Hopes To Ramp Up To One Every Two Or Three Weeks

SpaceX hopes to achieve an ambitious launch schedule this year, with a launch every two or three weeks later this year.

That word comes from SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell, according to a report appearing on The Motley Fool online.

The company also hopes it can achieve a landing success rate of 70 percent for its Falcon 9 boosters.

To fulfill its aggressive manifest, the company is ramping up production of the Falcon 9 boosters. Speaking at the FAA's annual Commercial Space Transportation Conference, Shotwell said that SpaceX is "in this factory transformation to go from building six or eight a year to about 18 cores a year. By the end of this year we should be at over 30 cores per year. So you see the factory start to morph."

Shotwell said that after the next launch from Cape Canaveral for SES-9, the company could see that launch rate of one every two or three weeks. "We've got a big manifest, a lot of customers to take care of," she said.

There are 46 missions on that manifest, but they do not carry specific launch dates.

Shotwell said that the company is also focusing on construction of the Falcon Heavy booster, with the first launch of the more powerful rocket planned for sometime this year. The SpaceX website explains that the "Falcon Heavy draws upon the proven heritage and reliability of Falcon 9. Its first stage is composed of three Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines together generate more than 4.5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff."

(Images provided by SpaceX)

FMI: www.spacex.com