During the start of 2018, Elon Musk had predicted that SpaceX would manage to pull off 30 launches. The target seemed far-fetched. Among all other reasons, some of those flights were planned for the Falcon Heavy, which during that time was yet to fly. Obviously, the company did not hit that figure. Still, the 21 launches that it did pull off during the year, amounted to an astonishing achievement for the company, which is 16 years old. SpaceX had eight launches in 2016 and 18 launches in the year 2017. They had built on the momentum by making their reusable rocket technology move out of the proof-of-concept stage to turn out to be the backbone of a growing range of flight-proven rockets.
Though the company had landed up their first rocket in the year 2015, it was not until 2017 that SpaceX actually went on to reuse their first booster. During this year, landing became almost a routine feature and engineers managed to bid farewell to all those Falcon Rockets, which were moderately reusable. Thus it had led to an era of much more capable Falcons, which are dubbed as the Block 5. The version having increased power and efficiency of Flacon Rockets has performed in an excellent manner since lifting their first payload. It was a communications satellite for Bangladesh. As per SpaceX, the modifications will make sure that each Block 5 fly 10 times or more before requiring light renovations and could add up to 100 times before getting retired. The year 2018 had all but two out of the 14 rockets, which SpaceX had attempted to land, got stuck up in their landings.
The first set of crewed flights of Falcon Heavy could come up in 2019. We might even see that SpaceX might succeed to catch a fairing next year, which is also known as the nose cone of the rocket. There is a boat named as Mr Steven, who had joined the ranks of the recovery fleet of the company last year. The boat carries with it a giant net, particularly designed to catch up fairings as they land. Each of the fairing costs in the region of $6 million, which is one-tenth of the total price of Falcon. Historically, it has been a component for one-time use. SpaceX, as part of their reusability strategy, SpaceX wants to lift them up before they strike the ocean.
