Tesla CEO Elon Musk Aims To Increase SpaceX Rocket Launches
CEO Elon Musk intends to ramp up rocket launches by SpaceX.
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, who is also CEO of SpaceX, has talked about launching payloads into orbit as regularly as once in a week. Now, Mr. Musk’s dream might slowly be turning into a reality. Executives of SpaceX hinted that the organization, which has just managed two rocket launches till now, could boost up to two rocket launches on a monthly basis starting with its next launch.
In early March, a conference was held in which Gwynne Shotwell, who serves as the President at SpaceX, announced the organization’s ambitious objective to launch one and half a dozen rockets by late 2016, including bigger Falcon Heavy Rocket launch.
SpaceX aims to launch three times more rockets into the orbit than it launched in 2015, as well as an average of approximately two launches per month from April to December. To meet its ambitious objective, the company should drastically raise its launch tempo prior to its scheduled April 8th mission to resupply the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA.
Barring every major setback, the remaining part of this year could witness Falcon 9 rocket head to orbit every few weeks – believing the organization can continue to follow its schedule, which it had set for itself – a task that it failed to perform previously.
The upcoming mission will be organization's first mission for the American civilian space agency following a mechanical failure, which led to explosion of the rocket during mid-flight in June 2015. A similar ISS resupply mission also experienced the same failure. In December, the space organization returned to flight after it grounded its rockets for half a year, and after that, it has launched only three missions - one each in January, December and in early March.
To launch 18 rockets in 2016, the company needs something such as 1.78 launches monthly – an objective that can be reached, according to Gwynne. For keeping up with the aspiring schedule, it is already reportedly slating its upcoming commercial launch for April 15, possibly just days following the launch of NASA ISS mission, as revealed by a space industry-wide launch schedule maintained by the leading space news source, Spaceflight Now.
That schedule indicated that in the two months – June and May the space organization is schedule to complete at least one mission. Every upcoming mission was bumped from the third and fourth quarter of 2015 when rockets of the organization were grounded.
Successfully raising the tempo to more than one launch per month would play an important role in building the image of the organization for trustworthiness, which was somewhat damaged by the rocket failure experienced last year.
Certain degree of failure is anticipated in the space industry, but deferrals could be quite expensive for companies spending millions of dollars on any satellite. The industry might forgo the occasional rocket explosion but expensive and long launch delays could result in clients finding other much reliable services.
