Spacex Falcon Heavy: Successful Launch and the Future Steps

The SpaceX team has successfully launched and landed the Falcon Heavy rocket in the orbit of the earth. This is the largest rocket in operation and during the launch the atmosphere was electric. Falcon Heavy is the largest and most powerful rocket available capable of carrying twice the payload of its closest competitor the mission was largely a success and the payload was delivered without a hitch. They sent the Elon Musk’s original cherry red Tesla Roasters with a mascot star man wearing the SpaceX spacesuit. The Falcon Heavy consists of 27 engines with five million pounds of thrust that’s as much as eighteen Boeing 747s in fact it’s so much thrust that there’s no need to run the engines at maximum capacity during the launch instead the thrust is throttled and optimized throughout the flight.

The History

SpaceX was so close to failing when they attempted to launch their first rocket the Falcon 1 they failed three times and they had just barely enough money for one more try .September 28th 2008 on the 4th and final attempt SpaceX became the first private company to launch a liquid-fueled rocket that could reach orbit fast forward a decade later and they’re making history again.

The Plan

Falcon Heavy rocket would take off from Kennedy Space Center and then releases payload out into space, two of the rocket boosters would be programmed to return back to Cape Canaveral to be recycled while a third booster which will be traveling much too fast to me the Cape would be landing on a floating platform 500 kilometers offshore with the Boosters measuring 16 stories in height it was a tall task. The Falcon Heavy is essentially three Falcon nines strapped together with some modifications carried out but it wasn’t as easy to get flying as it may first seem. According to Elon at a press conference post-launch they had to be alterations to the Boosters and the main core had to be almost completely custom built.

Starman and his Tesla now will be getting thrust into deep space on its way to an elliptical orbit around Mars for about a billion years meanwhile the 16 story tall rocket boosters returned down to earth. Two of the three rockets required to turn the main stage back to earth failed to cause the main stage rocket to be lost it slammed into the ocean at over 400 kilometers an hour 100 meters away from the floating barge regardless the launch was hailed as a success and is a huge step in the road towards regular space launches as now the price has been cut by four and a half times for the equivalent competing rocket United Launch Alliance as delta 4 heavy which is less powerful costs around 400 million dollars and the Falcon Heavy 90 million and this is one-tenth the cost of NASA’s planned space launch system that’s in development to venture out to the Moon and Mars the main cost savings here come from the fact that the Falcon Heavy is a reusable design one of the aims of the mission was to collect vast amounts of data in order to perfect launch procedures the end goal was to make such launches commonplace and as safe as aircraft travel which is the safest has ever been. The press conference Elon stated that ” The Falcon Heavy opens up a new class of payload and can send cargo all the way to Pluto if we wanted no gravity sling needed”.He states that this could encourage other countries and companies to do bigger and better he wants a new space race. Elon also did mention that the BFR method is the way forward but this Falcon Heavy launch gave him more confidence in that project.