#Falcon 9 second stage serial#

The weldment that forms the table was cut, welded, and powder-coated by hand. The nest might be cut by a CNC, but it goes on a rectangular sub-base with a hole pattern cut on a Bridgeport and held in a generic machinist's vise. In contrast, that brown leather trim panel assembly machine is a one-off, hand-built by craftsmen. But they're still built with mass-production manufacturing techniques: The parts go in a nest sized just for them cut by CNCs, the right amount of glue is applied evenly by automated sprayers, the adhesive is wet out by an automated press that records the force and position to a production database, the completed assembly undergoes 100% inspection in an automated poka yoke station. They might run 3 shifts per week while it's in production, and one a month for the next 10 years building service parts for mechanics. But while those lines turn out an impressive amount of product, they're a small part of the whole industry.įor every billion-dollar line at Ford building one black Model T (or F-150) a minute, there's a few dozen machines at tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers that might be building, say, a brown leather center console trim panel for the special color option for a less popular car. Sure, a few current flagships have production rates of 5,000 per week, with takt times of 45 seconds or less, and really impressive rolling production lines that won't stop for years, which feature a screaming-fast robot at each corner of the car that get featured in documentaries.

But somehow the we gone make small launch cheap with mass production story still convinces some investors.Įdit: Prat of why I mention this is just recently I was listening to interview with the CEO of Augsburg Rocket Factory from Germany and they made that argument again.Īs a controls engineer who does a lot of work for the automotive industry, I think you might be missing the long tail of production here.

RocketLab the only company that actually launches small sat regularly was absolutely convinced mass production was the way to go and then the CEO literally eat a hat and pivoted to making the rocket reusable instead. Going from the price of your first rocket to say 100 every year saves money, but nowhere near as much as reuse does. The cost saving from mass production would still be really quite small. Even if the were spectacularly successful and the was actual demand (there isn't) and launching as often as SpaceX. So any small rocket company that talks about improving launch cost by mass production and talking about 'using methods from the automotive industry' is just delusional.

That does give some savings but nothing like automotive.

#Falcon 9 second stage serial#

That gives you real cost savings, but 1-2 is really just serial production. SpaceX the most successful company doing by far the most launches, is producing about 1 new Falcon 9 Upper Stage about 2x a week at most.Ī successful car is produced 5000x a week, maybe even 10000x. Lowering the price or production by mass production. What I think is interesting here is how in the larger rocket industry, specially small launch all the competitors talk about how they need to make rocket production like car production.