SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Rocket Might Be Even More Impressive Than You Thought

Say what you will about its eccentric billionaire owner, but SpaceX is clearly making some impressive strides in the emerging new age of space exploration. Specifically, the Falcon 9 rocket has redefined how we think of spacecraft.

A brief list of accomplishments

The accolades and achievements of this innovative rocket continue to stack higher, but there are a few that deserve special recognition.

• With 16 launches in November, the Falcon 9 set a new monthly record
• So far this year, there have been 119 Falcon 9 launches, well above the previous record of 92
• The Falcon 9 recently went on its 400th mission and recovered its 375th booster

And if SpaceX manages to launch the rocket 15 times this month, it would equal the number of all NASA shuttle missions over the course of three decades combined.

With its ability to shave more than a week off the previous 21-day booster turnaround time, it appears that SpaceX is only poised to launch its versatile rocket more quickly and efficiently than ever.

A bigger bang for the buck

Comparing Falcon 9 to its NASA counterparts is even more eye-opening when you start to crunch the numbers. At a cost of about $1.5 billion per mission on average, each NASA launch is roughly 100 times more expensive than the SpaceX rocket.

That low-cost approach to space exploration has also allowed for many more missions than NASA could muster even with its federal budget — making Falcon 9 launches a staggering 30 times more frequent than the Space Shuttle.

That’s not to say that everything has gone perfectly for Elon Musk’s space firm. A few failures made headlines over the course of 2024, but SpaceX says it is continually making improvements to optimize the process further.

Chris Agee December 3rd, 2024

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