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Speaking at the International Space Station Research and Development conference, Elon Musk said that a successful maiden flight for Falcon Heavy was unlikely:
SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk has downplayed the chances of a successful inaugural flight for his Falcon Heavy space launch vehicle, admitting there is a "good chance it would not make it to orbit in its first launch."
Development of the booster rocket, which is powered by 27 engines, has proven to be "way harder than the team initially thought," he told the International Space Station Research and Development conference on Wednesday.
Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful rocket booster in the world, capable of delivering a 54 ton payload into orbit.
Musk said that combining three Falcon 9 rockets together had multiplied vibrations throughout the vehicle making it difficult to test without a launch.
The maiden test flight is due to take place toward the end of the year.
As if watching the inaugural launch of the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V were not tempting enough, how many more people will watch in hopes of seeing it go BOOM!?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 20 2017, @08:12PM (3 children)
Might as well stuff 27,000 Estes C6-7's in there.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 20 2017, @08:47PM (2 children)
For those of you not already aware, the ill-fated Soviet N1 rocket [wikipedia.org] sounds like a similar design inasmuch as there were a bunch of individual engines constructed in parallel to launch the thing. Out of 4 launches, the N1 *almost* successfully got to first-stage separation on the last test launch. At least it didn't blow everything to smithereens and kill all the scientist like the R-16 [wikipedia.org], though.
But this is the USSR we're talking about and they had atrocious QA. Musk is probably doing it at least 1 or 2 magnitudes more safely.
Well the Soviets sure had a difficult time of it. We don't refer to brain surgery and rocket science on the same level for nothing :)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday July 20 2017, @09:11PM (1 child)
I first thought of the N1 also. Technology also will be enabling beyond just quality control: a purely analog control scheme for that many engines sounds like a horrible nightmare. Glancing over the Wikipedia article the Soviets might have agreed, the N1 originally used the KORD (Russian acronym for KOntrol Racketnykh Dvigateley—literally "Control (of) Rocket Engines") but it was unable to compensate for the exploding turbopump of the second launch attempt. The last launch actually used the first digital control system employed by a Soviet rocket, the S-530, mitigating some of the deficiencies of the KORD.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Saturday July 22 2017, @02:16PM
Indeed. Not to mention the apparently considerably more robust components enabled by 3D printing and modern material science. And SpaceX has the benefit of a *much* more responsive digital control system than the S-530, one with dozens of smaller-scale launches informing it's design.