History, Politics And Current Affairs

So far this year SpaceX has had 53 F9 flights and 1 FH.

The goal of Musk was to hit 60 flights this year for SpaceX. For the rest of 2022 they have 3 Starlink flights and 5 customer flights planned. The goal of 60 flights in 2022 is in reach for SpaceX. Just a few years ago if someone had said that the Falcon rockets would be launching over 50+ times a year, I would have thought they were crazy. Even just a few years ago, the Space Force ranges couldn't even support this amount of orbital flights. SpaceX had to work directly with the ranges to create AFTS (Automated Flight Termination System) which makes it so the Falcon rockets require much less range resources for a launch.

The Block 5 Falcon 9 has a success rate of 100% over 130+ launches.

I am reposting a link from earlier this year about how SpaceX is building Airline-Type flight Ops for launch. Without some type of reusability of the flight hardware I think that this tempo of launches wouldn't be possible.

https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/ ... ops-launch

Musk is aiming for 100+ launches in 2023.

I can imagine that in order to hit 100+ launches, the Hawthorne factory will need to crank up the second stage assembly line & Vacuum Merlin-D line into overdrive. Though I’m not sure if they can slow down their first stage build rates any further without the unit costs starting to balloon way up?

Also, my prediction is that Starship will probably contribute no more than 5-7 flights at most for 2023, starting with a likely Feb/March first launch date. I base that on:

1. Boca Chica is only approved for 5 launches per year.

2. The launch infrastructure build at LC-39A at the Cape still far from completion.

3. Related to LC-39A, NASA has voiced concerns that a Starship kablooie could (would) put that entire complex out of commission, including its historic launch tower/FSS. So they could very well want SpaceX to ensure that the other LC-40 site over at CCAFS next door can launch Crew Dragon flights as a pre-requisite. And that alone will take at least a year to build it out (perhaps SpaceX can somehow piggy-back off that recent DoD contract they got to build a Mobile Service Tower for vertical integration of all those secret-squirrel sats?).

The two most critical Starship flights I can see for 2023 are the initial test flight, one flight for NASA’s propellant transfer demo contract (internal transfer within a single Starship) in support of HLS.

Early this morning SpaceX accomplished their 60th launch of 2022 with 100% mission success for the year. More than 90% of the launches this year used flight proven boosters.

SpaceX has one more launch planned for 2022.

Just glorious to behold.

Had a cool view of the Heavy launch this evening...

Edit: dangiit, attachment didn't work...