Mass Value Report for March

A quick breakdown of where we are as species, in terms of mass-to-orbit

Today I’m attempting a new format. I want to produce a data driven newsletter at the end of the month, and have the rest of my articles interspersed between them. The idea is to produce a constantly updating overview of the state of space. The analyses here are going to be a work in progress for a while, and you should see refinement as time goes on.

For this month, I’ll be focusing on SpaceX Falcon 9 launches. I’ve previously done some analysis on the total mass delivered by this rocket, and reuse rates, and since there there has been more launch data to study.

Growth Rate

Looking at Falcon 9 launches up until the end of March, I have remade the plot of mass-to-orbit capability of the rocket that I previously published in October.

To calculate this mass I am not for the moment using the actual payloads of flown rockets - just assuming all have the same median payload which I take to be 13 tonnes. This is just to keep things simple for now; I’m going to be refining this estimate each mont…