Elon Musk would like to launch two rockets into space every 5 days
Earlier this week, a SpaceX rocket launched for the 75th time this year, continuing a pace of flight that will bring the company closer to 100 missions by the end of December.
SpaceX plans to raise its launch rate to a higher level in 2024, reaching a rocket launch every 2.5 days. This will be driven largely by the launch of upgraded Starlink satellites with the ability to connect directly to consumer cell phones, a service called Starlink Direct to Cell, a company official said this week.
two rockets into space every 5 days
The goal next year is to launch 12 flights per month, with a total of 144 Falcon rocket flights. As is the case this year, most of these missions will be devoted primarily to launching Starlink broadband satellites. So far in 2023, more than 60 percent of SpaceX launches have delivered the company's Starlink satellites into orbit.
Engineers shortened the time needed to reconfigure SpaceX's busiest launch pad in Florida to less than four days. SpaceX also improved response time at the launch pad in California.
It may seem like SpaceX is speeding up every launch, but the company says there's automation at every step, from launch processing to countdowns and even post-flight data review, as engineers look for near misses that could be harbingers of concerns. Reliability. Recovering most of the rocket after each flight also allows for detailed inspections to detect small problems before they become major ones.
Aside from Stalink, there may also be an uptick in SpaceX missions next year for external customers, such as NASA, the US Space Force, or commercial companies.
In 2022, when SpaceX and T-Mobile first announced Starlink phone service, Elon Musk suggested that it would require much larger Starlink satellites, which could only be launched on the company's giant new Starship rocket. This rocket took longer to operate than SpaceX expected. Musk said earlier this month that he expects Starship to be ready to carry Starlink satellites into orbit within a year, according to the IRS Technica website.