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SpaceX Releases Animation of Planned Falcon Heavy Launch (gizmodo.com.au)
intellitech writes: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently shared a new (and, really freaking cool) animation demonstrating how the company plans to launch the maiden flight of their Falcon Heavy system later this year, which will be the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V used for the moon landings during the Apollo-era. According to Elon Musk's Instragram post, "FH is twice the thrust of the next largest rocket currently flying and ~2/3 thrust of the Saturn V moon rocket." He also reiterates that there's a "lot that can go wrong in the November launch."
Direct link to the YouTube video.
Direct link to the YouTube video.
It's not new.
What will happen? (A launch later this year, a successful launch later this year, or a successful launch later this year that also returns the first stages?)
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
according to Musk's twitter here
Pretty sure the Falcon 9 Heavy was supposed to have launched for real by now. Is this animation supposed to make up for the lack of the real thing?
Yes, the cartoon was supposed to be enough of a distraction, but you were too clever to fall for that... smugly sitting there changing the World in a fashion that Elon Musk can only dream about.
To be fair, I believe the launch delays began after the 06/15 CRS-7 crash. The last thing a privately held rocket company could afford is a reputation for repeated failure, so it seems prudent that they became a bit more cautious.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
To be fair, I believe the launch delays began after the 06/15 CRS-7 crash.
The first non-committal estimate was in 2008:
By 2008, SpaceX were aiming for the first launch of Falcon 9 in 2009, and "Falcon 9 Heavy would be in a couple of years."
By 2011:
In April 2011, Elon Musk was targeting a first launch of Falcon Heavy from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the West Coast in 2013.
It kept getting pushed back, then the CRS crash but initially only to April/May 2016:
By September 2015, impacted by the failure of SpaceX CRS-7 that June, SpaceX rescheduled the maiden Falcon Heavy flight for April/May 2016, but by February 2016 had moved that back again to late 2016. The flight was now to be launched from the refurbished Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A. In August 2016, the demonstration flight was moved to early 2017, then to Summer 2017, and finally to November 2017.
It's been "a couple years out" now for almost a decade and under a year since 2015. Musk's schedules should be taken with significant amounts of salt, he wants to move much faster than what they can manage in practice.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well let's list the ways he has already changed the world then:
1) co-founded PayPal, which revolutionized online payments.
2) founded Tesla, which is the first all electric car company.
3) founded Solarcity, revolutionized solar with his solar tiles.
4) built the largest battery manufacturing plant in the world.
5) built a functioning hyperloop test facility.
6) founded SpaceX
7) helped SpaceX become the first commercial spaceflight company to contract with Federal govt. Both for ISS missions and for military flights.
So, bub, what have YOU done to match the LEAST of these?
The concept was "three of the regular ones strapped together", but actually it's required a lot more design changes than originally thought...
https://youtu.be/XqYPmshyCDU?t=28m24s
The demand, most obviously, is a means for America to start putting astronauts into space again. No more relying on the Russians to do it.
And it puts in place a stepping stone to moon trips or mars trips.
Yes, most of this is regaining lost capability.
On the other hand he has pressure not to fail.
Here's the problem with rockets: they work right on the knife edge between inferno and explosion. Catastrophic failure is normal in testing new, cutting edge designs.
During the space race a lot of rockets failed. This is how the Russians got so good at it without having anything like the funding NASA had: they failed a *lot* but kept trying because they were behind the US. Once the Moon race heated up the US was able to reduce its failure rate in its very public program by spending almost inconceivable amounts of money.
So it's the old engineering tradeoff: cost/quality/schedule. Either you spend a lot of money, put up with a lot of failure, or spend lots of time. NASA in the 60s spent money; the Soviets of that era put up with failure; and on their super-heavy launch vehicle SpaceX has spent more time.
Ultimately in business there's no such thing as being your own boss. When you own the show, your customers are the boss. So what would potential customers say if SpaceX kept to schedule but had the kind of failure rate the old Soviet space program had?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The initial idea of moar boosters didn't work because as a center core regular F9 booster can't handle three times the structural load. The schedule hasn't been helped by the fact that they still don't actually have a launch stand that is capable of FH launch, though they should have LC-39A converted soon enough. Plus yeah, prioritization.
Where the fuck is the Raptor engine? How about an update on that? I am seriously interested in seeing a re-usable methane full flow staged combustion rocket engine.
>Musk's schedules should be taken with significant amounts of salt
Quite, and yet he nevertheless maintains impressive forward momentum. As the old adage goes "If you don't fail regularly, you're not trying hard enough." And you've got to give him credit for consistent vision - the details may change, the timeline may slip, but he mostly keeps on reaching his goals eventually. That's a lot more than you can say for an awful lot of people.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I don't understand the issue with crossfeed - it works really well with my Rockomax Jumbo-64 Fuel Tanks. That is, when you get the FTX-2 External Fuel Duct the correct way round.
Very nice animation - - - BUT
1) note the word 'planned' - even Musk is down-playing the full success of the initial launch
2) only the 2 out-board engines will land at Kennedy - the central engine burns longer and thus Kennedy is outside it's return/landing capability - - - it will land on a barge in the Atlantic
3) Item of Interest - the 2 out-board engines have been 'flight-tested', they are recycled launch engines
All-in-all, a very nice YouTube vid - but the odds of some kind of failure are pretty high. Still, I wish the best of luck for Musk and his team. They have done wonders over the last few years in turning the governmentally-controlled space-launch industry into a viable commercial business.
GO - MUSK - GO . . . It's gonna' be neat to see the 2 outboard engines landing simultaneously at Kennedy.
cheers . . .
redneck geek
The reason why it took so much longer time than the initial estimates was that SpaceX thought it would require just a few modifications to an existing falcon 9 rocket, by slapping on two side boosters.
:)
But the forces and stresses from having the side boosters on the core effectively meant they had to design the core from scratch again. It had to be able to withstand much larger stresses. Also having 27 engines close to each other rather than 9 increases vibration and heat. So in effect falcon heavy is almost a completely different rocket from falcon 9. And according to Musk, had they known this in advance they might not have gone down this path.
What they have achieved so far is truly amazing. I'm happy to be alive right now
Here's one for the BOTE crowd - - -
How about strapping FOUR outboard engines (or even SIX in a hexagonal array) wrapped around the central engine.
OK, so the thrust of even 3 full-burn engines over-stresses the vehicle, burn the outboards at 2-at-a-time max thrust, with all others throttled down, then jettison the exhausted engines and ramp up the next 2 to full thrust.
With a 4x set of outboards, the range is vastly expanded - geosync and moon insertion.
And with a 6-pack - burning 2 at a time, Mars and the Asteroids become real possibilities.
For near-earth orbits, the payload capacity becomes HUGE - equal / exceeding the Saturn V with the 4 outboard (plus central core) - - - and REALLY HUGE using the 6-pack plus core configuration.
Hell, with the 6-pack configuration, you could conceiveably deliver TWO fully loaded engines to low-to-medium orbit so they could be strapped onto another vehicle - - - to be used for Lunar, Mars, and Asteroid missions.
redneck geek
Paypal only sucks if you've never looked at what it takes to get a merchant account. Before Paypal it cost you a grand, minimum, to accept credit cards.
For Tesla, how many new Electric cars could you buy in the US when they started selling them? It was practically zero. People who wanted an electric car were stuck with having to buy a gasser and converting them.
If you don't consider Tesla's autopilot revolutionary you just aren't paying attention.