SpaceX progress towards a 100 launch year

[Robotbeat]

I wonder if ship-to-ship transfer of stages is possible… use a crane to move recovered boosters to another barge, pack them in tightly (maybe weld them down with ratchets and stuff like they do when Octograbber or whatever is off-line). So a salvo of like 10 launches in a week when the weather is nice. All about 800km down-range, transferring 10 boosters per barge.

[redneck]

I was thinking more like a fast hull that they transferred the booster to.  Possibly with gear to lay it down.  20 knots for it being a day trip?   Edit.   Or an LCAC at 40 knots

[Zed_Noir]

I was thinking more like a fast hull that they transferred the booster to.  Possibly with gear to lay it down.  20 knots for it being a day trip?   Edit.   Or an LCAC at 40 knots

Forget the LCAC. It is doubtful that it can navigate high sea states in the middle of the ocean and the operating cost is very high.

Probably can get up to about 24 knots with a "fast" hull. Since this is the cruise speed that most amphibious warfare ships can achieved. Tricky part is transferring the booster from the ASDS.

[darkenfast]

While 100 launches might be possible if EVERYTHING lines up right (which is what Musk usually means when he tosses out a statement like that), there are things like annual inspections of vessels, weather, octo-grabber malfunctions, etc., that can derail the perfect season, without even considering the rocket. If they get to 90, I still think it's quite an achievement!

When you really consider what goes on in a liquid-fuelled rocket engine, it's amazing what the Merlin and Falcon 9 are doing, over and over. It's like a fleet of top-fuel dragsters that almost never blow anything.

[jimvela]

I was thinking more like a fast hull that they transferred the booster to.  Possibly with gear to lay it down.  20 knots for it being a day trip?   

I posted that same concept a while back in one of the threads.  It seems like an obvious solution to me.

Could potentially even cycle multiple of the faster hull types.

Edit:  it was in this very thread:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=58240.msg2471990#msg2471990

Edit2:  It was noted by others the first time this was suggested that this solution isn't great if the launch flow has wildly different inclinations for each launch.  That means the drone ships need to move a great distance between each launch.

 I still believe this could be mitigated with planning and coordination across launches from the two active F9 pads.  It is probably still necessary to return the drone ships to port periodically, and would certainly need to rotate the crews/vessels tending the drone ships.

I'm also not sure we'd see this type of further optimizing the drone ship logistics put in practice unless there are more StarShip/SuperHeavy setbacks in the next few development launches. 

[Robotbeat]

While 100 launches might be possible if EVERYTHING lines up right (which is what Musk usually means when he tosses out a statement like that), there are things like annual inspections of vessels, weather, octo-grabber malfunctions, etc., that can derail the perfect season, without even considering the rocket. If they get to 90, I still think it's quite an achievement!

When you really consider what goes on in a liquid-fuelled rocket engine, it's amazing what the Merlin and Falcon 9 are doing, over and over. It's like a fleet of top-fuel dragsters that almost never blow anything.

But this isn’t what I’m saying. 200-300 would be possible “if everything went right.” There’s plenty of margin for 100 this year even with weather, maintenance, etc.

[darkenfast]

While 100 launches might be possible if EVERYTHING lines up right (which is what Musk usually means when he tosses out a statement like that), there are things like annual inspections of vessels, weather, octo-grabber malfunctions, etc., that can derail the perfect season, without even considering the rocket. If they get to 90, I still think it's quite an achievement!

When you really consider what goes on in a liquid-fuelled rocket engine, it's amazing what the Merlin and Falcon 9 are doing, over and over. It's like a fleet of top-fuel dragsters that almost never blow anything.

But this isn’t what I’m saying. 200-300 would be possible “if everything went right.” There’s plenty of margin for 100 this year even with weather, maintenance, etc.

We'll see. I think barges can become the problem. You can hire other commercial vessels if something happens to the SpaceX fleet, but the barges are specialty items - not because of their base hulls, but because of their extensions and equipment. If one of them has to be dry-docked for an inspection, that's a problem that has a knock-on effect on the others.

I'm speculating from the safety of my armchair that they'll just break 90. Happy to be wrong!

[spacenut]

Another drone ship (barge) could increase launches.  One by having a spare, and two by being able to launch more often using 3 ships instead of two to bring back in returning rockets.  This would seem to be the quickest solution.  I think, however, SpaceX is hoping to get Starship operational to be able to launch more Starlink satellites than Falcon 9 can. 

[DanClemmensen]

Another drone ship (barge) could increase launches.  One by having a spare, and two by being able to launch more often using 3 ships instead of two to bring back in returning rockets.  This would seem to be the quickest solution.  I think, however, SpaceX is hoping to get Starship operational to be able to launch more Starlink satellites than Falcon 9 can.

SapceX' accountants will do a tradeoff analysis. Over the remaining life of F9/FH, how many additional flights would another ASDS enable? A third Florida ASDS will not increase the mission count by 50% because ASDS is not the only constraint. It appears that two ASDS can support at least 60 missions/yr. Starship will begin to replace F9/FH in perhaps four years, potentially driving the Florida F9/FH launch count back down below 60/yr. That means a new ASDS will only be needed from the time becomes available (2025?) until 2028 or so. The new ASDS would therefore only enable about 90 launches at the most (my guess is more like 40), and this is not likely to be enough to justify it.

At some point, F9 launch availability will saturate the market. from an economic perspective, F9 has a monopoly (other launchers are used for non-economic reasons, not price). If the market is elastic, SpaceX may lower the price to increase the demand, but this makes those additional missions less valuable, and with a complex product like space launch, such an effect takes several years, by which time Starship would be available.

[Robotbeat]

Falcon 9 has long since saturated the market, it is just that SpaceX created more demand.

[Robotbeat]

While 100 launches might be possible if EVERYTHING lines up right (which is what Musk usually means when he tosses out a statement like that), there are things like annual inspections of vessels, weather, octo-grabber malfunctions, etc., that can derail the perfect season, without even considering the rocket. If they get to 90, I still think it's quite an achievement!

When you really consider what goes on in a liquid-fuelled rocket engine, it's amazing what the Merlin and Falcon 9 are doing, over and over. It's like a fleet of top-fuel dragsters that almost never blow anything.

But this isn’t what I’m saying. 200-300 would be possible “if everything went right.” There’s plenty of margin for 100 this year even with weather, maintenance, etc.

We'll see. I think barges can become the problem. You can hire other commercial vessels if something happens to the SpaceX fleet, but the barges are specialty items - not because of their base hulls, but because of their extensions and equipment. If one of them has to be dry-docked for an inspection, that's a problem that has a knock-on effect on the others.

I'm speculating from the safety of my armchair that they'll just break 90. Happy to be wrong!

they have had to do inspections on the droneship‘s before, and it hasn’t stopped them from reaching their launch goals.

They can rent a crane ship and another barge to do ship the ship transfer as one option if they really want to go far beyond 100 launches per year. But it is not yet necessary.

[RedLineTrain]

SapceX' accountants will do a tradeoff analysis.

I don't think SpaceX would let its accountants anywhere near a tradeoff analysis.

[Nomadd]

  Has anybody figured out the Starlink payloads if they did RTLS?
 Any chance the lost sats could be more than made up for by more frequent launches?
 I'd guess they'll have to go that route in any case if a barge ever goes down for repair or scheduled maintenence/inspections.

[redneck]

If they want to stay in business they better have someone keeping an eye on finances. Probably Multiple accountants at that operating level     Business that ignore the financial end learn new words like broke, bankrupt, and foreclosure.

Edit.  That was not quite where I should have gone.  Accountants are very necessary, but DO NOT let them run a company unless they are very familiar with the technical end.  Exclusively watching the pennies can lead to a miserable work environment and poor quality products.

[steveleach]

  Has anybody figured out the Starlink payloads if they did RTLS?
 Any chance the lost sats could be more than made up for by more frequent launches?
 I'd guess they'll have to go that route in any case if a barge ever goes down for repair or scheduled maintenence/inspections.

Maybe if launch cadence were the only factor, or if they weren't expending the upper stage. But as neither of those are true they also need to factor in how many satellites they can launch for the cost of that expended upper stage.

When the fully-reusable Starship is launching them, however....

[alugobi]

Scorecard through June:

[Robotbeat]

  Has anybody figured out the Starlink payloads if they did RTLS?
 Any chance the lost sats could be more than made up for by more frequent launches?
 I'd guess they'll have to go that route in any case if a barge ever goes down for repair or scheduled maintenence/inspections.

It might actually make more sense to go the other way and start launching Starlink satellites on Falcon Heavy with 3 RTLS boosters.

[DanClemmensen]

  Has anybody figured out the Starlink payloads if they did RTLS?
 Any chance the lost sats could be more than made up for by more frequent launches?
 I'd guess they'll have to go that route in any case if a barge ever goes down for repair or scheduled maintenence/inspections.

It might actually make more sense to go the other way and start launching Starlink satellites on Falcon Heavy with 3 RTLS boosters.

Are there pads to land three RTLS boosters?

[niwax]

  Has anybody figured out the Starlink payloads if they did RTLS?
 Any chance the lost sats could be more than made up for by more frequent launches?
 I'd guess they'll have to go that route in any case if a barge ever goes down for repair or scheduled maintenence/inspections.

It might actually make more sense to go the other way and start launching Starlink satellites on Falcon Heavy with 3 RTLS boosters.

Returning the center core to land doesn't make much sense. I order to make the way back, you are hard limited on speed and distance at MECO. Even a Mega-Heavy with 10 side boosters would still have to let the upper stage go at 1900m/s or so on a heavily lofted trajectory, and that means 15t of LEO payload.

[Robotbeat]

  Has anybody figured out the Starlink payloads if they did RTLS?
 Any chance the lost sats could be more than made up for by more frequent launches?
 I'd guess they'll have to go that route in any case if a barge ever goes down for repair or scheduled maintenence/inspections.

It might actually make more sense to go the other way and start launching Starlink satellites on Falcon Heavy with 3 RTLS boosters.

Returning the center core to land doesn't make much sense. I order to make the way back, you are hard limited on speed and distance at MECO. Even a Mega-Heavy with 10 side boosters would still have to let the upper stage go at 1900m/s or so on a heavily lofted trajectory, and that means 15t of LEO payload.

That isn’t the upper limit. The upper stage of Falcon has a wet mass of about 116t tonnes, the payload being on the order of 20-25t. The dry mass of a booster is about 27t. I think with a Falcon 9 RTLS payload is about 12t now, so a single booster is burnout at 12+116=128. 3 boosters, even without sequential staging, would be able to push a booster to the same delta-v that had a mass of 384t, so that’s 243t of extra propellant to work with if the payload is 25t instead. Falcon upper stage is about 4.5t burnout.

Anyway, I think 3 core Falcon Heavy could probably do about 2-3 times the RTLS payload of a Falcon 9, particularly with sequential staging and maybe an upper stage stretch.