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SpaceX Completes First Launch of 2018: Secretive 'Zuma' Spacecraft (cnn.com)
SpaceX's first launch of 2018 was "a secretive spacecraft commissioned by the U.S. government for an undisclosed mission," reports TechCrunch. An anonymous reader quotes CNN:
After more than a month of delays, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket vaulted toward the skies at 8 p.m. ET Sunday with the secretive payload. It launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida... The company [then] executed its signature move: guiding the first-stage rocket booster back to Earth for a safe landing. Just over two minutes after liftoff Sunday, the first-stage booster separated from the second stage and fired up its engines. The blaze allowed the rocket to safely cut back through the Earth's atmosphere and land on a pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station... The company completed a record-setting 18 launches last year, and SpaceX plans to do even more this year, according to spokesman James Gleeson.
I think in many ways the Falcon Heavy is a combination stopgap solution and proof of concept.
In the short term, if they get it working reliably then they immediately almost triple their maximum payload to orbit, as well as having huge unused capacity margins for to allow reusable landings on many launches that would otherwise have to resort to discarding the boosters. Not a bad deal.
In the long term, it gives them a chance to address the challenges of a multi-booster launch on a relatively low-power rocket, before applying those lessons to the BFR once it enters service. After all, a single BFR is really a lot less than you'd want to attempt a Mars outpost - a triple-booster version would make many things considerably easier.
And hey, why stop at three boosters? The original plans, way back before they had even made it to orbit, was to eventually go with a full 9-booster array. I doubt they'll get there right away, but it would make boosting seriously large payloads into orbit a lot easier. And whether it's Bigelow inflatable habitats, fully assembled nuclear reactors, or as-yet undesigned asteroid-mining facilities, the larger the single-launch payload, the more efficient your infrastructure can be made.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
NASA's "Space Launch System" (SLS) was commissioned in 2011 and scheduled for it's first flight in 2018. It's projected payload to low earth orbit is supposed to be 150,000-290,000 lb would be greater than the 140,700 payload of the Falcon Heavy to LEO. The maiden flight for the SLS is scheduled for no earlier than Dec 19, 2019, which translates to 2020 if they are lucky. The Falcon Heavy is set to fly THIS MONTH. The current competition for a Falcon Heavy is a Delta IV Heavy which is flight proven (9 launches) and can take 63,470 lb to low earth orbit.