They launched Falcon 9 to put another sixty satellites in orbit for SpaceX’s full-coverage internet Starlink project. Fun fact: there’s a thousand up there by now (out of a projected forty thousand). Another fun fact: that’s the ninth time the company used that booster.
I may be happier about this than the ongoing work on a no-fooling rocketship. The tests of their heavy rockets are genuinely exciting and fascinating, yes. No argument there. But this stuff with the Falcons is what’s going to end up making space a hell of a lot cheaper to exploit. And I’m very happy that somebody’s doing the tedious work involved.
Every now and then, I suspect Elon Musk has a bottle or two of whatever Steve Jobs was drinkin’ …
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Elon’s not nearly jobs .. not fit to wear Jobs’ turtleneck .. but …
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Given the absolutely ridiculous amounts of money Iridium was awash in, when it first went live, the most surprising thing about Starlink isn’t that it’s happening .. it’s that the chief player is ….an outsider.
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Mew
You have to be a complete outside to disrupt the narrative. Read the book Liftoff by Eric Berger about SpaceX’s early years from formation to Launch 4 of Falcon 1. It tells you how completely ossified the current space launch industry have become and only outsider can think outside the box.