SpaceX recovered more and more boosters, building up a stockpile of second-hand rockets. But it still hasn't reused any of them. That changed in March of 2017 when one of the recovered boosters was refurbished and used to launch a communications satellite. It wasn't the first time a rocket had been reused. That honor will always belong to the space shuttle program. But unlike the space shuttle, the reused Falcon 9 was cheaper. For the first time in history, recycling rockets makes good business sense. Now five years have passed and SpaceX and Elon Musk have just completed an insane record in the rocket industry. Last week, SpaceX had successfully completed three Falcon 9 launches in just over 36 hours, highlighting the company's continuous push toward ever higher launch cadences in 2022. SpaceX has managed to sustain an average cadence of more than one Falcon launch per week throughout the first half of 2022, completing its 26th launch of the year on June 19, and with another two launches planned before the end of the month. SpaceX has actually sustained that cadence for even longer. Beginning on November 24, 2021, SpaceX has now completed 32 Falcon 9 launches in less than seven months. The company's latest hat trick or triple header began on Friday, June 17, when Falcon 9 booster B1060 lifted off at 12.09 p.m. EDT from SpaceX's NASA Kennedy Space Center LC-39 APAD and helped carry another 53 Starlink V1.5 satellites into space and became the first Falcon booster to launch and land 13 times. Especially Starlink 4-19 was also SpaceX's 49th dedicated Starlink launch, SpaceX's 50th consecutive successful Falcon booster landing, and 100th successful Falcon booster reuse. How cool! 22 hours later, a second Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from SpaceX's Weidenberg Space Force Base SLC-4EPAD at 7.19 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time, and that was Saturday, June 18, carrying the first of three SARA radar satellites for Germany and an unspecified number of rideshare payloads. For the third time this year, booster B1071 successfully boosted back to shore and touched down at SLC-4E's LZ-4 landing pad shortly after liftoff. Finally, at 12.27 a.m. EDT on Sunday, June 19, a third Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from SpaceX's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station LC-40PAD, carrying a single spare Globalstar 2 communication satellite and apparently several secret rideshare payloads. Falcon 9's Globalstar launch occurred just over 14 hours after SARA 1, breaking SpaceX's record time between two orbital launches. Globalstar FM-15 was also SpaceX's 26th launch of 2022, averaging one launch every six and a half days in the first half of the year. June isn't over, however, and SpaceX still has plans to launch Starlink 4-21 on June 25 and the SES-22 geostationary communications satellite on June 28. If both launches avoid delay, SpaceX will end the first half of 2022 with 28 successful orbital launches. Perhaps even more significantly, after another two launches in the last of June, SpaceX will have launched 17 times in a single quarter, equivalent to 68 launches per year if sustained for four quarters. In the history of spaceflight, a single rocket family has never successfully launched more than 61 times a year. Without a doubt, what SpaceX has been and is doing is truly unimaginable. This is really a leap that makes other space companies and even the rocket industry of many countries bow their heads. You know space is not easy. Recall Astra's disastrous launch a few days ago. Astra's launch vehicle 0010 successfully took off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station but suffered an upper stage failure about 10 minutes into flight. The upper stage shut down early and we did not deliver the payload to orbit, Astra said in a statement on Twitter. We've shared our regrets with NASA and the payload team. So far, Astra has had only two successful orbital launches out of seven total attempts. The company reached orbit for the first time last November and successfully deployed a customer's satellites into orbit in March. A range of issues has impacted Astra's other launches, ranging from problems with its guidance system to engine failure. Anyway, Astra has tried harder than some other veteran companies. Blue Origin, after 21 years of establishment, still doesn't have a vehicle that can carry payloads up into space on a permanent basis by placing them in orbit. However, these American companies are certainly not the ones most concerned about the possibility of SpaceX, Russia, and China being the ones really sitting on the fire. China completed 55 successful launch missions in 2021, setting the current world record. The country is planning to break its own record in 2022. China will complete more than 60 space launches. However, they're now so surprised with what Elon Musk's SpaceX can do. Given the number we talked about above about SpaceX, China will not be the one to hold the throne this year. Finally, there's Russian Space Chief Dmitry Rogozin, who often makes fun of American broomsticks. And I was waiting to see if he had a reaction this time, but probably not. Rogozin is certainly feeling embarrassed enough by all of this. And that just about wraps it up for today's episode. Don't forget to share your ideas in the comment section. Everyone's support is the motivation for us to create more quality content. Thanks and we'll see you next time.