Elon Musk’s company is launching rockets at an unprecedented rate.
But the bulk of its flights in recent years have been to put up its constellation of Starlink satellites, which beam the internet to ground stations located in remote areas around the world.The company is now launching its reusable rockets about once every four days. Last year, it launched 61 times, so far this year the number is approaching 60.
driving the high flight rate help SpaceX understand the margins of the rocket’s capabilities. Without people on board, they run the engines at a higher thrust level, he said. “Then we fly that crew mission at reduced levels with more margin available for the hardware,” he said. “So I think that gives us another benefit of getting a chance to see this hardware operate in a more stressful environment.
“It's easy to think that this is easy,” Gerstenmaier told reporters before the flight. “This business is not easy. From the outside it may look like we're flying a lot of flights, and they're all trouble free. They are not all trouble free. They are not easy. Every time we fly, we learn something. We spend the time to go analyze it.”Recently, SpaceX and NASA discovered problems with some of the valves in the Dragon spacecraft, officials said.
“We're in good shape for flying,” he said. “We wanted to understand it very thoroughly, so we spent the last month or so looking at data. SpaceX tested different valves all across the country.”Boeing’s Starliner spacecraftSince then, Boeing, the other company NASA has contracted with to fly astronauts to the station, has discovered additional problems with its spacecraft. It now says its first human spaceflight mission won’t come until next year.
If all goes according to plan, SpaceX’s Dragon capsule will arrive at the space station by 8:50 a.m. Eastern time Sunday. The crew is scheduled to spend about six months on the orbiting laboratory conducting science experiments before returning to Earth aboard the same Dragon capsule they arrived in.
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