Main Engine Cut Off

I’ve been harping on three things in particular as the most important aspects of SpaceX’s 2016 work: schedule certainty, flight rate, and reuse.

There were no delays in the launch flow yesterday, which put them in position to hit their first possible window for CRS-9. After some struggles the past few years with technical issues causing scrubs (propellant cooling or otherwise), they’re building up a good streak of hitting their windows on the first try. That’s very important when they’re working through a pretty massive backlog of launches, and when they’re trying to up their flight rate to once every 2 weeks.

On that front, during the post-launch press conference, Hans Koenigsmann said that their next launches are JCSAT-16 in the first half of August, and Amos-6 by the end of August. That’s getting pretty darn close to their stated goal.

In terms of reuse, that was a seemingly-perfect landing last night, and based on initial inspections, the CRS-9 core will be ready to fly again. This is their fifth core recovered, of which at least 2 are due to be reused. The CRS-8 core should be flying this fall, and a Dragon pressure vessel will be reused on CRS-11.

Last night was filled with good signs for SpaceX’s future.