Increasing launch rate.

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Skyskimmer

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Generally does anyone know how long it takes to say double the launch mass/year going into space. I mean is this something that takes five years to done for the same costs. Or can it be done in say the period of a year or too. I say this because just thinking of spacex launch plans and it got me wondering, are they lowballing it, until they can get a proven track record.

I mean I'm aware that many satellites companies, book there launchs between 5-10 years in advance but could this be cut down to being much quicker??
 
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SteveCNC

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I used to do a lot of work for Lockmart and it seemed like from what I could see it took about 2 years from start to finish to build an atlasV and about 18 months to build an atlasIIAS . Now the way the falcon9 is designed is a bit different but I would have to guess it still couldn't be made faster than maybe one year start to finish at best . Of course you can make more than one per year but that's the time it would take to ramp up production plus any time required to increase facility space .
 
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Skyskimmer

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What about hiring employee's I know spacex is pretty picky of who and how people get hired. Is it hard to recruit people, or just hard to do so cheaply?
 
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vulture4

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SpaceX has some bugs to work out, but the processing flow for the Falcon is simpler than for the Atlas or Delta - for example there are only two stages and the payload, no strap-ons and no vertical integration at all.
 
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bdewoody

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Skyskimmer":32r27hyf said:
What about hiring employee's I know spacex is pretty picky of who and how people get hired. Is it hard to recruit people, or just hard to do so cheaply?
The people involved in building rockets that will be used for unmanned and manned space vehicles are highly skilled and not cheap labor. They are highly paid and expected to get the job done right every time. Rushing the construction of a booster or a space vehicle would not be a wise choice as the failure of one single part could end up causing a disaster.
 
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vulture4

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Agree, but there is substantial waste in most US operations that makes them noncompetitive on the world commercial market. Musk has a reputation for refusing all the redundancy, optional services and emergency systems that commonly find their way into permanent requirements because they can be justified, but in reality are not essential and add to cost.
 
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Skyskimmer

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bdewoody":3h7j0gat said:
Skyskimmer":3h7j0gat said:
What about hiring employee's I know spacex is pretty picky of who and how people get hired. Is it hard to recruit people, or just hard to do so cheaply?
The people involved in building rockets that will be used for unmanned and manned space vehicles are highly skilled and not cheap labor. They are highly paid and expected to get the job done right every time. Rushing the construction of a booster or a space vehicle would not be a wise choice as the failure of one single part could end up causing a disaster.
What is highly paid though that's a bit vague do you mean in the 200k a year range or around 100k or so?
 
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