This Week in Launch: A lonely SpaceX week

This week we’re only seeing three launches, all of which are from SpaceX and two of those are for Starlink missions out of Florida. About what we expect from a company doing the majority of Earth’s launch capability.

This week’s launches:

• April 17 (Wednesday)
  • SpaceX | Falcon 9 | Worldview Legion 1 & 2 | 11:30 A.M. PT
    • SLC-4E, Vandenberg Space Force Base, California
  • SpaceX | Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 6-51 | 5:24 P.M. ET
    • LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
• April 18 (Thursday)
  • SpaceX | Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 6-52 | 6:40 P.M. ET
    • SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida

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SpaceX launches three more missions this week

Continuing their three week streak of launching three or more Falcon 9s a week, SpaceX once again has three rockets scheduled to launch this week. For what I’ve seen, they are the only company currently attempting any launches in the next seven days.

A rare quiet week from China it is I guess.

The first mission will be a commercial flight for DigitalGlobe with two of its next generation Worldview Legion spacecrafts. Because of the light weight of these two spacecraft, the booster will be return to LZ-4 after launching.

Following this mission we’ll be back to the status quo of Starlink flights from Florida. The most annoying part of all of this is that SpaceX is seemingly skipping over Starlink Group 6-50. Every manifest I’ve looked at shows them launching 6-51 and -52 this weekend continuing on with -53.

It’s not uncommon for Starlink missions to fly out of order, but this is the first I’ve noticed them skipping a number entirely. What does this mean? Nothing, maybe, probably nothing.

Anyways, these three missions will bring SpaceX up to 42 total launches for 2024 and will continue to push that launch rate in the right direction to meet its 148 launch goal.

Musk gives update on future of Starship program

While I was traveling a few weeks ago, Elon Musk gave an update on SpaceX’s goal to make life multi-planetary with its Starship rocket down at Starbase. While there wasn’t a whole lot new, there were some things worth mentioning.

In case you were wondering, the state of SpaceX’s martian colony goal is strong with Musk restating how important it is that humanity has a backup. He’s hoping in the next 20 years SpaceX will be able to launch regular missions to the Red Planet, hoping eventually make it self sustaining and independent from Earth.

To do this, SpaceX will need to get Starship operational and upgrade it. A “Starship 2” version is already well talked about and construction of those ships is underway. Starship 2 will see slight extensions in its propellent tanks and various other improvements SpaceX has learned launching its first generation Starship rockets.

Starship 3 is where things will get crazy, drastically expanding the length of its tanks to be more than 500 feet tall. However, Musk states that more increases could come to Starship 3 depending on how Starship 2 does.

So if you’re looking at Starship and thinking “how can this get any bigger?” Well, it can, and it probably will.