Space Exploration Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for spacecraft operators, scientists, engineers, and enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
The excellent answer to the question Why would autonomous auto-destruct ramp up launch tempo? explains how it significantly reduces the extent of certain activities and responsibilities. In short:
It turns out, that ground-based system was really manpower-intensive:
But has this potential been borne out in reality? Is there any evidence that launch turn-around time has decreased?
Increasing cadence capabilities is only half the problem. Without demand, cadence won't increase.
Demand is likely to lag behind capabilities by a number of years given the long lead times for large capital expenditure projects like satellites tend to be.
The 45th Space Wing is expecting to increase cadence to 48 flights a year by 2020, aided by all launch providers adopting AFSS - but also due to Blue Origin coming online.
Changes made for AFSS and other elements of range automation seem to have made strides already - Brig. Gen. Wayne Monteith of the 45th says with SpaceX utilizing AFSS they've moved from "struggling to do two launches a week" two "now I can do two launches in 24 hours" because "I don't have to 'lock down the range' and have my fixed sites dedicated to a single mission."
AFSS wasn't developed with the idea of making the launch tempo increase, rather it was developed with the intention of "allowing" the launch tempo to be able to increase.
A lot of people tend to forget that during the Cold War, there were FAR more than 48 launches per year. I know someone who worked on each of the programs up to the shuttle program (after which he retired), and during the early days, including testing, he said there was often upwards of almost 200 launches! Of course, things were different, and many were test flights.
Today, there has to be a need. When there's a customer, they'll pick a rocket.
The range requires some time to basically "reset" for the next launch. However, if you have an automated flight system, that reduces the number of range assets that must be "rebooted" prior to the next launch, meaning that you could possibly have several launches in the same week, or even two launches being conducted simultaneously!
So I wouldn't say that it's made good on it's promise yet, but I would say that it's allowed for the possibility to occur, when and if that demand is required.
