SpaceX Eyes 19 Launches In 2017 (arstechnica.com)

SpaceX has managed to launch fifteen rockets this year as a result of its more efficient production flow over last year, a maturing Falcon 9 rocket, and an experienced workforce. On Monday, the company will go for its 16th launch of the year, doubling its previous record. It plans to launch its 19th rocket before year's end. Ars Technica reports: This year has seen a number of firsts for the company -- first reflight of a Falcon 9 booster, first reuse of a Dragon cargo spacecraft, first national security payload, and a remarkable dozen landings. But probably the biggest achievement has been finally delivering on the promise of a high flight rate. For years, competitors in the global launch industry have noted, with skepticism, that SpaceX has been unable to achieve higher flight rates and fly out its lengthy manifest. Those concerns appeared to have some merit, especially after SpaceX endured difficult financial years in 2015 and 2016, when the company lost two Falcon 9 rockets (one during launch and the other during a ground test) along with a payload. However, competitors worried, if SpaceX did ever figure things out, the company could become a "steamroller" with its lower cost flight opportunities.

On Monday, weather permitting, SpaceX will attempt to launch the Koreasat 5A communications satellite for a South Korean company. The launch window for the Kennedy Space Center-based liftoff opens at 3:34pm ET. After this, it's likely that SpaceX will launch two or three (possibly more) missions in 2017, bringing the company's tally for the year to 19 missions. (That would be one shy of the company's total for 2014, 2015, and 2016 combined).

Comments

Arianespace

[CrybabiesArePeople]

Meanwhile the french people of Arianespace, from their tower of smugness, must finally start to sweat a little, and maybe, maybe....begin to consider their superiority complex. Problem is, in France, they all come from the same school ("Ecole polytechniquqe, sometimes "centrale"), and are so sure of their genius, that they repeatedly run into the ground all the french industries: automotive (Peugeot), nuclear (Areva), petroleum services (Technip), electric appliances (Schneider) , banking, entertainment, electricity (EDF), trains and power generation (Alstom)..I must forget some....and now space! Yay :(

I suspect pants are being crapped at this point..

[Mysticalfruit]

If you're one of the other launch providers, I can only imagine what this must look like.

For years, these companies laughed off SpaceX as some billionaires hobby. I suspect the laughing has officially stopped and lengthy meeting have begun.

These other companies in a response to SpaceX have promised reuseable rockets to bring their costs down, but at this point they're dreams on a whiteboard.

I see a number of problems any competitor is going to have.
1. In many cases their production line is optimized to prevent funding losses from their governmental sponsors, not to create lots of rockets.
2. Their cost/revenue structures are bloated.
2. Once SpaceX sets this pace for launch cadence it's going to be very hard for competitors to keep up. Especially when SpaceX is going to have a literal fleet of used boosters at their disposal. I can only imagine some satellite provider going into talks starting with "If you can't launch 10 a year, then we're walking... oh and we also want them super cheap as well..."

This race to the bottom is going to be very detrimental to other launch providers who'll have to try to cut corners to save costs and speed up production.
I expect to see SpaceX's competitors have more failures.

Re:19? One additional launch, and they'd be Space

[taiwanjohn]

IIRC SpaceX is in fact planning 30 launches next year. I can't find a clear citation at the moment, but I think Gwynne Shotwell said as much in a recent speech somewhere.

And among those 30-odd missions there will be some significant milestones: 1. First Falcon Heavy flight; 2. First Dragon-2 flight; 3. First crewed flight; and (possibly) a tourist fly-by around the moon. They will probably also refly some "flight-proven" boosters for the third or fourth time next year, as well as demonstrating fast turnaround (say, within 48hrs) of a reflown booster.

It'll be a lot of fun to watch all that happening.

Re:I suspect pants are being crapped at this point

[Gavagai80]

Until Blue Origin has a working orbital rocket, they're not competition at all. Suborbital and orbital are not remotely comparable, which is why Blue Origin is building a completely different rocket which is many times larger and all they've got is a vague hope to have it ready by 2020.

Re:I suspect pants are being crapped at this point

[Kjella]

These other companies in a response to SpaceX have promised reuseable rockets to bring their costs down, but at this point they're dreams on a whiteboard.

I think they're a little more worried about the near future than the present though. SpaceX has relaunched 3 of their 18 landed boosters, so like 1.16 missions/booster so far. The non-production costs are the same, the second stage costs are the same, none of the boosters have flown more than twice so 50% of the production cost + reduced payload capacity + landing/refurb costs means it's probably not a huge win yet. The most scary thing for them would be the most boring things for us, SpaceX launching the same booster a 3rd and 4th time and pushing the reuse factor up, up and away. Their worst nightmare is a booster flying >10 times like an airplane instead of a rocket.

What we want to see is the Falcon Heavy, BFR, Dragon 2, manned missions etc. but they're more like capabilities we don't have today. Even the SLS program is so full of pork it's unlikely it'll be shut down just because Musk can launch a FH - hopefully, it's been less than a year away since 2012 - but undercutting the competition on cost will be very noticeable. Then again Musk seems to want to put a lot of money into R&D, so how much prices will drop just because SpaceX's costs drop... we'll see.

Re:I suspect pants are being crapped at this point

[EnsilZah]

I suspect pants are not even crapped to a sufficient capacity yet.

Roscosmos recently announced they're going to design a simpler to manufacture, expendable Soyuz 5 rocket that would match SpaceX's current launch prices, in 5 years.

Ariane is going to bring the Ariane 6 to market in 2-3 years without consideration to reusability, and if I remember correctly, their CEO said it would take on the order of 10 years to develop anything reusable.

ULA haven't even selected an engine for their next rocket yet, and any reusability considerations are an afterthought years down the line from when the rocket actually flies.

At this point the best any of the major players are aiming for is to try matching last year's prices 3-4-5 years down the line, as if SpaceX is just going to sit there and wait, and a 10 year development cycle is still a reasonable expectation.

And by then they'll be bringing out a new unproven design, while Flacon 9 will have a history of 100 flights, 900 operational engine fires.
SpaceX will have the economy of scale in pad operations of launching every other week or even more rapidly than that.
SpaceX will have a profit margin to fall back on from their reused rockets that they're currently using to pay off the R&D, to lower prices even futher.
And they'll have rockets sitting there waiting to match a customer with a free launch slot while their competitors will require ordering a new rocket built a year or so in advance.

SpaceX is going to eat up the commercial launch sector, and all these companies are going to get are subsidized scraps from their respective governments, and demand for specialized features like ULA's longer lifespan second stage.

Of course there's still room for Blue Origin to grow into, as well companies that aim to sell cheaper rockets for smaller payloads, and presumably China and India.