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New SpaceX Falcon launch... finally?

Streetwind

By Streetwind
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Streetwind

Streetwind

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https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/479817276837724160

SpaceX is gearing up to conduct a routine satellite launch for Orbcomm today at six PM eastern. Nothing about the payload of six satellites is particularly newsworthy. There is of course the fact that there will be another ocean soft-landing test conducted during this flight, much like during CRS-3 in April, so maybe we can get more (and better) juicy video of that. But what I do think is actually newsworthy is the fact that the launch itself is happening. See, SpaceX cites a total of 13 missions in its launch manifest for 2014. We're now approaching the end of June, which marks half of the year come and gone. How many 2014 missions has SpaceX launched so far?

One.

This also needs to be seen against the backdrop of a grand total of three Falcon 9 launches in 2013, and two more so far in 2014 (one of which was a delayed 2013 mission). Also, a minimum of one flight was already pushed out of the 2014 flight manifest into 2015, which now contains 16 missions. That gives us five completed flights in the past 18 months, but a launch manifest of twenty-eight upcoming launches for the next 18 months. Some of which are Falcon Heavy flights, which require three Falcon 9's worth of hardware. That's a tall order. No wonder that ULA, the company that they've been brawling with a lot recently over government launch contracts, has called SpaceX "overcommitted" - and personally I'm surprised they didn't find stronger words than that, considering how aggressive Elon Musk often acts towards them.

In a recent speech at the start of the month, Gwynne Shotwell of SpaceX addressed this issue, and conceeded that they have to up their game and prove that they can deliver on the promises made. However, she also feels confident that they can in fact pull it off. She says that currently, the company produces one Falcon 9 rocket per month, but by the end of the year it will be producing as many as two per month.

Now nevermind the fact that a production speed like that still won't be enough for SpaceX to "meet their cadence" as Shotwell promises, not in 2014 and not over the 18 month timeframe outlined above either. I'm sure that if they can ramp up now, they can continue to ramp up in 2015 and catch up with whatever backlog they have, if it makes economic sense to do so. No, what I'm more interested in is the question: if they are currently producing one Falcon 9 per month, where are they? Even the Falcon that launched in January was originally scheduled for November/December 2013, and thus likely came out of production in mid-October. And then there was one launch in April. Meanwhile, the inhouse Falcon Heavy demonstration flight scheduled for Spring 2014 has been scrapped completely and thrown somewhere into 2015 because there are simply not enough Falcon rocket cores available to assemble one.

I'm as much as a SpaceX fan as the next guy, but I'll admit I'm worried. Now what do you guys think? Is SpaceX as overcommitted as its critics claim, or will the company be able meet its launch cadence? And where is the one rocket per month they claim to be producing? How many Falcons do you think will actually fly in 2014?

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Tiberion

Tiberion

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After they finally got the April mission up, Musk said then they were planning on 10 missions from the Cape in 2014, including the January and April missions. So including todays launch, that is 8 more. Only 2 of those are Dragon missions since CRS-6 was pushed to January due to the ISS schedule getting messed up by all of the issues (not just SpaceX)

4 of the remaining 6 will be 2 AsiaSat launches (8 and 6) and 2 Orbcomm OG2 launches (today's, and one more in September)

For the last two, one will be Turkmenistan's staellite, and the last one will be either the Eutelsat launch or the Loral launch - neither have been been reschduled since the delays at the Cape. It's very possible that neither of those fly this year and we end at 8. All the others SHOULD fly unless something major happens. And then there is one launch at Vandenburg (CONAE) and while the Falcon Heavy launch won't happen until early 2015, the cores are supposed to be at Vandenburg this year. So that is at least 9 and up to 13 cores delivered for the year. Considering that the 1st flight of 1.1 was Sept 2013 it seems they aren't TOO terribly behind schedule. (if they manage to deliver all of the above, that's 13 cores in 15 months - we'll assume that the 1.1 maiden flight with CASSIOPE and SES-8 in early December were worked on before September primarily)

SpaceX is still a startup, so these issues were pretty much expected as they are doing things from the ground up. I imagine if they were a conglomerate consisting of pretty much the entire US aerospace industry with a huge political lobby protecting them and guaranteed contracts paid for by the government, they'd have things a little easier. But then if we go by other examples, they wouldn't need to innovate, and would be far less interesting.

By the way, the manifest on SpaceX.com seems to be out of date.

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Streetwind

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(...) By the way, the manifest on SpaceX.com seems to be out of date.

8 launches in six months does sound more manageable than 12, no question. But if that is the case and the launch manifest on the website is indeed out of date, that means that they had a fairly major rescheduling action only recently. The launch manfiest was updated with the completed CRS-3 launch at the end of April. That would imply they basically sat down in May and figured out how many boosters they could produce until years end, and then pushed four 2014 launches back into 2015.

This would line up better with Shotwell's statements, and with those of Elon Musk that you are referring to. If we then allow for one or two excess Falcon cores in storage because of the multi-month delay of CRS-3 followed by a temporary grounding due to a helium leak investigation, then a production speed of one core per month can indeed be enough to keep pace with the (revised and shortened) launch manifest.

Of course, with a launch every 3 weeks or so (and more like 2 weeks come 2015), their single launchpad and the ability to quickly put rockets onto it might turn out to be a bottleneck if there is a delay at any point. I suppose that means the engineers get to practice rapid launch preparations then... if SpaceX's plan is to land a used booster back at KSC, refuel it and relaunch it "the same day" (quote Elon Musk), then they better learn how to put up and launch a factory-fresh Falcon in the same timeframe :P

Of course, that still doesn't answer the question of "where are all the Falcons" considering their claimed production speed. But well, maybe they only started producing at this speed very recently? Maybe they were closer to a rocket per 3 months at the start of the year, and then ramped up throughout spring. But that's speculation on my part.

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Streetwind

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Good to hear!

In the meantime, ahead of today's launch, SpaceX released another F9R test flight video:

This one has deployable fins near the top to help with attitude control during descent. Unsure if that means they'll also be flying this tonight - on one hand, the test flight is only 3 days old, but on the other hand, these returning boosters from commercial launches are essentially "free" realworld testing scenarios. They might just as well throw it on and see what happens.

EDIT: looking at photos of the rocket they have on the pad, it doesn't look like it's fitted with the fins. Guess it's still too experimental.

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Streetwind

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This is the third launch of 2014, so, 2.

When I wrote that, I was referring to items from the 2014 launch manifest that have been launched already. The first launch of 2014 was a delayed 2013 item, and the third launch hasn't happened yet as of the time of this writing (and the time of the writing of the quoted post), so the "One" is correct.

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Streetwind

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Yeah, they basically said "the weather is clear for the entire 53min launch window, we'll move the launch to the end of the window to gather extra data on the status of the helium tanks."

(They had an issue with helium leaks that repeatedly delayed the CRS-3 launch, and they want to make sure they have it pinned down and fixed. High-pressure helium is used to fill in the space vacated by fuel flowing out of the tanks into the engines.)

Though assuming they're satisfied with what they got, they might still launch before the end of the window.

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Tiberion

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Sounds like nothing failed, they were still evaluating some data (on the helium tanks?) and ran out of time to do it. Hopefully more details forthcoming on the twitter machine.

Edit: Nope, 2nd stage pressurization fault.

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Streetwind

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Well, I sort of expected it, after they didn't take the first possible launch time and then closed the chat as well. I have a feeling they knew right then already that it very likely wouldn't happen.

Fix your darn helium tanks Elon! :P

Oh well, here's hoping they try again tomorrow and don't delay it another couple weeks. As put forward in the beginning of this thread, SpaceX has little room for delays right now.

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