Agree about a 2nd TEL for LC-39A. But raising the LC-39A cadence would also require an additional booster recovery drone ship to fully take advantage of the increased capability. Putting SLC-6 into service at Vandy will require at least one additional drone ship on the west coast as well.

Feels like investing in a totally second TEL for LC-39A, left in config for Heavy would be an investment worth considering…. SLC-40 is kicking butt on launch rate. LC-39A should be ashamed… :)

But SpaceX apparently plans to boost monthly cadence further as best it can. nextspaceflight.com shows 10 more Falcon launches scheduled for October in addition to the one just completed. That is a monthly cadence only one short of the 12 launch cadence SpaceX has already said it plans to hit during every month of 2024. If it can do 11 in October, it will finish the month with a year-to-date total of 80.

Key to this ambition are the five missions SpaceX currently intends to launch from Vandenberg SFB during October – the same number it intends to launch from SLC-40 at Canaveral. To this point, pad SLC-4E at Vandy has been unable to support such a cadence because the transporter-erector SpaceX has there is of an older design than the ones in use at LC-39A and SLC-40 in Florida and requires more maintenance between uses. But perhaps SpaceX has recently done some quick upgrades to SLC-4E to permit faster turnarounds between launches. Or perhaps it is about to put SLC-6, which it “inherited” from ULA last year, into service as a Falcon pad this month.

Apart from possible pad-related improvements, the October cadence from Vandy will also be helped by the fact that two of the five currently scheduled launches from there will be of customer payloads light enough to allow RTLS booster landings at LZ-4.

The remaining 26 days of October should prove quite instructive to we outside observers.