By Burt Dicht
NSS Space Coast Correspondent

Some weeks in spaceflight are just busy. This one was something more.

Over a period of four days, SpaceX launched four rockets from four different launch pads in Texas, Florida and California. Three of those launches took place on a single day.

The missions were very different. Starship reached orbit for the first time and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites. A Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon carried four astronauts from three nations to the International Space Station. Another Falcon 9 launched 130 payloads on a rideshare mission from California. And Falcon Heavy carried a National Reconnaissance Office payload into space.

Taken individually, each is a story. Taken together, they tell a larger one about the engineering, infrastructure and people required to operate at this pace.

It began Monday (Sept 28) morning in South Texas with Starship Flight 14. For me, Starship is the Engineering Design Process playing out in real time: design, build, test, evaluate, improve and test again.

Flight 14 provided another example. An engine on Super Heavy shut down during ascent, and later one of Starship’s vacuum engines shut down early. Flight controllers evaluated the data, determined the vehicle could continue, and Starship went on to reach orbit. It deployed 26 operational Starlink V3 satellites before returning to Earth about three hours after launch and splashing down north of Hawaii.

Fly, learn, improve, fly again. That is the loop.

Then came October 1.

At 11:10 a.m., Crew-13 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov rode a Falcon 9 and the Dragon Grace to the International Space Station.

They docked at 7:05 p.m., just 7 hours and 55 minutes after liftoff, the fastest launch-to-docking by a U.S. spacecraft in International Space Station history.

At 2:32 p.m. EDT, while Crew-13 was still making its way to the station, another Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Transporter-18 carried 130 payloads into low Earth orbit. Its first-stage booster was making its 25th flight and returned to land at Vandenberg.

SpaceX was not finished.

At 11:54 p.m., Falcon Heavy lifted off from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center carrying NROL-97, the first National Reconnaissance Office payload to fly aboard Falcon Heavy. A few minutes later, its two side boosters returned to the Cape, landing at Landing Zones 1 and 2.

Three launches in less than 13 hours, from three different launch pads on two coasts. That may be the most interesting part of the story.

Starship shows the Engineering Design Process at its most visible and experimental. Falcon 9, Dragon and Falcon Heavy show what happens as that process matures into operational capability. Booster recovery and reuse, once experimental themselves, are now part of regular launch operations.

But launching four missions in four days requires more than rockets. It requires launch pads, factories, recovery systems, mission control centers, transportation, logistics and supply chains. Most importantly, it requires people.

Behind these four launches were engineers, technicians, software teams, launch controllers, range personnel and thousands of others working across multiple facilities and time zones. While one team was launching astronauts from Florida, another was preparing 130 payloads for launch from California. Another was getting Falcon Heavy ready at Kennedy Space Center, while teams in Texas were evaluating the results of Starship’s first orbital flight.

That is industrial capacity, but it is also the skill and experience of the people who make it work.

Those of us who live on the Space Coast get to hear launches rumble overhead with increasing frequency. On October 1, two of them came from our own backyard, while another took flight from the other side of the country.

Four launches. Four pads. Four days. Three launches in one day. It is worth stopping to appreciate not only the rockets, but the capability required to make that possible.

Author’s Note: This was not SpaceX’s first launch tripleheader. On March 14–15, 2025, the company launched three Falcon 9 rockets in just over 12 hours.

Images:

Top image: A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center, FL on Oct.1 with NROL-97, a payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. Image credit: SpaceX.

Below: Liftoff of Starship Flight 14 on Sept 28 from Starbase, Texas. Image credit: SpaceX.

Below: Crew-13 lifts off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Image credit: Burt Dicht.

Below: A Falcon 9 heads to orbit on the Transporter-18 rideshare mission on Oct. 1 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Image credit: SpaceX.