POLL: Number of SpaceX flights in 2012

[cambrianera]

Two, COTS 2/3 april/may and CRS1.
CSR2 will slip to 2013, very small chances for F9 satellite fairings and zero chances for FH.
I think Grasshopper will go somewere in 2012, but not really what the poll was intended for.

[mmeijeri]

One.

[Robotbeat]

If they can't get two off this year, they will start seeing a mass exodus of customers (there's been a trickle so far). Three will be really good for them.

[rcoppola]

I voted 2:

D2/3 and CRS-1.

However, getting ready to prove out their systems for D2/3, they will have many lessons learned to apply downstream. We could be pleasantly surprised by a rather robust launch schedule beginning early summer.

[Alpha Control]

My vote is for two flights, COTS 2/3 and CRS-1.
Or it could be COTS 2/3 partial success (what then becomes flight 1) followed by COTS 2/3 (flight 2) to complete the objectives.

[go4mars]

I voted for "none of the above", since 0 flights was not an option.

Is one flight "wanting a pony"?  I would be very curious to hear how you rationalize an expectation of 0. 

[Lurker Steve]

They have a total staff of 1500 people. You can't expect them to churn out rockets at a fever pace when you only have so many staff members. I'm not even sure what their production staff totals are. They will be lucky to put out 2 Falcon 9's and Dragons for this year. For a very small company, that's not bad. I'm thinking that they will have to increase their production staff and facilities by over a third to see a slight increase in production rates. I'm not even sure that their current facilities could even handle the load.

Do you really think headcount is the problem ??
What exactly is a "fever" pace ?

The first stage for the F9 has been at KSC since the summer. Unless they have the same group of workers making the 1st stage, second stage, and the Dragon capsules, who would expect that there should be a another first stage nearing completion soon, with a third first stage in also some intermediate stage of manufacture.

I guess we don't know the exact mix of employees at SpaceX, how many R&D engineers vs Manufacturing engineers and technicians, but I can't believe those manifacturing guys really need to work overtime at this point.

[SpacexULA]

Voted 2 Flights, but I think there will be 4 sets of hardware arrive at the launch complexes.

2 Dragon Flights to the ISS
1 Dragon at the Cape Preparing for flight by end of december
1 Sudo Falcon Heavy (Like the 1st Falcon, 3 test tank 1st stages, a test 2nd stage tank and the same payload fairing they used the 1st time), used (I think the Falcon Heavy will have a mix of Merlin 1C and 1D engines to get to the 27 engines)

[Kaputnik]

Voted one, being slightly pessimistic. I fear that there could be both delays to the COTS 2/3 flight and also significant (but publically undisclosed?) issues on that flight which will push CRS1 into 2013.

[dafixer]

I voted one.
I think with this upcoming flight (already delayed by months) being the inaugural flight to ISS issues are bound to come up resulting in delays to CRS-1. Falcon 9 has only flown twice so far and it has never flown in a "full-up" Falcon/Dragon configuration.

Because of the current pace of Falcon flights I would be very surprised to see a second launch this year.

[A_M_Swallow]

I voted 2.

SpaceX will be under pressure to get COTS 2/3 to fly this year.

The second flight could be of Orbcomm satellites.  This will test the fairing and allow the production staff to produce income whilst the development staff debug the Dragon.  I am not going to specify the number of satellites nor the number of engines the Falcon has.

[scienceguy]

I voted 1. It just seems like they are still prepping.

[grr]

3, possibly 2.

One in April(march will not happen).
Assuming that it is smooth, then they will do 2 dragon flights the rest of the year, with a sat launch in early 2013.

And SpaceX will want these to go up before sending up FH.
After all, this is testing that system as well.

[Danderman]

I voted for "none of the above", since 0 flights was not an option.

Is one flight "wanting a pony"?  I would be very curious to hear how you rationalize an expectation of 0. 

I expect a big delay for the March April flight.

[iamlucky13]

I voted for the same number of flights as they flew in 2010.   

I bet most people here forgot how many that was, even if they can guess after reading my post.

[baldusi]

I voted for "none of the above", since 0 flights was not an option.

Is one flight "wanting a pony"?  I would be very curious to hear how you rationalize an expectation of 0. 

I expect a big delay for the March April flight.

Due to some "private"information or simply applying a standard SpaceX delaying factor? Something to do with the TMA-04M pressure test failure?

[kevin-rf]

I am going to make a statement that saying how many launches in 2012 is kind of arbitrary and do not represent what SpaceX can or will do.

There will be a COTS 2/3 flight in the spring/early summer, then if COTS 2/3 goes well, CRS-1 will then happen in late 2012 early 2013. Using the typical SpaceX slip that will be sometime in December, but maybe as late as January. So if that happens, it will only count as one 2012 launch?

I personally do not think any other SpaceX rockets will make it to the Florida pad over that time period. A rocket may make it to Vandenberg in 2012, but will not fly (being optimistic and drinking the cool aid) until early 2013.

A better example of what I am arguing, Russia had 4 launch failures in 2011, but in reality if you went from the first failure in December 2010 to the last failure in December 2011 they had five failures. Over a years time they had five failures, but only four in 2011.

Using years for arguing statistics is a bad concept. What counts for SpaceX is building up the flight rate. Can they get more than two flights off over the next twelvish months?

 

[antiquark]

Zero!  Mainly because they're not getting any practice with actual launches, so when the vehicle is finally ready to go, glitches onsite could pile up and delay things even more.

[InvalidAttitude]

I think SpaceX need at least 2 launches, otherwise they are not taken seriously anymore.

[kevin-rf]

I think SpaceX need at least 2 launches, otherwise they are not taken seriously anymore.

There is a difference between need and what they can actually do.

Honestly, they need to do COTS 2/3, CRS-1,2, and two Vandenberg flights in the next year.

That is not a flight rate they can achieve at this point in time. I think the general belief is they can possibly achieve two flights over the next year.