Leaving The Planet

If you’re up in a few hours, there’s scheduled to be a huge launch out of French Guiana at 04:45 AM PDT, about five hours from now.

Tomorrow night, about this time (23:25 PDT), there’s a launch out of Vandenberg. (Weather permitting.) Right now we have fairly heavy overcast and fog moving in, so if it’s like that tomorrow we won’t see a thing from here. But maybe, if it clears a bit…

Sometime next week, maybe as early as Monday, maybe not, assuming the FAA issues a launch license, there’s a launch out of Texas. It will be the first launch of a full SpaceX Starship. They won’t try to go for a full orbit and they won’t try to recover either the booster or the Starship vehicle – both will splashdown in the ocean and be destroyed, the booster off of Texas and the Starship off of Hawaii after about 3/4 of an orbit.

About the same time next week, there’s a Falcon Heavy taking off from Florida with a satellite heading for geosynchronous orbit. Because of the launch parameters, all three of the cores will be expended. None will be brought back for landing and re-use.

On top of all of that, SpaceX is launching a Falcon 9 from either Florida or California better than twice a week.

And that doesn’t count any of the crewed flights, missions to the ISS, private and government. Or the Chinese space station. Or the upcoming trips to the Moon.

If you want to be leaving the planet in your rear view mirror, it’s a good time for it.