SpaceX launched three rockets across two coasts in thirteen hours Thursday — a pace that would be unthinkable at any government agency currently bogged down in years-long environmental reviews — proving what American enterprise can deliver when the regulatory state gets out of the way.
The contrast couldn't be starker. While federal agencies spend half a decade writing environmental impact statements before breaking ground on basic infrastructure, Elon Musk's operation put a crew of astronauts into orbit, deployed 130 commercial payloads from California, and lofted a classified national-security satellite from Florida — all before most Americans went to bed.
The day started at 11:10 a.m. ET with Crew-13 launching from Cape Canaveral. NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney rode alongside Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov in a Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9. According to ABC News, the mission is on track to be the fastest trip to the ISS ever — less than eight hours from liftoff to docking — thanks to favorable orbital mechanics. SpaceX vice president Bill Gerstenmaier said a recent orbit adjustment by the space station lined things up: "We just kind of got lucky that they line up and work out extremely well."
ABC News framed its coverage around Kutryk bringing a century-old family pocket watch, calling it a symbol of "how far his family and the world have come." That's a nice sentiment. The real story is that a private company is ferrying astronauts to orbit faster than NASA ever managed on its own, under a Commercial Crew Program contract that replaced the agency's bloated in-house approach.
About three hours later, SpaceX launched Transporter-18 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Southern California — another Falcon 9 carrying 130 payloads for paying customers. The Ventura County Star reported the cargo includes cubesats, microsats, hosted payloads, and two spacecraft with reentry vehicles, plus four orbital transfer vehicles carrying 41 payloads for later deployment. This is the rideshare model: small satellite operators get reliable access to orbit without waiting on government launch schedules.
The day closed with a Falcon Heavy launch at 11:53 p.m. ET from Kennedy Space Center, carrying a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office designated NROL-97. SpaceX says Falcon Heavy can lift the equivalent of a loaded Boeing 737 to orbit. The Ventura County Star noted the payload details are secret. Fair enough — but taxpayers might ask why a private company can turn around a heavy-lift national-security launch in the same afternoon it sent astronauts to the space station, while the Pentagon's own procurement process takes years.
ABC News noted a 45% chance the Crew-13 launch could be scrubbed due to weather — one of the few things bureaucrats can't regulate away. The mission was already delayed in August over a mechanical issue.
Investor's Business Daily ran a headline promising details on Musk's Starship launch schedule cuts for next year but delivered nothing but legal disclaimers. So much for financial press accountability.
The open question: if one company can run three orbital-class launches in a single working day, how many years of environmental review does the federal government really need to approve a pipeline?
