While perusing Skylaunch’s website last night, it occurred to me that 2FTS could really do with ordering some of their cable retrieve winches.
Skylaunch Cable Retrieve Winch
While the old MVP winches had 6 cables each, the new Skylaunch EVO winches only have 2 cables each, meaning more retrievals will be needed. This will be compounded by the fact that the future VGSs will be larger, meaning more launches, and thus even more retrievals.
In addition, assuming that the 25 new Skylaunch winches will be divided up between the 11 future VGSs, resulting in 2 winches per VGS (with 3 still spare), that will result in double the number of already much increased retrievals.
If however 2FTS were to purchase some Skylaunch cable retrieve winches, then the retrieval time could be vastly reduced, and thus the “sortie generation rate” much increased (in theory allowing for up to 60 launches per hour).
I would think that, at a minimum, 22 retrieve winches would be needed (one for each main winch). I also imagine the retrieve winches would need to be converted to Diesel. And as always, cost would be the limiting factor. But interesting to ponder nonetheless…