SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket ,SpaceX Falcon Heavy poised for debut test launch will blast off on 6 February , II
SpaceX's hot new monster rocket makes its launch debut this week, blasting off from the same pad that hoisted men to the moon a half-century ago. The Falcon Heavy won't surpass NASA's Saturn V moon rocket, still all-time king of the launch circuit. It won't even approach the liftoff might of NASA's space shuttles.
But when it departs on its first test flight, as early as Tuesday, the Heavy with its three boosters and 27 engines will be the most powerful working rocket out there today, by a factor of two.
Picture SpaceX's frequent-flyer Falcon 9 and its single booster and then times that by three; the Heavy's three first-stage boosters are strapped side by side by side.
The Heavy represents serious business for the private space company founded 16 years ago by Elon Musk. With more than 5 million pounds of liftoff thrust, equivalent to 18 747s jetliners, the Heavy will be capable of lifting supersize satellites into orbit and sending spacecraft to the moon, Mars and beyond.
Using another airplane analogy, SpaceX boasts a Heavy could lift a 737 into orbit, passengers, luggage and all. The company already has some Heavy customers lined up, including the US Air Force.
"I can't wait to see it fly and to see it fly again and again," said the Southwest Research Institute's Alan Stern. He's the lead scientist for NASA's New Horizons spacecraft which made an unprecedented flyby of Pluto and is now headed to an even smaller, icy world on the fringes of the solar system.
Cape Canaveral hasn't seen this kind of rocket mania since the last space shuttle flight in 2011. Huge crowds are expected for the afternoon launch from Kennedy Space Center.
Visitor center tickets for the best up-close viewing, called "Feel the Heat" and "Closest Package," sold out quickly.
"When you're talking about what would be the biggest and largest operational launch vehicle in the world, that adds another dimension of excitement," said Phil Larson, an assistant dean at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who used to work for SpaceX and the Obama administration.
The Heavy is capable of delivering, in one fell swoop, 140,660 pounds (63,800 kilograms) of cargo to low-Earth orbit, nearly 60,000 pounds (26,700 kilograms) to high-Earth orbit, 37,000 pounds (16,800 kilograms) to Mars, or 7,700 pounds (3,500 kilograms) to Pluto.
But for this inaugural flight, the rocket will carry up Musk's cherry-red Tesla Roadster. In addition to SpaceX, he runs the electric car maker Tesla.
"Red car for a red planet," Musk tweeted in December, when announcing the surprise cargo. Fresh-off-the-drawing-board rockets typically carry steel or concrete blocks in place of true cargo."That seemed extremely boring," Musk explained.
NASA officials said the Falcon Heavy is just the latest evidence of the Kennedy Space Center's transformation into a multi-user spaceport, a turnaround after decades of space shuttles taking center stage.
A variety of rockets will be needed, besides NASA's still-under-construction Space Launch System megarocket, as astronauts venture out into the solar system, said Kennedy's director of center planning and development, Tom Engler.
Blue Origin, led by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, for instance, is developing a big, reusable orbital-class rocket named New Glenn after the first American to orbit the world, John Glenn.
But when it departs on its first test flight, as early as Tuesday, the Heavy with its three boosters and 27 engines will be the most powerful working rocket out there today, by a factor of two.
Picture SpaceX's frequent-flyer Falcon 9 and its single booster and then times that by three; the Heavy's three first-stage boosters are strapped side by side by side.
The Heavy represents serious business for the private space company founded 16 years ago by Elon Musk. With more than 5 million pounds of liftoff thrust, equivalent to 18 747s jetliners, the Heavy will be capable of lifting supersize satellites into orbit and sending spacecraft to the moon, Mars and beyond.
Using another airplane analogy, SpaceX boasts a Heavy could lift a 737 into orbit, passengers, luggage and all. The company already has some Heavy customers lined up, including the US Air Force.
"I can't wait to see it fly and to see it fly again and again," said the Southwest Research Institute's Alan Stern. He's the lead scientist for NASA's New Horizons spacecraft which made an unprecedented flyby of Pluto and is now headed to an even smaller, icy world on the fringes of the solar system.
Cape Canaveral hasn't seen this kind of rocket mania since the last space shuttle flight in 2011. Huge crowds are expected for the afternoon launch from Kennedy Space Center.
Visitor center tickets for the best up-close viewing, called "Feel the Heat" and "Closest Package," sold out quickly.
"When you're talking about what would be the biggest and largest operational launch vehicle in the world, that adds another dimension of excitement," said Phil Larson, an assistant dean at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who used to work for SpaceX and the Obama administration.
The Heavy is capable of delivering, in one fell swoop, 140,660 pounds (63,800 kilograms) of cargo to low-Earth orbit, nearly 60,000 pounds (26,700 kilograms) to high-Earth orbit, 37,000 pounds (16,800 kilograms) to Mars, or 7,700 pounds (3,500 kilograms) to Pluto.
But for this inaugural flight, the rocket will carry up Musk's cherry-red Tesla Roadster. In addition to SpaceX, he runs the electric car maker Tesla.
"Red car for a red planet," Musk tweeted in December, when announcing the surprise cargo. Fresh-off-the-drawing-board rockets typically carry steel or concrete blocks in place of true cargo."That seemed extremely boring," Musk explained.
NASA officials said the Falcon Heavy is just the latest evidence of the Kennedy Space Center's transformation into a multi-user spaceport, a turnaround after decades of space shuttles taking center stage.
A variety of rockets will be needed, besides NASA's still-under-construction Space Launch System megarocket, as astronauts venture out into the solar system, said Kennedy's director of center planning and development, Tom Engler.
Blue Origin, led by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, for instance, is developing a big, reusable orbital-class rocket named New Glenn after the first American to orbit the world, John Glenn.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A scarlet Tesla Roadster from the assembly line of Elon Musk's pioneering electric automobile business is poised this week to go where no sports car has gone before - outer space.
The sleek, battery-powered hot rod is serving as a mock payload for the highly anticipated debut test flight of Musk's new Falcon Heavy jumbo rocket, set for liftoff as early as Tuesday by his other transportation venture, Space Exploration Technologies.
If the launch succeeds, the Falcon Heavy will rank as the most powerful rocket in operation today, and the mightiest space vehicle to blast off from the United States since NASA's Saturn 5 rockets last carried astronauts to the moon 45 years ago.
It would likely give California-based SpaceX a leg up on rival commercial rocket companies seeking major contracts with NASA, the U.S. military, satellite companies and even paying space tourists.
Propelled by 27 engines supplying three times the thrust of SpaceX's current workhorse Falcon 9 booster, the Falcon Heavy is essentially constructed from three Falcon 9s bolted together side-by-side, with the nose cone and payload capping the middle rocket.
The spacecraft is set for liftoff from launch complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida - the same pad used by the Saturn 5 that carried Apollo 11's three-man crew on their historic 1969 mission culminating in Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's first human steps on the lunar surface.
The "passenger" riding atop the Falcon Heavy will be setting a more whimsical record as the first car sent into solar orbit - a deliberately droll bit of high-stakes, high-tech cross-promotion dreamed up by Musk himself.
"I love the thought of a car driving apparently endlessly through space and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future," the billionaire entrepreneur and SpaceX founder said in a Twitter post last month.
GREATER LIFT CAPACITY
The Falcon Heavy is actually designed to carry payloads of much greater heft than a sports car, with SpaceX boasting its ability to place roughly 70 tons into standard low-Earth orbit at a cost of $90 million per launch.
That is twice the lift capacity of the biggest existing rocket in America's space fleet - the Delta 4 Heavy of SpaceX rival United Launch Alliance (ULA), a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co. - for about a fourth the cost.
The new rocket also would give SpaceX entry to two key arenas requiring higher lift capacity than a single Falcon 9 provides - geostationary orbital missions to deliver satellites that circle Earth's equator at the same pace as the planet's rotation, and for human exploration beyond Earth.
Arrival of the Falcon Heavy puts it in competition with the next big rocket under development by NASA as well, the heavy-lift Space Launch System, or SLS, which will be far more powerful than SpaceX's new jumbo rocket but also much more expensive to fly.
The Trump administration recently signaled that NASA may contract with a commercial provider to launch the first component of its Deep Space Gateway, a lunar-orbiting research outpost planned as a successor to the International Space Station in the next decade and a jumping-off point for missions to Mars.
SpaceX already has lined up its first three paying missions for the Falcon Heavy, including the planned launch of two paying passengers on a tourist trip around the moon.
Like the Falcon 9 that came before it, the Falcon Heavy is built to capitalize on SpaceX's cost-cutting reusable rocket technology, with each of the three main-stage boosters designed to fly back to Earth after launch.
The two side-boosters are supposed to touch down on landing pads at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, while the central booster should land itself on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
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