On Sunday, Elon Musk shared the deck from an all-hands SpaceX update he gave to employees last week.
SpaceX is averaging one launch a week. In late April, the company notched its fastest booster turnaround time to date (just 21 days). To date, SpaceX has successfully launched 160 times, with 122 landings and 98 reflights.
- Hello, old friend…We could see up to four Falcon Heavy missions in 2022, which would make for a busy back half of the year for the heavy rocket.
- Polaris: Jared Isaacman and the Polaris Dawn crew plan to conduct the first spacewalk in Q4 from a Crew Dragon.
- Ax-1: In April, SpaceX and Axiom completed the first all-private mission to the ISS. More on that below:
Starlink
Near the third anniversary of its first Starlink V0.9 batch launch, the broadband internet service is nearing 500,000 subscribers. It’s available in 32 countries. With new airline deals, Starlink is available “by land, air, & sea,” Musk noted. Starlink is also rolling out support for RVs.
Finally, as Kyiv and satellite operators fend off jamming efforts and other cyberattacks from Moscow, SpaceX says it has sent 15,000 Starlink terminals to Ukraine.
Source: SpaceX. Render of a Starship Starlink dispenser. Note: GIF sped up to 1.5X speed by Payload.
Starship
Musk highlighted SpaceX’s work on Ship 24 , Booster 7 (B7), and Raptor 2.0. Starship Ship 24 recently passed its first cryoproof test, while B7 appears to have received new Raptors.
Musk also indicated that SpaceX will build two factories “of the future” in Texas and Florida that will presumably be co-located with Starship launch sites. The latter telegraphs that SpaceX will continue with contingency plans to build, develop, and launch Starship from the Space Coast, regardless of the FAA’s environmental assessment decision on Starbase. That decision is coming June 13, for what it’s worth.
Finally, Starship’s orbital flight test is in the offing.
