SpaceX's
first Falcon Heavy rocket sits at launchpad 39A at NASA's Kennedy
Space Center on December 28, 2017.
SpaceX/Flickr
(public domain)
SpaceX is targeting February 6 to launch its Falcon
Heavy rocket for the first time.
Elon Musk, the company's founder, has previously said
"there is a good chance this monster rocket blows up."
Musk plans to launch his own red Tesla Roadster with
the rocket as a test payload.
"Space is hard," goes a favorite saying of rocket scientists.
That's also true for SpaceX founder Elon Musk as he prepares to
launch what is currently the world's most powerful rocket.
SpaceX successfully test-fired its first Falcon
Heavy rocket on Wednesday. The 230-foot-tall launcher
belched fire and fumes through the 27
engines of its three boosters while tied down to Launchpad 39A in
Florida — the same one used by Apollo astronauts to
fly to the moon.
"First static fire test of Falcon Heavy complete—one step closer
to first test flight!" SpaceX said on Twitter.
Musk chimed in a few days later to confirm the tentative date of
the rocket's maiden flight: "Aiming for first flight of Falcon
Heavy on Feb 6 from Apollo launchpad 39A at Cape Kennedy. Easy
viewing from the public causeway."
However, Musk has often said that Falcon Heavy could fail — as
in, explode.
"Just bear in mind that there is a good chance this monster
rocket blows up," Musk told Phil Plait, an astronomer
and writer, in December. "So I wouldn't put anything of
irreplaceable sentimental value on it."
That's precisely why Musk plans to launch
his personal Tesla Roadster out to Mars orbit using Falcon
Heavy.
'We were pretty naive'
The
booster of a Falcon 9 rocket lands after helping launch the
classified payload of the US government's Zuma mission toward
space.
SpaceX/Flickr
(public domain)
Falcon Heavy's design is based in part on SpaceX's go-to rocket,
called Falcon 9.
Falcon 9 is powered by nine cone-shaped engines attached to a
reusable booster. The booster pushes the top of the rocket and
the payload about 40 miles into the sky, then detaches,
lands back on the surface, and gets refurbished — a clever
technology that
saves the company millions per mission. (All other orbital
rockets today are discarded
after one launch.)
When Musk released his plans for Falcon Heavy in April
2011, he thought it would be relatively easy to build a
Falcon Heavy by strapping together three such boosters, also
called cores. At the time, he predicted the maiden launch might
occur in 2013, or perhaps even late 2012.
But those hopeful launch windows came and went.
"It's one of those things that sounded easy," Musk said during a
March 2017 press conference after a Falcon 9 launch. "It was
actually shockingly difficult to go from a single-core to a
triple-core vehicle."
During a July 2017 spaceflight conference, Musk added: "We were
pretty naive about that."
A high-risk flight
Since announcing Falcon Heavy, a rocket that is only
out-performed
by NASA's retired Saturn V rocket, Musk has characterized the
rocket's first flight as "high-risk" due to the "aerial ballet"
of coordination required to get it off the ground and land all
three booster cores.
"Twenty-seven engines are firing simultaneously," Musk said at
the March press conference. "That's a lot of engines. It should
really be called the Falcon-27."
Elon Musk's 2008
midnight-cherry-red Tesla Roadster sits inside the carbon-fiber
fairing of SpaceX's first Falcon Heavy rocket.
Elon
Musk/SpaceX via Instagram
In a December tweet, Musk quipped that
the Falcon Heavy launch is "guaranteed to be exciting, one way or
another." In a following tweet, he said of his
Tesla Roadster: "Destination is Mars orbit. Will be in deep space
for a billion years or so if it doesn't blow up on ascent."
Musk has not quantified exactly what the risk of failure is, but
if you want to see what happens, SpaceX will likely host a live
webcast of the launch on its YouTube channel.
Assuming Falcon Heavy's launch isn't delayed by technical issues,
bad weather, or errant boats (debris could rain over the Atlantic
Ocean if the rocket blows up), lift-off should occur at 1:30 p.m.
ET on February 6, though it could be as late as 4:30 p.m.
A backup launch date is set for February 7 with similar times.
But if there are delays beyond that, all bets are off — the
federal government is currently funded through February 8,
and a
government shutdown could stall the launch, since the US
Air Force must oversee rocket launches from Cape Canaveral.
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