Most machines start showing their age after a handful of uses. Booster B1067 just wrapped its 36th trip to space and back, and it's showing all the wear of a rental car that's somehow still got that new-car smell.

Flight 36, Landing 160, Nobody's Counting Except Everybody

Early on July 9, SpaceX launched Falcon 9 booster B1067 on the Starlink 10-42 mission, lofting 29 broadband satellites to low Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. Liftoff came at 5:25 a.m. EDT, and about eight minutes later the booster stuck its landing on the drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas" — setting a new reuse record for any Falcon 9 first stage in the process.

B1067 isn't some rookie that got lucky; it's been flying since June 2021, when it debuted on a Dragon cargo run. Since then it's carried crew on Crew-3 and Crew-4, plus 24 separate Starlink batches, before this record-setting 36th flight. The landing was also the 160th successful touchdown for that specific drone ship, and the 635th booster landing across SpaceX's entire fleet.

Reusability Stopped Being a Headline and Became a Habit

A few years ago, "SpaceX landed a rocket" was itself the story. Now the story is a specific booster quietly racking up flight number 36 like it's clocking in for a shift, and that's arguably the bigger achievement — reusability has gone from marketing bullet point to boring, reliable infrastructure.

The economics here are the real headline hiding in plain sight: every reflight without a rebuild is a launch that costs a fraction of an expendable rocket, which is precisely how Starlink's satellite constellation gets built out at a pace no competitor can currently match. Cheap, frequent, reusable launch isn't just a nice-to-have anymore — it's the entire business model.

Thirty-six flights and counting. At this rate, B1067 is going to need its own frequent flyer program.

Source: Spaceflight Now