This is incredible.

What a great visualization. Still hard to fathom how far Europe is lagging the rest of the developed world. Almost impossible to believe. I know they are geographically disadvantaged, but so is Russia and somehow they've managed ~50% of all launches ever.

This site has some cool interactives that are a fun time waster as well.

https://spacestatsonline.com/launches/country

whomever made that chart should be fired...like the same shade of blue for 4 countries

10andBOUNCE said:

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whomever made that chart should be fired...like the same shade of blue for 4 countries

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It's like they needed final approval of the original design and the guy in charge said "It's great but it's needs way more blue. Like, waaaay more."

yeah that could be better; but you can go turn off whatever you want and clear it up

Oh, and the 3 non-US blues account for like 10 launches total so it's not that big of a deal. Just the tops of the bars

Had no idea there were that many launches during the cold war era … I know that there were some close calls, but it's still amazing that none of those ever were ever fully misinterpreted as an ICBM to trigger nuclear holocaust

What's the transit time to Titan? We have to be looking at decade+ right?

AgBQ-00 said:

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What's the transit time to Titan? We have to be looking at decade+ right?

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Wiki says about 6 years.

Very cool! Thanks for posting!

Thanks!!

txags92 said:

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AgBQ-00 said:

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What's the transit time to Titan? We have to be looking at decade+ right?

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Wiki says about 6 years.

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Depends on how they get there. SpaceX launched Europa Clipper on a Falcon Heavy. It's going to take 9.5 years. Saturn is twice as far.

The New Horizon's probe that wizzed past Pluto was launched on an Altas V. It took 13 months to pass Jupiter's orbit and took it 2 years 5 months to pass Saturn's orbit. But New Horizon wasn't planning on slowing down and entering orbit around anything. It was just going like a bat out of hell.

Sea Speed said:

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I honestly didn't realize Russia has essentially launched 2x the US until the last couple of years when we started to close the gap thanks to SpaceX

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Probably says more about the reliability of their early satellites than anything. We also relied on them for ISS resupply quite a bit.

I'm just a victim of belief in American exceptionalism. That really surprised me tbh.

I think a lot of the difference is reconnaissance satellites. The US tended to launch larger, more complicated satellites that last longer and made multiple film drops before switching to electronic imaging, and the Soviets kept using shorter lived single use film satellites until well into the 80s.

Russia's decline over the past 30 years is the main take-away. Then factor in their commercial market share, and share of multi-payload launches, and complete lack of reusable launch vehicle plans. I think they have smart engineers still but zero commercial investment…or substantive future.

AgBQ-00 said:

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What's the transit time to Titan? We have to be looking at decade+ right?

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Per this article:
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/missions/spacex-falcon-heavy-rocket-will-launch-nasas-epic-dragonfly-mission-to-saturns-huge-moon-titan-in-2028

Quote:

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If all goes according to plan, Falcon Heavy will launch the car-sized Dragonfly rotorcraft during a three-week window in July 2028. The spacecraft will then spend six years making its way to Titan, the second-largest moon in the solar system (after Jupiter's Ganymede.

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I wished that there was a Starship landing video where the framing was better, color was accurate, and the lens wasn't distorted. So I made it. pic.twitter.com/pLyMj7l0SW

— TJ Cooney 🚀 (@TJ_Cooney) November 26, 2024

Is there a ship nearby waiting for those booster landings? The other view of the booster landing I'm from farther away than the buoy seems to be much elevated. Plus, doesn't someone have to make sure all that stuff gets to Davy Jone's locker so the Chinese don't find it???

Centerpole90 said:

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Is there a ship nearby waiting for those booster landings? The other view of the booster landing I'm from farther away than the buoy seems to be much elevated. Plus, doesn't someone have to make sure all that stuff gets to Davy Jone's locker so the Chinese don't find it???

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I'm really surprised that the Chinese apparently didn't seize the Ship on the last launch. The buoy positions were publicly trackable online showing them where to expect it to come in, and then after landing it was floating there probably long enough for them to grab it. Of course they'd be videoed carting it away, and they'd be in violation of the Outer Space Treaty, but China doesn't seem to care about such things.

Where does the shot indexed here on the right come from? Isn't that shot higher than right on the water's surface?

Can someone explain the whole genesis of the banana thing?

It's a callback to an old Internet meme, and the fact that a lot of people don't comprehend the size/magnitude of Starship.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/banana-for-scale

nortex97 said:

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Berger yesterday (I think in this video), he said he doesn't expect them to catch the upper stage until 2026. I dunno if he is right, but he's pretty well plugged in/a great journalist, imho.



Rocketlab had a good weekend/day:

Two launches in less than 24 hours from two pads in two different hemispheres. pic.twitter.com/wud8IPuOGY

— Rocket Lab (@RocketLab) November 25, 2024

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The comment about Starship was about ship re-use not catching the ship. He's under the impression that SpaceX wants to catch multiple boosters before re-using a booster, and then will likely proceed to catching multiple ships before moving to re-use, and that perfecting booster re-use quickly is more important than getting ship re-use working.

Basically the first Ship catch opportunity won't be until March based upon current cadence. That still likely won't be a re-used booster which pushes booster re-use to summer and then it's a question of how long it'll take to get confidence in that process before they're comfortable moving to ship re-use testing.

Comments about re-use for Starship start around 20:18 into the video.

Centerpole90 said:

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Where does the shot indexed here on the right come from? Isn't that shot higher than right on the water's surface?

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That's a good question. Yeah, given the size of Ship at 165 ft tall, and that the camera view seems to be higher than the Ship, I'd estimate the camera height to be a little above 200 ft. Plus it isn't rocking like the buoys. It's either from a drone or from a good sized ship. Looks like a telephoto view from a ship though.

Fun video of us testing our LTV prototype in the Arizona desert.

The chatter seems to be popping up again around a FH/orion combo being used for a LEO rendezvous based lunar mission system.

Ill be curious to see, given how badly SLS is flailing and the push to cut waste, if that might finally come to fruition. Especially with Dragon well into safe/diverse operations. It would even keep ESA happy at this point.

Any modifications to handle earth gravity? Or is the idea if it can handle it then you're good for lunar?

NASAg03 said:

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Fun video of us testing our LTV prototype in the Arizona desert.

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I'm a proud owner of LUNR. Long-term hold.

Same. I've added quite a bit of stock into my retirement savings

Ag_of_08 said:

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The chatter seems to be popping up again around a FH/orion combo being used for a LEO rendezvous based lunar mission system.

Ill be curious to see, given how badly SLS is flailing and the push to cut waste, if that might finally come to fruition. Especially with Dragon well into safe/diverse operations. It would even keep ESA happy at this point.

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Are they happy if their Gateway habitat and refueling modules lose their ride?

Good to see. I think this is in Wallops, VA.

A day in the life of flight hardware testing for Neutron.

We recently took our new rocket’s second stage through an initial Wet Dress Rehearsal, successfully running its flight avionics and pressurant and propellant management systems to emulate flight operations. pic.twitter.com/UylORSaaGO

— Rocket Lab (@RocketLab) November 28, 2024

Neutron's launch mount is taking shape fast at LC-3 in Wallops, Virginia pic.twitter.com/OETCURCiHV

— Rocket Lab (@RocketLab) November 27, 2024