SpaceX Is Launching Again: What to know if you're still paying attention

So, SpaceX just casually tossed a Falcon 9 booster into the Atlantic Ocean. A 21-flight veteran, one of the workhorses of their fleet, sent to a watery grave without so much as a second thought. And the response from the space-obsessed internet? A collective shrug.

This wasn't some catastrophic failure. This was a choice. A `spacex rocket launch` on Thursday night from Cape Canaveral, carrying a hefty 6.1-ton communications satellite for Spain, was apparently too important to bother with the whole "landing the rocket" thing that made SpaceX famous in the first place. They just stripped off the landing legs and grid fins, said "due to additional performance required," and let it rip.

Let me translate that corporate-speak for you: "The payload was too heavy, and it was easier to just build a disposable rocket."

And honestly, I can't decide what's more absurd: the fact that they did it, or the fact that nobody seems to care. We've been so thoroughly conditioned by the relentless pace of `spacex launch` events that the deliberate destruction of a multi-million dollar piece of high-tech hardware barely registers as a news story. It's just another Late-night SpaceX rocket launch from Cape Canaveral to send SpainSat mission to orbit rattling the windows on the Space Coast.

The Reusability Myth Gets a Reality Check

Remember the whole sales pitch? Reusability was going to change everything. It was the holy grail that would slash the cost of access to space and make humanity a multi-planetary species. It was the core of the SpaceX mythos. Landing those boosters on drone ships, side-by-side on the Cape—that was the magic trick.

Now, it seems, reusability is less of a religion and more of a... flexible guideline.

This was a calculated business decision. No, "calculated" feels too clean—this was a brute-force solution. It's cheaper and faster to just expend a booster with 21 flights on its odometer than to delay a mission or use a Falcon Heavy. The bean counters won. The dream of perfect, elegant reusability took a backseat to the raw pragmatism of getting a customer's payload to orbit.

The irony is that on the very same day, another Falcon 9 booster, B1075, was launching Starlinks from California and sticking its 21st landing perfectly on a drone ship. So they can do it. They just chose not to. They're so dominant, so far ahead of the competition, that they can afford to be wasteful when it's convenient. This ain't your scrappy underdog SpaceX anymore. This is the new monopoly, and they'll do what they want.

And what about the customer? Spain’s Minister of Science, Diana Morant, gushed that this satellite "will place the Spanish industry at the top of Europe." At the top of Europe? Your flagship national security satellite, a cornerstone of your defense infrastructure, had to be launched on a disposable American rocket because your continent can't get its own hardware off the ground reliably. Is that really something to brag about?

We're Drowning in Launches

The real reason this story has no legs is the sheer, overwhelming volume of launches. This was the 134th `spacex rocket launch` of 2025, coming just after SpaceX launches record-breaking 133rd Falcon 9 mission of the year (video). It tied the company's entire record from 2024... and it's still only October. They're aiming for over 170.

This constant barrage of launches is like the Netflix-ification of spaceflight. Each mission is just another episode in an endless stream. There’s no time to digest one before the next one drops. A `rocket launch today` is no longer an event; it's just content. We track booster tail numbers like they're celebrity pets but gloss over the actual implications of what's happening. The spectacle has been completely normalized. They're so busy cheering for the next launch that...

I find it bizarre. We're living in an era of unprecedented access to space, driven by a company that's breaking records left and right, and it's starting to feel profoundly boring. The magic is gone, replaced by the relentless churn of a logistics machine. Maybe I'm the crazy one here. Maybe this is just what progress looks like, and I’m just some dinosaur complaining that the rockets don't feel special anymore. The Spanish goverment certainly seems happy.

But when the company that sold us on a green, reusable future starts casually ditching rockets in the ocean because it's easier, it feels like something important has been lost. It feels like we've been sold a bill of goods.

So This Is What Winning Looks Like?

Let's be real. This isn't a failure for SpaceX. It's the ultimate victory lap. They are so far ahead of everyone else that they can treat their revolutionary, reusable rockets as disposable trash when the mood strikes. They built the system, and now they can choose when to follow their own rules. The promise of reusability wasn't about saving the planet; it was about crushing the competition. And on that front, mission accomplished. It just feels a lot less inspiring now that we see how the sausage gets made.