SpaceX Plans To Resume Launches In November (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: SpaceX is aiming to resume flights in November following a launch pad fire that destroyed a Falcon 9 rocket and an Israeli communications satellite it was due to lift into orbit, the company's president said on Tuesday. The space services company suspended Falcon 9 flights while it investigates why the rocket burst into flames on Sept 1 as it was being fueled for a routine prelaunch test at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. "We're anticipating being down for about three months, getting back to flight in the November timeframe," Gwynne Shotwell, president of Elon Musk's space company, said at a satellite industry conference in Paris. SpaceX previously said a nearly-completed second launch site in Florida, located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), would be finished in November. The pad was last used to launch NASA's space shuttles five years ago.

Comments

Re:First they have to find the cause

[Geoffrey.landis]

What is scary is if Musk has already decided they will resume so quickly even if they have not determined the cause.

Everything SpaceX does is always attributed to Musk. The actual article attributes the quote to Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX.

She was speaking at a conference. Somebody asked when they'd be likely to start flying again, and she gave a best guess. This is not a firm commitment to fly whether or not they have found and fixed the problem, it's just a best guess about how long the process will take.

My personal best guess is that a failure review for a non-manned system takes about six months (after their June 2015 failure launches resumed in December, for example) so I think she is a little optimistic, but she probably would prefer to err on the side of optimism.