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After a slow start, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket is about to hit its stride (arstechnica.com)
41 points by LinuxBender on Jan 14, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 8 comments



“The timing for this launch is noteworthy, as the launch window opens just 10 minutes after sunset. This will be the first time that the Falcon Heavy rocket has launched in twilight, and it should be visible for hundreds of kilometers up and down the Florida coast.”

Wish I was in Florida to see it.

The DoD will use this massively as the Russians have taught the world that high bandwidth for soldiers is now one of the most important factors in effectiveness.

According to Ukraine leadership, they would have not lasted this long without Starlink.


They've taught the world that mankind's hopes for keeping space a place of peace are over and it's now another theater of war. Guess we knew the era of peace in space would eventually end but still held out hope that it could hold out longer.


They’ve taught the world that anti-satellite capabilities are futile. Such weapons cost several orders of magnitude more than a Starlink sat, and there will soon be tens of thousands of Starlink sats.

Once Starship is online there will be tens of thousands of any kind of sat you like. Sure that can and will include military anti-sat sats, but the economics of that just don’t work. Targeting such systems is incredibly complicated, time consuming and expensive, there are going to be many redundant target sats, and a replacement of the destroyed sat can be on orbit in a day or two. It will be like using Patriot missiles to shoot down off the shelf camera drones. Sure you can do it, but there’s just no benefit.


It’s another arm of MAD, which has kept the peace far more than anything to date.

https://images.app.goo.gl/FNeYQK8B6T1k9Dpp7


The launch is typical, the twin boosters flying back to land together is a sight to see at least once.


SpaceX has two main verticals: launch services and Starlink.

This improves their launch capabilities (= higher launch revenue), but also enables Starlink 1.5, which means better coverage and therefore more recurring Starlink revenue.

The next thing they're working on - Starship - will essentially cannibalize Falcon Heavy while also enabling Starlink 2.0 which will supposedly be 5G from space.


This is a very intertwined strategy: Without generation 2 satellites, Starlink can't scale. Without Starship running a pretty incredible launch cadence you can't lift enough generation 2 satellites to orbit fast enough to build and maintain a large enough constellation to be a large-scale communications provider.


I wonder if Falcon Heavy is profitable. I thought for sure it was going to be obsolete the moment Starship was announced but here we are. I know FH development was more complicated than expected, I wonder how many commercial launches do they need to break even.




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