Reusability Changes Everything

For the umpteenth time.  

With the cadence of Falcon 9 launches that SpaceX has been putting in - and working to increase - on any given day if they're not launching one, they're rolling one out to the pad to prepare for launch, or bringing one into port for refurbishment.  Or all three. 

The highlight of this is the booster as it's the recycling we see the most of.  Even at nearly 400 successful landings, landing a booster is still incredible.  While it's "the way it ought to be," for every launch I watch video coverage of I still read comments where people say, "it never gets old." 

Last Friday, Booster B1067 became the fleet leader by launching for the 25th time.  B1067 has now launched 457 satellites and eight astronauts over its 25 flights.  You probably remember when they considered achieving 10 flights was a goal.  Now we call boosters with up to 10 flights "near new."

SpaceX now plans to launch each Falcon 9 booster up to 40 times. Engineers temporarily removed two Falcon 9 boosters from SpaceX's launch rotation in 2023 for in-depth inspections after their 15th flight. That allowed SpaceX to extend each booster's certification to 20 flights, and last year, officials announced they were going for 40.

As their experience with reuse has gone up, the time it takes to inspect a booster and prepare it for its next flight has gone down.

In November, SpaceX launched the same Falcon 9 booster twice in less than 14 days, the shortest turnaround time for a booster yet. The company has launched 38 missions with booster turnaround times of one month or less, and all but nine of those flights occurred within the last year. 

Don't forget that the 14 days included returning the booster to Port Canaveral on the drone ship it landed on, that's usually around a day and a half travel back to port, followed by days getting it ready for the next flight. 

And it's not just the booster.  They successfully re-fly fairing halves, too, after dropping the concept of catching them in a giant net and instead just letting them splash down into the ocean, then picking them out of the water.  In December, they announced a fairing was launched for the 22nd time. 

SpaceX's factory in Hawthorne, California, must also churn out new upper stages for each Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy flight. That's 135 of these multi-million-dollar stages for each Falcon mission in the last 365 days, or one flight (and one new upper stage) every 2.7 days.

They regularly set new records increasing their launch cadence, or decreasing the amount of time spent on the ground. 

When SpaceX landed twice on the same drone ship in three-and-a-half days last year, the company's vice president of launch, Kiko Dontchev, congratulated his team on X. The drone ship "traveled roughly 640 nautical miles in that time with only 3.5 hrs at the dock to drop off a rocket," he wrote.

All of this progress toward faster turnaround times and higher cadence is going to be essential for Starship if Musk's visions for the monster vehicle ever are to be realized.  Musk has suggested that SpaceX must produce 100 or more Starships per year to fulfill his Mars settlement ambitions, even with full reusability.  That link is saying SpaceX needs to build Starships as often as Boeing builds 737s.  Boeing has several plants that can manufacture those planes.  It sounds like they need to clone the Starbase factories in other places around the country. 

In the background, a Falcon 9 rocket climbs away from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Another Falcon 9 stands on its launch pad at neighboring Kennedy Space Center LC-39A awaiting its opportunity to fly. Image credit: SpaceX