What SpaceX just did dominated the space. NASA shocked…

Space is hard. The challenges of space exploration are undeniable. As a result, the exorbitant costs associated with rocket launches were taken for granted. Seemingly an inescapable reality, some agencies exploited public ignorance, channeling taxpayer funds into projects without exploring more cost-effective alternatives. What's more, rockets, these remarkable feats of human engineering and innovation, were often treated as disposable, leading to the wasteful expenditure of millions if not billions of dollars with each launch. However, a pivotal enlightenment transformation has occurred with the advent of Elon Musk's SpaceX. With the evolution of reusable rockets, the cost of space exploration is incredibly decreasing. SpaceX is now not just competing in the industry but in many ways overshadowing veterans who once ridiculed them. Once considered underdogs, they are now breaking records, with ease even surpassing their own benchmarks. Let's find out more in today's episode of Great SpaceX. Recently, there have been musings that SpaceX has become an accidental monopoly in the space launch business, which makes perfect sense based on what the company has achieved this year. The latest Falcon 9 launched its 90th orbital mission for SpaceX in the last 365 days, roughly a launch every four days on average. SpaceX has even delivered almost a thousand metric tons to orbit so far this year. These records will certainly continue to increase. Additionally, on October 18th, Bill Gerstenmaier, the vice president of build and flight reliability at SpaceX, said during a hearing of the US senate's subcommittee on space and science, this year we're going to attempt to fly a hundred flights. As we look to next year, we want to increase that flight rate to about 12 flights per month or 144 flights, he added. Moreover, SpaceX achieved another significant milestone by reusing Falcon 9 first stages a groundbreaking 17 times. This achievement signifies not only engineering prowess, but also a game-changing cost efficiency play. With these plans, the launch frequency of the Falcon 9 will probably continue to increase. Currently, the average launch frequency of the Falcon 9 is four to five days. In the future, this will probably only be about two to three days. Besides that, SpaceX is also deploying the Starlink communications system. Communications system, designed to provide voice, text, and internet directly from space throughout the world. Even parts of the world that are so remote, it was thought impossible to receive any sort of service. Starlink has the potential to break through the efforts of totalitarian regimes to deny their people access to free and uncensored information. The latest customer may be Israel, currently engaged in a war with Hamas terrorists. To meet its goals, the latest batch of Falcon 9 launches is rather unique, since they feature the highest number of new satellites that SpaceX has launched to date. According to SpaceX, the Starlink launch flew a batch of 23 satellites. This is the second time that the Falcon 9 has flown this number of second generation satellites, with the first flight taking place earlier this month on the 22nd. The changes that have enabled it to launch an additional Starlink satellite with the Falcon 9 are uncertain, since SpaceX's latest live streams on X provide few payload weight or performance details. SpaceX set a new record with the Falcon 9 in January when it launched a Starlink payload weighing 17,400 kilograms. This launch was for the Starlink version 1.5 satellites, and since then, SpaceX has made several upgrades to the Falcon 9. It revealed one such upgrade in May of this year. Outlining that performance upgrade to the Falcon 9 enabled it to land the rocket on solid ground for all future crewed missions. Landing a first stage rocket booster requires engineers to leave some fuel in the tank for firing up the engines for the boostback and landing burns. A terrestrial landing, which typically requires a rocket to travel further, also needs more fuel, and performance margin upgrades enabled the Falcon 9 to squeeze out more from a similar amount of fuel. Finally, let's not forget the Starship, the monstrosity of a rocket now under development at the SpaceX Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. When the Starship becomes operational, it'll be able to launch immense amounts of payloads into low Earth orbit, land people and cargo on the moon, and fulfill Elon Musk's dream of establishing a settlement on Mars. These things will happen, provided that government regulators authorize more test flights. Government paperwork seems to be a bigger impediment to getting Starship off the ground than the technical challenges. This might seem like mere statistics, but it's vital to emphasize the significance. Launching rockets is one of the most complex and challenging tasks in any industry. The SpaceX Falcon 9 is a two-stage rocket designed for payload delivery and manned flight. Both the Falcon 9 and Large Heavy Lifter Falcon Heavy, which uses three Falcon 9 rocket boosters, are built to return their lower rocket stages upright either to Earth or to a drone ship out in the ocean. Four lightweight carbon fiber legs deploy just before landing, each one containing a shock-absorbing system to cushion the impact. The launch-to-landing process for the Falcon 9 rockets takes just minutes to achieve, and the company aims to cut relaunch turnaround times to just 24 hours. Reusing the rockets costs SpaceX less than half the amount of building new ones. Drone barge recovery retrieves the rocket stages that come down over the open sea and saves money on expensive rocket fuel by simply shipping the booster back to shore. SpaceX is ahead by virtue of its ability to launch payloads into orbit. The Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket in operation and is capable of lifting nearly 64,000 kilograms into low-Earth orbit. That eclipses the Delta IV Heavy, which achieves less than 23,000 kilograms, and the NASA Space Shuttle's 24,000 kilograms. With the launch of the Psyche mission recently, the Falcon Heavy has become a choice launcher for interplanetary missions. To be fair, NASA's outstanding ingenuity and large research budgets led to the moon landing in 1969. Yet, despite all that innovation and investment, it wasn't until the Space Shuttle program took off in 1981 that the concept of reusable spacecraft was first realized. The shuttle orbiter featured two reusable solid rocket boosters attached to a disposable fuel tank, and the craft itself used wings to fly back to Earth on re-entry. The era of space shuttle missions led to the construction of the ISS and made spaceflight much more accessible. More than 130 shuttle missions were flown, but the program never met NASA's optimistic expectations of 50 flights per year and individual launches ended up costing an average of 450 million U.S. dollars. By comparison, the Falcon Heavy could lift its maximum load into low-Earth orbit for 150 million, a third of the cost. Musk estimates that when the Falcon 9 incorporates technology to make its second-stage rocket reusable, alongside the first stage and its Dragon capsule, launches will become 100 times cheaper. Even after all of this, do you still wonder how SpaceX came seemingly out of nowhere to become the dominant rocket company on the planet? Billionaire Mark Anderson reportedly suggested that SpaceX, as well as the electric car company Tesla, would have gone under had it not been for Elon Musk. Indeed, as the Falcon 1 failed over and over again to launch during the early part of the 21st century, as cash quickly leached away, SpaceX going under would have seemed like a safe bet. So what is it about Elon Musk that allowed him to succeed at commercial spaceflight when so many others had failed before? The 1990s was a decade replete with rocket companies like Beale Aerospace and Rotary Rocket that flourished briefly, only to fade away. Walter Isaacson's best-selling biography of Elon Musk provides some insights into the mind of the man who changed the economics of space travel. Musk has a number of qualities few people have that have created his success. He has the ability to relentlessly drive his employees to perform feats that they never imagined themselves capable of. He has an obsession to look at processes and examine whether they can be done at a lower cost. But what's most important is that Musk has a vision that goes beyond wealth acquisition. Because of his childhood love of sci-fi, he really wants to expand human consciousness into space. He wants to save the human race by making sure that a planet-wide catastrophe such as a nuclear war or climate change will not wipe us out. Another factor is that after the Columbia disaster, NASA became interested in outsourcing space launches to the private sector with the commercial orbital transportation services and commercial crew programs. The space agency became a huge market for commercial space companies, and Elon Musk struck the iron while it was hot. In any case, due to SpaceX and its up-and-coming competitors, it's an exciting time to be alive for space aficionados. And that's it for today's episode, folks. Thank you so much for watching, and if you want to support our channel even further, go ahead and head on over to our Patreon and become a patron to get access to exclusive content. Link in the description below. We nevertheless appreciate your generosity and your passion for space exploration. As always, this is Kevin from GreatSpaceX, and until next time, keep looking up.