Saturday, February 24, 2018

SpaceX engine production and rocket capacity









 
 
 
 
 
 
 
What we have here is production capacity to launch monthly at least and haul serious tonnage at the same time.  This is essentially continuous operation allowing a steady lowering of the cost profile.
 
The actual launch capacity now matches the Saturn standard with the heavys.  Thus it becomes plausible to support a true space station.  Such a station should be a balloon through which we have an axle consisting of a large cross section tube to handle docking g and construction storage and hanger decks.  We can then suspend cable stayed decks around the rotational axis and sustain centripetal acceleration on the decks allowing artificial gravity for work to be done.
 
I like to call these dyson spheres though initially need to be small..
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SpaceX engine production and rocket capacity
brian wang | February 8, 2018

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/02/spacex-engine-production-and-rocket-capacity.html

SpaceX is producing about 5 engines per week and has the factory capacity for 400 engines per year or about 8 engines per week.

The Falcon 9 has 10 engines. One nine-engine first stage and a single engine second stage.

The Falcon Heavy has 28 engines. Three nine-engine cores and a single engine second stage.

SpaceX should soon be pretty perfectly recovering the first stages and the fairing and other parts. Only the single-engine second stage will not be recovered.


If 2018 production was 400 engines. Then ten Falcon 9 and ten Falcon Heavy could be produced along with extra single-engine second stages.


In 2018 and 2019, SpaceX could produce twenty reusable Falcon 9 and ten Falcon Heavy’s along with 220 expendable second stages.


There are currently only a handful of Falcon Heavy launches on the manifest. Although Elon Musk has mentioned they have a dozen commercial customers for the Falcon Heavy.


The Raptor engines are the same size as the Merlin engines.


The SpaceX BFR has 31 engines in the first stage and 6 engines in the second stage. SpaceX should be able to produce ten BFR per year.


How many customers will to help drive the costs down by ten times from higher reuse each year?

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