SpaceX needs to launch 13, not 12, times a month
Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s Vice President of Launch, has become a good voice for the company for those wanting to follow SpaceX’s insane launch rates. Usually this would always be lead by Elon but in recent years more executives have been able to share what they’re doing at the popular company.
Dontchev said in a X post “The launch system … needs to be capable of 13/month so we can play catch up when planned maintenance, debacles and weather inevitably slow us down.” A smart conservative measure after last year when the company failed to meet its goal after only one week of bad weather and mechanical problems.
SpaceX currently operates three launch pads, two on the East Coast in Florida and one out in California. The company could take over more sites, like it did with SLC-6 at Vandenberg, but nothing will become available for launches for a few years.
Last year SpaceX chief for launch out of Vandenberg shared at a local event that the company hopes to launch once a week in 2024. A rate haven’t seen by that base in decades, if ever. That will still mean the bulk of 2024’s launches will come from Florida, and most likely SLC-40.
SpaceX’s two East Coast launch pads, SLC-40 on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center, each had separate missions in 2023.
While SLC-40 was away launching over 50 rockets, most of them Starlink missions, LC-39A took on all of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and Dragon flights. It takes several weeks to transition the pad to be ready after a Falcon Heavy lifts off, unlike just a few days or less between Falcon 9s. Flights of crew or cargo to the ISS also have there own unique requirements that lead to it only having 13 launches in 2023.
At the end of last year SpaceX finished construction of a new crew access tower and arm at SLC-40, allowing for it to be used to launch Dragon missions again. It was teased that Axiom-3 could have used it for its mission later this month but ended up sticking with LC-39A. It is the most historic pad there after all.
How, or if, SpaceX will use this second pad to increase its launch rate is unknown but it will for sure serve as a backup incase LC-39A has to go offline for any reason.
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Where does Starship play into this?
Oh yes Starship, the rocket SpaceX wants to launch as quickly as once an hour. It isn’t included in the 144 launch goal, but I personally include it in the total number of launches at the end of the year.
The company’s development facility and private spaceport, Starbase, has been hard at work getting the next set of Starship flight hardware ready for launch. Teams have already conducted static fires on both stages, I’m sure more will come as we await the FAA‘s approval.
Nothing I’ve seen or heard shows that SpaceX will get the go ahead to launch in January, so I would expect no earlier than February for any sort of launch operations.
The goal to getting Starship’s launch rate will be to reduce the down time between missions. SpaceX has already done this with being hardware rich. This is having more test vehicles it knows what to do with, so when one fails or blows up you have a backup there to take it’s place.
SpaceX will also need to reduce FAA mandated mishap investigation timelines. During Flight 2, the Starship upper stage almost made its way all the way through its engine burn. This is a good sign that Flight 3 could finally see the upper stage make it to its splashdown point near Hawaii.
Monthly launches by the end of the year could be possible if all goes well for the company on both the testing and regulatory side.
