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ClearlyCylindrical OP t1_ixzxw55 wrote

The code I used to generate this graph can be found here.

I used the datasets found on planet4589 to generate this graph. There are a few issues with this the data, in that the launch list does not specify the variant of the given vehicle. Because of this the payload capacity for a given vehicle is taken to be the average of all variants.

This graph is plotting the payload capacity to LEO, not the payload sent to LEO. Essentially, it is plotting the total payload sent to orbit assuming all launches were at their payload limit, and were only sending payloads to LEO.

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djellison t1_iy44p3h wrote

> This graph is plotting the payload capacity to LEO

What number are you using for Falcon 9?

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ClearlyCylindrical OP t1_iy450k1 wrote

With my code it works out to around 15 tonnes. It's not great as it just averages the values for all variants, but thankfully it turns out to be pretty close to the true value of around 16-17 tonnes for a droneship landed booster.

I plan on improving this in future in order to take into account the different variants instead of just averaging them.

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djellison t1_iy47y61 wrote

That's a pretty good number to use - I was concerned you might have picked the number SpaceX has on their website that isn't even really possible to fit inside the fairing of an F9 :D

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