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SpaceX poised to launch 'world's most powerful rocket'
Topic Started: 6 Feb 2018, 03:05 AM (99 Views)
skibboy
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05 February 2018

SpaceX poised to launch 'world's most powerful rocket'

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© GETTY/AFP/File / by Kerry SHERIDAN | Elon Musk, CEO of Space X, shows off a mockup of the Falcon Heavy rocket, which is finally ready for its first launch

MIAMI (AFP) - SpaceX is poised for the first test launch Tuesday of its Falcon Heavy, which aims to become the world's most powerful rocket in operation, capable of ferrying people to the Moon or Mars some day.

The launch is the most ambitious yet for SpaceX, and has been hailed by industry experts as a game-changer because of its potential to propel the California-based company to the front of the modern day space race.

"NASA may decide to use it (the Falcon Heavy) as a way of fast-tracking its plans to get to the Moon and Mars," Erik Seedhouse, assistant professor of applied aviation sciences at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, told AFP.

Tuesday's launch is a "huge deal, even for a spaceflight company that routinely accomplishes huge deals," said Jason Davis of the Planetary Society, describing the Falcon Heavy as "mythical."

No people are on board, just a mannequin wearing a futuristic spacesuit, strapped into CEO Elon Musk's very own cherry red Tesla car.

"Starman in a Red Roadster," Musk posted on Instagram Monday, showing the rocket's payload on a pedestal, aiming skyward.

Musk has also said David Bowie's hit "Space Oddity" would play in the vehicle during the launch.

"I love the thought of a car drifting apparently endlessly through space and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future," Musk tweeted last year.

An animated video released by SpaceX to preview the launch showed all three rocket boosters returning to upright landings on Earth, while the car and mannequin emerged from the protective nose cone and sailed into orbit.

The blast-off is scheduled for 1:30 pm (1830 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The destination is deep space, into an orbit about the same distance from the Sun as Mars -- but not all that close to the Red Planet itself.

Musk has cautioned that the maiden launch of the Falcon Heavy -- a project he first unveiled in 2011 -- may indeed fail.

"Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn't blow up on ascent," Musk said on Twitter in December.

Even if there is a disaster on the launchpad Tuesday, Seedhouse said it is unlikely to harm the reputation of SpaceX -- already a top cargo supplier to the International Space Station under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA and busy with a steady stream of satellite clients and government payloads.

"Last year they had more launches than any other country in the world -- never mind any other company," Seedhouse said.

"Every failure they have had they have bounced straight back," he said.

- Most powerful in operation -

The Falcon Heavy is essentially three Falcon 9 rockets in one, with a total of 27 Merlin engines.

These engines "together generate more than five million pounds of thrust at liftoff, equal to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft," said SpaceX.

The rocket is designed to carry nearly 141,000 pounds (64 metric tons) into orbit, more than the mass of a fully loaded 737 jetliner.

"Falcon Heavy was designed from the outset to carry humans into space and restores the possibility of flying missions with crew to the Moon or Mars," SpaceX said in a statement.

"When Falcon Heavy lifts off, it will be the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two," it added.

The Falcon Heavy is designed to lift more than twice the payload of the next closest operational vehicle, the Delta IV Heavy, at a far lower cost.

The Delta IV Heavy costs about $350 million per launch, according to United Launch Alliance.

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy starts at around $90 million.

"That is way, way, way below anything else in the government launch industry," Seedhouse said.

Previous rockets that are no longer in commission have been more powerful than the Falcon Heavy -- including the Saturn V moon rocket, last flown in 1973, which delivered more payload to orbit.

The Soviet era Energia, which flew twice in 1987 and 1988, was also more powerful than the Falcon Heavy.

The United States has been unable to send its own astronauts to space since 2011, when the 30-year shuttle program ended, leaving the world's astronauts to rely on Russian Soyuz rockets for transport to the International Space Station.

NASA is building its own massive rocket, called the Space Launch System, but costs are high and the project is years away from completion.

by Kerry SHERIDAN

Source: Posted Image.com
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skibboy
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Elon Musk's Falcon Heavy rocket launches successfully

By Jonathan Amos
BBC Science Correspondent

1 hour ago

US entrepreneur Elon Musk has launched his new rocket, the Falcon Heavy, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The mammoth vehicle - the most powerful since the shuttle system - lifted clear of its pad without incident to soar high over the Atlantic Ocean.

It was billed as a risky test flight in advance of the lift-off.

The SpaceX CEO said the challenges of developing the new rocket meant the chances of a successful first outing might be only 50-50.

With this debut, the Falcon Heavy aims to become the most capable launch vehicle available.

Posted Image
The aim was to send the car and mannequin towards Mars' orbit

It is designed to deliver a maximum payload to low-Earth orbit of 64 tonnes - the equivalent of putting five London double-decker buses in space.

Such performance is slightly more than double that of the world's next most powerful rocket, the Delta IV Heavy - but at one third of the cost, says Mr Musk.

For this experimental and uncertain mission, however, he decided on a much smaller and whimsical payload - his old cherry-red Tesla sports car.

A space-suited mannequin was strapped in the driver's seat, and the radio set to play David Bowie's classic hit Space Oddity on a loop.

Posted Image

If all phases of the flight are successful - and that will not be known until at least 6.5 hours after lift-off - the Tesla and its passenger will be despatched into an elliptical orbit around the Sun that reaches out as far as the Planet Mars.

The Falcon Heavy is essentially three of SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 vehicles strapped together.

And, as is the usual practice for SpaceX, all three boost stages - the lower segments of the rocket - returned to Earth attempting controlled landings.

Posted Image
Two boosters head back to Florida's Space Coast

Two came back to touchdown zones on the Florida coast just south of Kennedy; the third booster was due to settle on a drone ship stationed several hundred kilometres out at sea.

During the launch, the video signal from the drone ship was lost, so the fate of the third booster is not yet clear.

The upper-stage of the Falcon Heavy, with its Tesla cargo, began what hopefully will be an escape trajectory to Mars' orbit.

That requires the engine on the upper-stage to fire on three separate occasions, with the third and final ignition only occurring after a long cruise phase.

Mr Musk warned before the flight that this was one of the phases he was most concerned would not work properly.

The upper-stage has to pass through a concentrated region of radiation above the Earth, known as the Van Allen Belts, and this could interfere with electronic systems.

Having such a large and powerful rocket should open up some fascinating new possibilities for Mr Musk and his SpaceX company.


These include launching:

- Much bigger satellites for use by US intelligence and the military. The scale of these satellites is limited by current rocket performance.

- Large batches of satellites, such as those for Mr Musk's proposed constellation of thousands of spacecraft to deliver broadband across the globe.

- Bigger, more capable robots to go to the surface of Mars, or to visit the outer planets such as Jupiter and Saturn, and their moons.

- Huge telescopes. Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is having to be folded origami-like to fit in its launcher next year.


But it is the low cost - brought about through the recovery and reuse of the boosters - that Elon Musk believes will be a game-changer when allied to the new performance.

"It'll be game-over for all other heavy-lift rockets," he told reporters on Monday.

"It'll be like trying to sell an aircraft where one aircraft company has a reusable aircraft and all the other companies had aircraft that were single-use where you would parachute out at your destination and the plane would crash-land randomly somewhere. Crazy as that sounds - that's how the rocket business works."

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Source: Posted Image.com
Edited by skibboy, 7 Feb 2018, 12:26 AM.
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skibboy
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07 February 2018

What's next for SpaceX?

WASHINGTON (AFP) - In successfully sending the world's most powerful rocket into space, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has pulled off yet another spectacular gamble.

The question now is what's next for SpaceX and the space industry following the launch of Musk's Tesla roadster into space aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket?

- Satellites -

Falcon Heavy can launch far heavier payloads than other rockets -- more than twice as much as its closest rival, the Delta IV Heavy rocket built by United Launch Alliance, the joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

"Falcon Heavy opens up a new class of payload," Musk told reporters following Tuesday's launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

By blasting his electric car into space, Musk not only pulled off a publicity coup but also showed potential clients that SpaceX can deliver the goods.

Using reusable boosters, SpaceX has a cost advantage -- at 90 million dollars a launch it is three times cheaper than its rivals.

It has already lured two clients: the US Air Force and Arabsat, a consortium of Arab nations seeking to have communications satellites put into orbit.

The market, however, has changed significantly since Musk announced the Falcon Heavy project in 2011.

SpaceX took a lot of time to develop its powerful rocket, and spent more than half a billion dollars doing so, according to Musk.

During that time, a lot of progress been made in increasing the capability of smaller rockets -- including SpaceX's own Falcon 9 -- and reducing the size of satellites.

"There is a part of the commercial market that requires Falcon Heavy," SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell told the Los Angeles Times last year. "It's there, and it's going to be consistent, but it's much smaller than we thought."

- Moonshot -

One year ago, SpaceX announced that it had signed a contract to send two paying passengers into orbit around the moon, something which hasn't been done since NASA's Apollo 17 mission in December 1972.

The space tourists would ride aboard a passenger version of SpaceX's Dragon 2 capsule, which has already been used by NASA to send cargo to the International Space Station.

Space tourism is a promising industry but the costs will limit its availability for some time to the super-rich.

The moonshot was planned for late this year but SpaceX has yet to commit to that timeline.

SpaceX is also not the only one eyeing the moon.

In December, President Donald Trump directed NASA to set up a lunar base as a first step in a mission to Mars.

Trump was vague, however, with details, financing or a calendar for sending men to the moon or the Red Planet.

Hooking up with a private partner such as SpaceX or Blue Origin, the space company founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, could be on the cards.

- Mars -

Establishing a colony on Mars is Musk's stated long-term goal and Falcon Heavy is one step in the ambitious project he outlined last year.

Falcon Heavy's successor -- and the SpaceX rocket that could make an unmanned mission to Mars -- would be the irreverently-named rocket currently known as BFR, or "Big Fucking Rocket."

BFR would eventually replace SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets and the Dragon capsule.

Around 350 feet (103 meters) tall, BFR would be nearly as big and even more powerful than NASA's Saturn V which sent astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s.

A first test flight could take place in 2019 with orbital tests in 2020 and the delivery of the first cargo to Mars in 2022.

Musk said the successful Falcon Heavy launch left him encouraged about the future of BFR.

"It gives me confidence that BFR is really quite workable," Musk said. "It's given me a lot of confidence that we can make the BFR design work."

"Most of our engineering resources will be dedicated to BFR and so I think that will make things go quite quickly," Musk said.

by Christophe VOGT

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