Business, Media Criticism, Space, Technology and Society

“We Will Definitely Catch Up”

4 Comments

As I said, I went to the Satellite 2017 conference. Unfortunately, my flight was too early yesterday to catch this panel:

Shotwell also anticipates that using Falcon 9 rockets with pre-flown first stages will enable the company to execute on its backlog, which is currently loaded with customers that expected to have their satellites launched in 2016. SES-10 was one such mission.

“We do anticipate reflying about six vehicles, [with] pre-flown boosters this year, which should take some of the pressure off of production,” Shotwell said.

Let hope. I’ve been saying that the plans for the Apollo 8 re-enactment next year aren’t as unrealistic as some think (I give it about 30%). They have to get flying again, and they have to fly the heavy this year, and they have to get in those qualification flights, but I think those, not the Dragon itself, are the long pole in the tent. Once they have both pads going, they may in fact be able to work of that backlog, and if they’re regularly reflying first stages, that will be historic.

4 thoughts on ““We Will Definitely Catch Up””

  1. It would be truly delicious if they were able to send tourists around the Moon before NASA “certified” the Dragon for Commercial Crew. I had asked a few people about whether SpaceX would do a manned orbital flight of Dragon on its own, ahead of Commercial Crew. The response from everyone (outside SpaceX) was that this would probably not happen, because they wouldn’t want to piss NASA off by upstaging them (I have had personal experience with this, and agree). But a lunar orbit flight, especially for tourism, would be so completely unhooked from just an orbital demonstration with company astronauts that NASA couldn’t really bitch about it too much. Yet it would have the same effect. I really hope they pull this off.

    1. Even waiting for certification, it will still mean NASA gets upstaged by SpaceX. Although, do we need to look at it that way when they have such a friendly non-adversarial relationship?

      I would like to think that NASA would be happy for them and proud of the contributions they have made to SpaceX’s success.

  3. Once they have both pads going

    Should read, “Once they have three pads going.”

    Getting that third pad done will be a huge boost for their launch rates.

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