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Elon Musk's space company has set itself the lofty goal of reaching Mars, and it's ready to test the rockets it expects to get it there. The Raptor rocket engine has been shipped to the company's test site in Texas, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell revealed at a keynote address at the Small Satellite Conference. [...] SpaceX confirmed that the rocket engine is ready to be tested. The Raptor, which will drive the rockets bound for Mars, is projected to be more than three times more powerful than the Merlin engines attached to the company's current Falcon 9 rockets.
Also covered at Ars Technica.
Separately, there is a two-hour Falcon 9 launch window starting at 1:26 AM ET on Sunday (1 hour and 17 minutes after the launch of this story). SpaceX may come close to its goal of launching a rocket about every other week by the end of the year. SpaceX has set up a live-stream on YouTube of both the JCSAT-16 Hosted Webcast and the JCSAT-16 Technical Webcast.
As for the prospect of reusability:
If the Falcon 9 lands intact tonight, SpaceX will officially have six recovered rockets in its possession. However, the company has yet to actually reuse one of these reusable rockets. The goal right now is to re-launch a Falcon 9 that the company landed in April sometime this fall, either in September or October, according to CEO Elon Musk. Until then, SpaceX seems to be acquiring a nice little stockpile of rockets that have gone to space.
(Score: 5, Informative) by NCommander on Sunday August 14 2016, @06:14AM
Watched the launch and landing, and not only did they stick it, they stuck it right ontop of the X on the logo. It's at the point the launch tracker has gone from "Experimental Landing" to "Landing Attempt" ...
Still always moving