SPACE-X Falcon Heavy inaugural flight of the gigantic Elon Musk's rocket was a huge success
The first launch of the Falcon Heavy, the largest and most powerful space rocket available on Earth, took place on 6th February 2018 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and was a HUGE success! Everything worked as expected and the rocket, designed and built by the US space company SpaceX, has brought its cargo into orbit: Elon's private cherry-red Tesla Roadster, directed towards the orbit of Mars around the Sun. The launch was awaited with great interest from the space industry, considering that inaugural flights are often at high risk and something could go wrong.
The departure of the Falcon Heavy was made to wait: SpaceX had scheduled to launch at 13:30 Florida time, but due to the high winds in altitude it was necessary to postpone a pair of hours. The countdown has been suspended and then set for 3:45 pm, after an improvement in the weather conditions and the start of the procedures to load the three rockets that together make up the Falcon Heavy. As per tradition, SpaceX employees at the company headquarters in California attended the launch, which followed the most delicate moments with apprehension and cheered throughout the live broadcast. Each crucial step of the test was welcomed with great ovations, and a bit of emotion by technicians and engineers who saw the work of years become concrete action in a few minutes.
Elon Musk first announced plans for the Falcon Heavy in 2011, saying that in a couple of years the big rocket would be ready. Musk's prediction as often happens in his case, turned out to be too optimistic and it took almost seven years to get to inauguration launch. However, it is a very short time for a company of this type, especially considering that SpaceX was founded in 2002.
The Falcon Heavy is a more "heavy" and full-bodied version of the Falcon 9, the classic rockets famous for their ability to manoeuvre after launch and return to Earth, without being lost and destroyed during the return. And it is precisely the union of three Falcon 9 to constitute a Falcon Heavy, naturally with some additional modification. The rocket as a whole can rely on 27 engines and can carry up to 64 tons of material in orbit (LEO, low earth orbit, between 160 and 2 thousand kilometers). The main objective is to use it to put very heavy satellites in orbit, but it could also be used to transport material to the Moon or to Mars.
The historic inaugural launch came from an equally historic ramp, the LC-39A of NASA's Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, the famous base in Florida: this very same site was used for the Apollo missions, such as the one that brought the first astronauts to the Moon (Apollo XI), and later as a launch pad for the Space Shuttles, the large spaceships taking off vertically like a rocket and then returning to Earth gliding like an airplane.
Since 2011 NASA has retired the Shuttle, so SpaceX has been able to rent the launch pad for 20 years, adapting it to its Falcon Heavy. The LC-39A can also be used for the smaller Falcon 9, because it has catwalks and systems to allow the astronauts to reach the top, entering the space capsule (Dragon Crew) that will be used to transport them to the International Space Station. In the absence of a US system to take astronauts into orbit, NASA now has to take costly passes from the Russian Space Agency Soyuz: things will change when SpaceX has its crew transport system ready.
This inaugural launch served to demonstrate the capabilities of the Falcon Heavy, before putting in some expensive satellite. A few minutes from the start, after helping the rocket to overcome the gravity of the earth, the two lateral launchers of the Falcon Heavy separated and began their journey back to Cape Canaveral, in view of their re-use. They followed a perfect choreography coordinated in the sky of Florida, landing at the same instant a few hundred meters from each other. It was one of the most striking and exciting moments of this entire EXCITING test.
Meanwhile, what remained of the Falcon Heavy continued to travel to get away from the Earth, until a new separation. The first stage of the remaining Falcon 9 reversed and returned to Earth, but having less propellant landed on a SpaceX platform in the middle of the ocean (because it would not make it back to Cape Canaveral). The live streaming from the SpaceX platform had some problems and it was not possible to observe in real time the arrival of the third and last launcher ("core"). It was lost because in the re-entry phase not all the engines the engines needed to make it slow down were activated. SpaceX was not interested so much in the launchers used for the inaugural launch, because they were not expected to be reused.
The rocket recovery system is however central to SpaceX, because it allows to drastically reduce the costs for space launches. Elon Musk's company is the only one to have developed a system to do it so effectively. The Falcon Heavy will allow us to bring in heavy satellites and other materials at a price of about 90 million dollars, a very low figure for the space industry, especially when compared to the 350 million dollars required by other space companies, which in any case does not they can offer a comparable load capacity.
Another moment of great surprise came when the tip of the rocket in orbit opened, revealing its contents: a Tesla Roadster driven by a mannequin, dressed in SpaceX space suits. Musk had promised that the first load of the Falcon Heavy would be one of the cars produced by his electric car factory and so it was, even though in the past few months they had thought it was a joke. On the dashboard of the Roadster was the message "DO NOT PANIC!", Taken from one of the three cameras mounted in the car. The writing is a quote from the Douglas Adams hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "The Guide has already supplanted the great galactic Encyclopedia, as the undisputed custodian of all knowledge and wisdom, for two important reasons. First, it costs a little less; second, it bears the writing, DO NOT PANIC, no panic, in large and reassuring characters on the cover. "
The Tesla Roadster in Space In the plans of Musk and SpaceX, after having separated from the last stage, the Roadster should have been positioned in an orbit similar to that of Mars around the Sun. The orbit of the Tesla Roadster in the initial plans of SpaceX Things have gone differently: the car has followed a trajectory that will lead it to overcome the orbit of Mars. Initially, Musk had written in a tweet that would have reached the main belt, the dense area of asteroids that is between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, but further calculations have ruled out this possibility: the Roadster will not go that far.
Third burn successful. Exceeded Mars orbit and kept going to the Asteroid Belt. 05:46 - 7 feb 2018 191,000 44,600 users are talking about it Information and privacy of Twitter Ads Musk had announced that the car radio would remain on "Space Oddity" by David Bowie, but in the last days the presentation of the initiative used " Life on Mars? ", Also by Bowie, but perhaps more appropriate.
Some observers had raised concerns that the Roadster could crash on Mars if something did not go as planned. Musk thought it was a "minuscule" event: the Roadster was more likely to finish pulverized in the Earth's atmosphere or reach a much larger orbit, as it then did. This inaugural HUGE success is great news for SpaceX. After years of great results and reduced costs thanks to rocket recycling, no one questioned its capabilities, but the demonstration of an even more powerful transport system could convince new customers.
SpaceX already has a contract to bring a heavy satellite from Saudi Arabia into orbit this year, using a Falcon Heavy. Many other manufacturers may choose SpaceX for their bulky satellites or transport more of them at orbit, and NASA itself may begin to evaluate alternative plans for long distance missions with automatic probes, for example to Mars.
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