back to article SpaceX launches 2 lunar landers on path to the Moon

SpaceX has successfully completed the 100th launch of a Falcon rocket from pad 39A and sent two landers on their way to the Moon. The mission, launched at 0611 UTC on January 15, 2025, also featured a successful landing of the Falcon 9 first stage on the Just Read The Instructions droneship. Texas-based Firefly Aerospace and …

  1. 42656e4d203239 Silver badge
    Pint

    Obligatory beer

    Here is a beer for all the hardworking engineers and scientists, who, unlike the general public (and people who should know better), know that space is very very hard and munlanding even harder.

    I await further news with bated breath (not holding it though, cos 45 days is a bit long!)

    1. beast666 Silver badge

      Re: Obligatory beer

      Let's also raise a toast to Mr Musk, without whom, none of this would be possible at stunning low cost.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Obligatory beer

        I'll grab my popcorn and watch this thread.

      2. Oneman2Many Bronze badge

        Re: Obligatory beer

        The difference between say a F9 vs Vulcan launch cost is quite small in the overall budget of the programs, I wouldn't expect it to be a deal breaker for the program. Where F9 does score is in the cadence of launches potentially allowing an earlier launch date.

        1. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Obligatory beer

          "Where F9 does score is in the cadence of launches potentially allowing an earlier launch date."

          Missions start planning at least 2 years out so cadence isn't a big issue nor a benefit. There's a tremendous amount of scheduling and red tape to do for a space launch which is why it takes so long. It's the military that wants to have launches that can go in a couple of days to deploy spy sats quickly to fill in coverage gaps over an area of interest. This has traditionally been the role of the U-2 and SR-71 since those can/could be sent up in hours.

      3. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

        Re: Obligatory beer

        The launch market was ready for disruption. If SpaceX had not done it frustrated engineers from Blue Origin would would have.

      4. Craig 2
        Trollface

        Re: Let's also raise a toast to Mr Musk

        You forgot your icon ;-)

      5. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Obligatory beer

        Unfortunately, we can't run an experiment to see if some other person or group would drive for reusability if Musk had never appeared on the scene.

        1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

          Re: experiment

          Blue Origin was founded before SpaceX. Blue started small and slowly explored the theory for all the possible solutions. SpaceX rushed in with a minimal viable product (Falcon 1) which they iterated. Their first priority was optimising to reduce manufacturing costs. Blue patented landing a rocket on a barge before SpaceX tried getting a booster back with parachutes. We know for certain Blue Origin were on the path towards re-use before SpaceX demonstrated it was possible. To that extent the experiment has already been conducted.

          I would go further and say SpaceX actually delayed Blue from getting to orbit. The US has been unhappy about Atlas being dependent on Russian engines for a long time. Having Falcon 9 as an alternative encouraged the US to become more serious about ending Atlas V. ULA might have continued with just Delta IV. It costs silly money but that would not matter if it were not for those meddling kids at SpaceX. Falcon 9 pushed ULA into finding a new engine. The choices for supplier were ARJ and Blue. ARJ are outstanding at price gouging and Blue had an engine almost ready. ULA asked Blue to embiggen BE-4 so they would only need two on Vulcan. Making BE-4 bigger made dealing with combustion instability far more difficult. It set Blue back years. Jeff hiring the losers from ARJ and putting them in charge at Blue caused damage in several ways. It was the impetus behind the upper stage re-use team leaving blue and starting Stoke.

          RocketLab was founded by people at SpaceX unhappy with the cancellation of Falcon 1. Without SpaceX the same people would likely have been unhappy at Blue. The really hard part of a launch start up is funding R&D. SpaceX's success has made that much easier as demonstrated by the number of small launch companies getting small rockets to the launch pad then going bankrupt because SpaceX takes the majority of small satellites to orbit a hundred at a time with Falcon 9.

          Booster re-use would definitely have happened without SpaceX but there is plenty of room for argument about when. The big driver towards SpaceX's rapid cadence is Starlink. As far as I know, Kuiper was a "me too" project. Without SpaceX someone would have pitched it to Jeff eventually.

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            Re: experiment

            "Blue patented landing a rocket on a barge"

            Wait...what? Someone granted a patent for that? I'd have thought that was a patently obvious thing! Or is it some specific patents for some specific hardware?

          2. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: experiment

            Blue patented landing a rocket on a barge before SpaceX tried getting a booster back with parachutes."

            Did they? I know they have a patent on an upper stage recovery scheme, but there was a model of a launch and recovery ship at the Space Studies Institute office that dates back years before Jeff started Blue Origin. The institute was started by Gerard K. O'Neill, one of Jeff's profs.

          3. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: experiment

            "As far as I know, Kuiper was a "me too" project."

            There were memes going around for satellite constellations to provide internet everywhere long before Elon "invented" Starlink. Very little that Elon comes up with is original (if any). I have a photo taken from a 1978 men's magazine that has a sketch by Curtis Brubaker that could easily be called an early concept drawing for Cybertruck. Brunel was doing tunnels many years ago. Hyperloop was a patented system called Vac Train that Robert Goddard came up with (or at least was awarded the patent for). Landing a rocket is ages old. Tom Mueller was the "father" of the Falcon 9 and left SpaceX wanting no part of Starship. The list is endless. The overwhelming majority of what Elon does is "me too".

            1. that one in the corner Silver badge

              Re: experiment

              > There were memes going around for satellite constellations to provide internet everywhere long before Elon "invented" Starlink.

              Someone here hopefully has a copy of the original Wireless World article and can correct me, but I'm sure I recall that Arthur C. Clarke's original idea of comms satellites[1] would provide for *all* styles of comms, so if 'plain old data" had been called "internet traffic" back then it would have included.

              Phonecalls were uppermost in the discussions about this outlandish idea, because Joe Public could understand the idea of a phonecall as something personal to them, more of a leap forwards than just some more long-range radio coverage for the Light Programme.

              Maybe Elon's offering will one day provide phone via satellite to every subscriber? There's a revolutionary idea.

              [1] ok, geostationary 'cos who'd ever want to flood fill the sky with the things? And gamer's ping times weren't an issue then.

    2. steviebuk Silver badge

      Re: Obligatory beer

      I see the Kerbal reference. Shame about Kerbal Space Program 2.

  2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Navigational error?

    I thought the Moon was a waste of time and they were just going straight to Mars. Isn't that what the Dear Leader said not long ago?

    1. alisonken1
      Holmes

      Re: Navigational error?

      I thought the Moon was a waste of time and they were just going straight to Mars. Isn't that what the Dear Leader said not long ago?

      This is a customer launch - not a SpaceX launch. Also, cargo, not crew.

    2. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Re: Navigational error?

      That quote was taken out of context. It was in reply to someone resurrecting an old NASA plan to supply a Mars mission with resources from the Moon. Perhaps some day in the distant future it will make sense but today the cheapest way to Mars is direct from low Earth orbit without a stop near the Moon. The quote makes much better click bait if you miss that out and set up the wrong context by talking about Artemis first.

  3. TVU

    Well, I would like to see two successful lunar landings followed by subsequent data sets and photos.

    1. that one in the corner Silver badge

      TVU was downvoted? Somebody here *doesn't* want successful lunar landing missions?

      Worried about us finding a secret lair? *Not* finding his own secret lair, making his pub buddies realise he's been telling whoppers?

      Or have we someone who took Niven's[1] book title too literally and is worried that pointy landing legs will pop the Moon?

      [1] no, the other Niven, David, not Larry.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        "TVU was downvoted? Somebody here *doesn't* want successful lunar landing missions?"

        Nah, I think it was the implication that the Apollo landings didn't happen by appending the demand for proof at the end of the sentence. That may not be what the poster intended, but that was the meaning I took from it :-)

        PS, I wasn't the downvoter, I thought it was funny :-)

        1. that one in the corner Silver badge

          Good grief, it never even occured to me to TVU's comment that way!

          After[1] *every* (non-military) space mission, surely we *all* look forwards to seeing the data collected - ok, as a layman, preferably seeing the data crunched into easy to understand graphs and, yes, photos?

          As he never mentioned Apollo, or even used a word similar to "proof", I just took his words as written. Not quite sure how to process the alternative (implied or inferred) appearing here - sure, we get nutters but they aren't usually subtle.

          [1] during, for the long-lived missions, such as the space telescopes and rovers

          1. TVU

            I certainly didn't intend it that way either - I just want to see the lunar photos and get the lunar regolith geological composition results, etc.

            We certainly got some surprises from the Apollo missions, such as astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmitt discovering the orange soil during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 that comprised tiny orange glass beads that had been ejected in a volcanic eruption. No one had predicted that beforehand.

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