Recycled

[George K]

Here’s what a Falcon 9 looks like after 8 flights to space in a year

SpaceX launched its 20th Falcon 9 rocket of the year on Wednesday, and the booster lofting the Transporter-2 mission completed yet another successful flight to orbit.

This launch continues to cement the progress SpaceX has made toward the viable reuse of rocket first stages. This rocket core, named B1060, for booster number 1060, had previously flown into space seven times. Its first launch was a GPS III satellite mission for the US Space Force on June 30, 2020. With Wednesday's flight, the rocket has now flown eight missions in a calendar year.

That is a rate of one mission every 1.5 months. However, since early January, this same rocket has flown five missions, so it is approaching a rapid cadence of one launch per month. This is unprecedented for the Falcon 9 rocket or any other orbital spacecraft in history. Each of NASA's space shuttle orbiters, for example, typically only flew one to two times per year, needing significant refurbishment between each flight.

[George K]

One of my closest surgeon friends built his own airplane (One of the Van's series - a tail dragger). He looked at the cost as well as the performance hit of having it painted.

He decided to not paint.