Re:SpaceX Crew Dragon Splashes Down After Historic Test Flight
by Rebelgecko on Friday March 08, 2019 @11:05PM
(#19344375)
Last I heard, SpaceX won't be using Boca Chica for Falcon 9/Heavy launches. So they do have their own launch facility, and they do have their own rockets, but they don't currently have any rockets that they can launch from their LF (which isn't ready yet)
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Re:SpaceX Crew Dragon Splashes Down After Historic Test Flight
by jryle70 on Saturday March 09, 2019 @08:02AM
(#19345915)
Spacex lease LC39 and LC40 at Cape Canaveral. They are exclusively used for Spacex's launches. SpaceX need approval for launches obviously, but they have full control of the cadence and timetable. NASA and US Air Force are just customers (albeit with higher priority).
They don't own the land like they do with Boca Chica, but from the operational perspective they are the same.
Re:SpaceX Crew Dragon Splashes Down After Historic Test Flight
by Rebelgecko on Saturday March 09, 2019 @10:22AM
(#19346530)
That's not quite how things are in practice. At the Cape and Vandenberg they need to submit a scheduling request to the range. In the past, the Air Force wouldn't allow launches within 72 hours of each other. This caused some conflicts as SpaceX (and to a lesser extent ULA and Orbital/Northrop) upped their launch cadence over the last year. In theory with the Falcon's automated FTS they can launch more frequently than that, but I don't think that has actually happened.
Leasing the pad also prevents SpaceX from making certain modifications and puts some infrastructure constraints on them