SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is heavy launch vehicle. It is used for launching commercial and science payloads and the Dragon Spacecraft.
- Overview: One of the most powerful operational rockets in service, consisting of three structural Falcon 9 core boosters strapped together. It is designed to lift heavy national security payloads, large commercial satellites, and deep-space science missions into high-energy orbits.
- Basic Specs: It stands 70 meters tall, generates over 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff using 27 Merlin engines, and can carry up to 63,800 kg to Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
- First Flight: Launched on February 6, 2018, from Kennedy Space Center Pad 39A. The historic maiden flight successfully placed Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster into a heliocentric orbit and featured the viral dual-booster propulsive landing back at Cape Canaveral.
About
Falcon Heavy is manufactured and developed by Space-X. It has 2/3 the liftoff thrust of NASA’s Saturn V manned moon landing rockets – last launched in the 1970s.
The two stage Falcon Heavy stands more than 229.6 feet (70 meters) tall and is 39.9 feet wide (12.2 meters). It weighs more than 3.1 million pounds (1.4 million kilograms).
Like the Falcon 9 it will be fuelled with liquid oxygen and RP-1 kerosene propellants.
Mission Design:
Falcon Heavy was designed from the start to carry humans into space and with the potential to send human missions to the Moon or Mars or beyond.
It will be able to carry the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
The launch vehicle consists of three boosters based on the Falcon 9: two side boosters and the center core. The whole center core airframe was redesigned its because it’s got to take so much load and also includes booster separation systems.
Specs:
Payload Weight: 54 metric tons (119,000 lb) into orbit.
Launch Sites:
The Falcon Heavy is comprised of three Falcon 9 cores.
The combined trio of Falcon 9 cores generate about 5.1 million pounds of lift-off thrust upon ignition from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Furthermore SpaceX engineers have advanced to the next step and successfully recycled, reflown and relaunched two ‘flight-proven first stages this year in March and June of 2017 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida involving the SES-10 and BulgariaSat-1 launches respectively.
Launch
Falcon Heavy requires the simultaneous ignition of 27 orbit-class engines. There’s a lot that can go wrong there.
Side booster rockets return to Cape Canaveral and the center core lands on droneship.
“Sides run high thrust, center is lower thrust until sides separate & fly back. Center then throttles up, keeps burning & lands on droneship. If we’re lucky!” Musk elaborated.
The center booster will touch down on an ocean going droneship prepositioned in the Atlantic Ocean some 400 miles (600 km) off of Florida’s east coast.
Design
Designing and building Falcon Heavy has proven to be far more difficult than Musk ever imagined and the center booster had to be significantly redesigned.
At first it sounds real easy! You just stick two first stages on as strap-on boosters. How hard can that be?” But then everything changes. All the loads change, aerodynamics totally change. You’ve tripled the vibration and acoustics. You sort of break the qualification levels on so much of the hardware.”
The two side boosters will be recycled from prior Falcon 9 launches and make precision guided propulsive, upright ground soft landings back at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Each booster is outfitted with a quartet of grid fins and landing legs. The center core is newly built and heavily modified.
To date SpaceX first stages from KSC launches have touched down either on land at Landing Zone-1 (LZ-1) at the Cape or at sea on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship barge (OCISLY).
Cost:
About one-third the cost of Delta IV Heavy.
“With the ability to lift into orbit over 54 metric tons (119,000 lb)–a mass equivalent to a 737 jetliner loaded with passengers, crew, luggage and fuel–Falcon Heavy can lift more than twice the payload of the next closest operational vehicle, the Delta IV Heavy, at one-third the cost,” according to the SpaceX website.
Falcon Heavy consists of 2 stages:
1. First stage is combines three Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines together generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at lift-off.
Only the Saturn V moon rocket, last flown in 1973, delivered more payload to orbit.
Falcon Heavy vs Delta IV Heavy
Falcon Heavy will blast off with about twice the thrust of the Delta IV Heavy, currently the worlds most powerful rocket. The United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Heavy (D4H) has been the world’s mightiest rocket since the retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttles in 2011.
Falcon Heavy vs Saturn V
The thunder, power and roar of over 5 million pounds of lift-off thrust from the Falcon Heavy’s 27 engines is absolutely certain to be a thrilling, earth-shaking space spectacular !! Thus placing it in a class of its own unlike any US launch since NASA’s Saturn V and Space Shuttles rocketed to the high frontier from the same pad.
Future
Musk also hopes to launch a pair of paying private astronauts on a trip around the Moon and back as soon as 2018 while journeying inside a Crew Dragon spacecraft with the Falcon Heavy – similar to what his company is developing for NASA for commercial ferry missions to low Earth orbit (LEO) and the International Space Station (ISS).
History
Space-X first proposed the Falcon Heavy in 2011 and targeted a maiden mission in 2013. The cargo to orbit was estimated 53,000 kilograms (117,000 lbs) of cargo to orbit. This was about twice the capacity of NASA’s Space Shuttle.
The first launch of Space-X Falcon Heavy was on 6th February 201 from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA. It became the world’s most powerful rocket in use at the time.
But before the Falcon Heavy can actually be rolled up to launch position at pad 39A, SpaceX must first complete repairs and refurbishment to nearby pad 40.
That Cape pad was heavily damaged nearly a year ago during a catastrophic launch pad explosion that took place in Sept. 2016 during a routine prelaunch fueling and static fire engine test of a Falcon 9 rocket with the Amos-6 commercial comsat payload bolted on top.
Pad 40 must achieve operational launch status again before SpaceX can commit to the Falcon Heavy launches at Pad 39A. Workers will also need to finish construction work at pad 39A to support the Heavy launches.
Due to the high risk, there will be no payload from a paying customer housed inside the nose cone atop the center core. Only a dummy payload will be installed on the maiden mission.
“I want to make sure to set expectations accordingly. I hope it makes it far enough beyond the pad so that it does not cause pad damage. I would consider even that a win, to be honest.”
Missions
added this info here it was suppose to be for Falcon spacecraft
- Cargo Dragon (Dragon 1 & 2): Detail the uncrewed variants that have been routinely supplying the International Space Station with scientific experiments and cargo since 2012.
- Crew Dragon (Formerly DragonRider): Detail the human-rated variant that is fully certified for human spaceflight and routinely launches astronauts to orbit.
Did you know?
Falcon Heavy can lift more than twice the payload of the next closest operational competitor in 2017, the Delta IV Heavy.
In the USA only the Saturn V moon rocket delivered more payload to orbit. It was last flown in 1973.
SpaceX Falcon 9 launch is slated for Aug. 13 on the NASA contracted CRS-12 resupply mission to the ISS.
Add to 2018
China will launch its second flight of the Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket. The rocket debuted successfully in late 2016 but suffered an apparent first stage issue shortly after launch on its second flight on 2 July 2017.
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