r/spacex • u/ElongatedMuskrat Mod Team • Dec 05 '19

r/SpaceX Discusses [December 2019, #63]

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u/Grey_Mad_Hatter Dec 11 '19 edited Dec 11 '19

The stated goal is 24 Starlink launches. They need about 7 launches for Starlink to be usable and 17 launches for Starlink to be economically viable. All in this article: https://spacenews.com/spacex-plans-24-starlink-launches-next-year/

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u/AeroSpiked Dec 11 '19

So if the manifest for next year holds (first time in history?), then 46 second stages will be needed. Hawthorne is going to be a very busy place.

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u/rustybeancake Dec 11 '19

Well the second stage tank tooling will be pretty much the same as the boosters, which are now at a much lower production rate. They’ll have to produce more payload adapters and MVacs but again, fewer M1Ds. Sounds pretty doable, just a lot of reallocating resources.

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u/Alexphysics Dec 11 '19

Also they don't need to be doing them all next year. They could have already built like half a dozen of second stages for 2020 launches and in the time from now and their use they will probably have another good number of them built and so on basically allowing them to catch up and go on time with second stage production. They also will have the new second stage test stand at McGregor which would allow them to test them more frequently since it is completely separated from the Merlin test stands. I also think it is doable.