adiggs
Active Member
At this moment SpaceX has only five boosters available for standard launches:
B1049
B1051
B1058
B1059
B1060 - spoken for until recovered
All except for one (B1058 May 30th) will be launched this month June 2020 - weather permitting. The shortest turnaround time for a Block 5 booster has been 2 months. Sadly, the loss of two boosters in landings earlier this year may cause some delays in upcoming Starlink launches.
I find that if I think about this too long, I find it comical. Not SpaceX; the rest of the launch industry and launch entities.
SpaceX is launching so many rockets, so fast, they might find their cadence slowed down now, because of 2 rockets lost on recovery attempts a few months earlier.
So many things in that last sentence are just 'wrong':
SpaceX has this problem. Due to:
- A launch cadence that is faster than anyone / everyone
- And due to their rocket recovery process (nobody else in danger of joining SpaceX with this capability - SpaceX has repeated so many times that it's a Process)
- And due to that rocket recovery process being sufficiently robust and reliable enough, SpaceX can plan for future production of rockets, and scheduling of launches based on that rocket recovery process that nobody else is in danger of doing for the first time.
- and OMG - the plan is off now due to losses in the rocket recovery process that happened months ago, such that it might affect #1; launch cadence now.
Yeah - we all want that problem