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World's Most Powerful Rocket Ready In 2012, SpaceX Says

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-love-that-name dept.

Velcroman1 writes "Elon Musk, the millionaire founder of private space company Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX for short) said the long-planned Falcon Heavy vehicle would be ready for lift off at the end of 2012. The rocket, which he called the most powerful in the world, would be capable of taking men to the International Space Station, dropping vehicles and astronauts on the moon — and maybe even cruising to Mars and back."

6 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. "maybe" cruising to mars? by tulcod · · Score: 5, Funny

    How can one not know whether his/her rocket is capable of making it to Mars? Are we talking superpositions here or what?

    1. Re:"maybe" cruising to mars? by ByOhTek · · Score: 5, Funny

      Maybe part of his team is using metric, and another part is using imperial?

      --
      Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
    2. Re:"maybe" cruising to mars? by killkillkill · · Score: 5, Funny

      To be fair, that error actually got NASA closer to Mars.

  2. But smaller then the Saturn V from the 1960s by LWATCDR · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Call me when we have something that can out lift the Saturn V. Yes I know they say this will cheaper but still I expected us to be much farther along than we are.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  3. Re:Vaguely remember... by IICV · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...but NASA also needed $12 billion and a decade to make a pen that worked in 0 gravity... and the Russians just used a pencil, classic.

    There's pretty much nothing true in that statement besides the claim that "the Russians just used pencils" - NASA did too, until after Fisher developed the space pen (without government funding) and asked NASA to try it. In fact, after NASA adopted the space pen, so did the Russians.

    And there's problems with using pencils in space - wood pencils are flammable, and the graphite in mechanical pencils can snap off more easily and damage vulnerable equipment (it's conducive, after all) or the astronauts themselves, if they accidentally inhale it.

  4. Re:Details from press conference by harperska · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unpublished Standard #1: Components must be built by companies that contribute to politicians on the committee to decide the standards.

    Unpublished Standard #1: Components must be built by ATK.

    Congress doesn't really care about 'shuttle derived technologies' and costs are a straw man. But ATK in particular, who makes the shuttle SRBs, holds some pretty strong sway over certain congress-critters. That's why the Ares 1 first stage was just a scaled up shuttle SRB even though SRBs are a pretty dumb idea for a human-carrying rocket and completely idiotic as the sole first stage, as they can't be effectively throttled or shut off after being lit.