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SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket seems to be a hit with satellite companies
When the Falcon Heavy rocket launched for the first time in February, some critics of the company wondered what exactly the rocket's purpose was. After all, the company's Falcon 9 rocket had become powerful enough that it could satisfy the needs of most commercial customers. One such critic even told me, "The Falcon Heavy is just a vanity project for Elon Musk."
[...] Last week, the Swedish satellite company Ovzon signed a deal for a Falcon Heavy launch as early as late 2020 for a geostationary satellite mission. And just on Thursday, ViaSat announced that it, too, had chosen the Falcon Heavy to launch one of its future ViaSat-3 satellite missions in the 2020 to 2022 timeframe.
[...] In explaining their rocket choice, both Ovzon and ViaSat cited the ability of the Falcon Heavy to deliver heavy payloads "direct"—or almost directly—to geostationary orbit, an altitude nearly 36,000km above the Earth's surface. Typically, rockets launching payloads bound for geostationary orbit drop their satellites into a "transfer" orbit, from which the satellite itself must spend time and propellant to reach the higher orbit. (More on these orbits can be found here).
[...] The demonstration flight of the Falcon Heavy apparently convinced not only the military of the rocket's direct-to-geo capability but satellite fleet operators as well. The Falcon Heavy rocket now seems nicely positioned to offer satellite companies relatively low-cost access to orbits they desire, with a minimum of time spent getting there in space.
See also: SpaceX heading to two to four Falcon Heavy paid launches per year
Related: How to Get Back to the Moon in 4 Years, Permanently
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After the Falcon Heavy Launch, Time to Defund the Space Launch System?
NASA's Chief of Human Spaceflight Rules Out Use of Falcon Heavy for Lunar Station
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Could Launch Japanese and European Payloads to Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday October 27 2018, @07:37PM
*Partial reuse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy_test_flight [wikipedia.org]
The upper stage and fairing were not recovered, as is usual with Falcon 9. There is talk of attempting to recover the upper stage [soylentnews.org] but it is pretty much just a wild idea. Fairing recovery has been unsuccessful so far. They recovered two side boosters, but not the center core, which crash landed on the water and exploded. Musk said they will fix this by including more ignition fluid on future FH launches.
It's possible that missions will choose to deliberately expend the center core to get more payload to orbit.
If you want full reuse, you want BFR. It's possible that BFR will never be deliberately expended, since it will be able to be refueled in orbit. Maybe for a very massive payload, they could go into an extremely low orbit, refuel, and then take it higher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]