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SpaceX Is Planning To Launch a Falcon 9 For the Third Time (arstechnica.com)
According to the senior director of government sales for SpaceX, Lars Hoffman, the company is planning to launch a Falcon 9 first-stage booster for the third time. At the Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium on Wednesday afternoon, Hoffman said: "We've launched Falcon 9 over 60 times. We've landed our first stage booster 30 times now. And relaunched 16 times. We're about to relaunch a booster for the third time. So we're turning this into routine access to space. High-reliability, higher-performance, lower-cost access to space; that opens it up to everybody." Ars Technica reports: The company has not officially confirmed its plans, but at present SpaceX intends to reuse a Falcon 9 rocket for the third time to launch a rideshare mission of dozens of small satellites for Spaceflight. This Spaceflight SSO-A mission currently has a launch date of November 19, according to a calendar maintained by Spaceflight Now. An earlier report in The Space Review previously indicated this mission may involve the third flight of a booster.
By the way, I was at Vandenberg a few weeks ago, and the landing burn is loud, even though it's one engine rather than 9. And then these two sonic booms come and bang on your chest! And that was at least 5 miles away from the pad.
Bruce Perens.
Probably. But you want to see it realtime, don't you?
Bruce Perens.
Headline: "SpaceX Is Planning To Launch a Falcon 9 For the Third Time".
Body: "We've launched Falcon 9 over 60 times."
Me: ??
The headline may be misunderstood as the third Falcon 9 flight ever. The news here is that a specific Falcon 9 booster is going to be reused for the second time, so it will be its third flight. Not to be confused with Falcon Heavy (Simultaneous boosters landing), which has been launched only once in a test flight.