SpaceX flew another batch of Starlink internet satellites up from Vandenberg — the Space Force base on the California coast that has been, for several fire seasons now, perched inside a tinderbox. Booster 1063, the reusable first stage, landed on a Pacific droneship Elon named after a spaceship in an Iain M. Banks novel. Cute.
A Falcon 9 burns roughly 147 tonnes of refined kerosene per flight. At 3.16 kg CO₂ per kg of RP-1, that's 464 tonnes of carbon dioxide injected directly into the stratosphere, where it lingers — I did the arithmetic — about a hundred times longer than ground-level emissions. The booster is reusable. The exhaust is not.
Jonathan McDowell will tweet the orbital parameters within the hour. Jonathan also flies to Prague for conferences he could attend on Starlink. The ship is called "Of Course I Still Love You." California is on fire. Pick one.
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Based on the original article "SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 24 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit from California (video)".
