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.

Comments

Re:Launch cadence

[Kjella]

The real challenge for SpaceX is to launch often enough that they can realize the savings of being able to launch the same rocket 100 times and of potentially being able to have 24 hour turnaround time. They've improved slightly, but they're still only averaging about 2 launches a month.

Not really because 24 launches/year at 1 launch/rocket = production of 24 rockets. At 2 launches/rocket = 12, at 3 launches/rocket = 8, at 4 launches/rocket = 6... they don't have to increase their launch rate to save massive amounts of money. Even with three month refurb a booster with 10 launches (which is the goal AFAIK, 100 is just for BFR pie-in-the-sky dreams) has less than a three year lifespan, they don't need faster turnaround to expend them in a timely fashion. Of course if you're making money then higher volume equals more money, but it's not necessary.

They probably do need to grow the market though, of 27 US launches so far this year the Falcon has had 17. Even if SpaceX steals some Soyuz launches to the ISS through the Commercial Crew program and a few more from Atlas/Delta there's not a lot of growth potential, unless China/Russia/ESA/Japan/India want to give up their own rocket programs. But no, nothing bad happens if those plans slide another year while they do their 4th-5th-6th launch of the same rocket. It's the only way SpaceX could avoid breaking their back on Starlink which is a massive investment, bigger than creating the BFR.

Re:Launch cadence

[lgw]

They probably do need to grow the market though, of 27 US launches so far this year the Falcon has had 17. Even if SpaceX steals some Soyuz launches to the ISS through the Commercial Crew program and a few more from Atlas/Delta there's not a lot of growth potential, unless China/Russia/ESA/Japan/India want to give up their own rocket programs.

If launch costs fall by half, the number of launches will more than double. If launch costs fall to 10% (wasn't that a SpaceX goal?), launches will increase by far more than 10x, probably 100x. We've seen that with just about every technology. Entire new industries are enabled when costs get low enough.