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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.
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?
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.
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