Spacex seeks spot in exclusive market with heavy rocket

LOS ANGELES — Sevenyears ago, Los Angeles entrepreneur Elon Musk publicly introduced the Falcon Heavy rocket, promising the first launch of the 27-engine behemoth would be “pretty epic.”

That day comes Tuesday, when Spacex plans to launch the Falcon Heavy at 10:30 a.m. PST from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center in its first demonstration mission. The Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful

U.S. rocket since the famed Saturn V, which took astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s.

A successful launch would vault Spacex into the small cadre of heavy-lift rockets available throughout the world, ranging from the European Ariane 5 to United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy in the U.S.

But the commercial market for massive satellites is tight, meaning the Hawthorne space company will need to capitalize on lucrative national security launches and posi

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tion itself to compete for new opportunities requiring heavy hauling capacity to maximize its investment in the Falcon Heavy.

“The world has changed since 2011, when Falcon Heavy was announced,” said John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute. “Falcon Heavy has to create or facilitate a market different than the one that may have been the original intention.”

Spacex already recognizes the changing market for large commercial satellites. The company initially thought it would fly the same numbers of Falcon 9s — the rocket that forms the three engine cores of the new, larger rocket — as Falcon Heavys. But that ratio is turning out to be about two to three times more Falcon 9 commercial missions, especially as upgrades to the Falcon 9 have made that rocket more powerful.

“There is a part of the commercial market that requires Falcon Heavy,” said Gwynne Shotwell, president of Spacex, during an interview with the Los Angeles Times last summer. “It’s there, and it’s going to be consistent, but it’s much smaller than we thought.”

New markets

Falcon Heavy markets could include NASA planetary missions. Last year, Musk said the rocket would be used to send two tourists around the moon, and analysts have questioned whether the Falcon Heavy could factor into the Trump administration’s call to NASA to return to the moon.

Once operational, the Falcon Heavy will likely compete largely against a few heavy-lift rockets. On the commercial side, Europe’s Arianespace offers the Ariane 5 heavy launcher that can hoist more than 44,000 pounds to low-earth orbit.

The Ariane 5’s trademark is its ability to launch two satellites in a single mission, making it a popular

and cost-effective option for commercial satellite operators, said Phil Smith, space industry analyst at Bryce Space and Technology. NASA plans to launch its $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope on an Ariane 5 next year.

Massive U.S. national security satellites that require a bigger rocket than Spacex’s workhorse Falcon 9 or the Atlas V, made by a joint venture of Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp., rely on ULA’S Delta IV Heavy.

The rocket of choice

With 2.1 million pounds of thrust at liftoff and a payload capacity of 62,000 pounds to low-earth orbit, the Delta IV Heavy has been the rocket of choice for the heaviest spy satellites and other sensitive payloads for the U.S. government.

However, the rocket is costly to produce — its burnt-orange foam insulation must be applied by hand, and the rocket production line is large and complex — and is being phased out.

The launch cost of a Falcon Heavy starts at $90 million, while its smaller Falcon 9 starts at $62 million.

The starting price for ULA’S smaller Atlas V is advertised at $109 million.