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Title    Falcon Heavy Maiden Launch Successful (Mostly)
Date    Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:10PM
Author    martyb
Topic   
from the it-IS-rocket-science dept.
https://soylentnews.org/breakingnews/article.pl?sid=18/02/06/1317232

takyon writes:

Update: Launch seems to have been successful. The two side boosters landed nearly simultaneously. Footage from the drone ship was cut off. The car made it into space; but the third stage will need to coast through the Van Allen radiation belts for around six hours before it makes the final burn for trans-Mars injection.

Update 2: The middle booster of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket failed to land on its drone ship
Falcon Heavy Post-Launch Media Briefing - Megathread

SpaceX's newest rocket, the Falcon Heavy, is set to be launched at around 1:30 PM EST (6:30 PM UTC) today. The launch window extends to 4:00 PM EST (9:00 PM UTC).

SpaceX will attempt to recover all three boosters during the launch. The two previously-flown side boosters will attempt to land nearly simultaneously at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Landing Zones 1 and 2. The center core will attempt to land on a drone barge hundreds of miles off the coast of Florida.

The dummy payload for the Falcon Heavy is Elon Musk's personal 2008 Tesla Roadster. It is carrying a mannequin wearing SpaceX's space suit flight suit that will be used when the company begins to send astronauts to the International Space Station. The car will be launched into a heliocentric orbit that will bring it close to Mars (and back near Earth) periodically, and is equipped with three cameras. Its stereo system will be playing David Bowie's Space Oddity.

If the launch is successful, the Falcon Heavy could be flown within the next 3 to 6 months for a customer such as the U.S. Air Force, Arabsat, Inmarsat, or ViaSat.

Falcon Heavy will be capable of launching 63,800 kg to low-Earth orbit (LEO), 26,700 kg to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO), 16,800 kg to Mars, or 3,500 kg to Pluto (New Horizons was 478 kg). It will supplant the Delta IV Heavy, which is capable of launching 28,790 kg to LEO or 14,220 kg to GTO. Space Launch System Block 1 will be capable of launching 70,000 kg to LEO (Block 1B: 105,000 kg to LEO, Block 2: 130,000 kg to LEO).

Musk has suggested that an additional two side boosters could be added to Falcon Heavy (perpendicularly?) to make a "Falcon Super Heavy" with even more thrust. This may not happen if SpaceX decides to focus on the BFR instead, which as planned would be able to launch 150,000 kg to LEO while being fully reusable and potentially cheaper than the Falcon 9 (or capable of launching 250,000 kg to LEO in expendable mode).

The webcast can be seen here or directly on YouTube.


Original Submission

Links

  1. "takyon" - https://soylentnews.org/~takyon/
  2. "The middle booster of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket failed to land on its drone ship" - https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16980954/spacex-falcon-heavy-rocket-middle-core-failed-landing
  3. "Falcon Heavy Post-Launch Media Briefing - Megathread" - https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/7vruh7/falcon_heavy_postlaunch_media_briefing_megathread/
  4. "Falcon Heavy" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy
  5. "recover all three boosters during the launch" - https://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2018/02/05/what-expect-spacex-falcon-heavy-launch-tesla-roadster-ksc-florida/307016002/
  6. "personal 2008 Tesla Roadster" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk's_Tesla_Roadster
  7. "flight suit" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/08/24/0246212
  8. "periodically" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler
  9. "Space Oddity" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Oddity
  10. "New Horizons" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons
  11. "Delta IV Heavy" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV_Heavy
  12. "Space Launch System" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System
  13. "suggested that an additional two side boosters could be added" - https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/5/16975850/spacex-falcon-heavy-launch-elon-musk-tesla-questions
  14. "BFR" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BFR_(rocket)
  15. "here" - http://www.spacex.com/webcast
  16. "directly on YouTube" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbSwFU6tY1c
  17. "Elon Musk's huge Falcon Heavy rocket set for launch" - http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42950957
  18. "SpaceX Falcon Heavy: Everything you need to know" - http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/05/technology/future/spacex-falcon-heavy-everything-you-need-to-know/index.html
  19. "Musk Sets a Low Bar for SpaceX Launch" - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-05/musk-sets-low-bar-for-spacex-launch-as-no-blowup-seen-as-success
  20. "Is the Tesla Roadster Flying on the Falcon Heavy's Maiden Flight Just Space Junk?" - https://www.space.com/39602-falcon-heavy-tesla-not-just-space-junk.html
  21. "Original Submission" - https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=24702

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