SpaceX’s hot new monster rocket ready for first test flight
Falcon Heavy carries high-value cargo: its owner’s red roadster
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – SpaceX’s hot new monster rocket makes its launch debut this week, blasting off from the same pad that hoisted men to the moon a half-century ago.
The Falcon Heavy won’t surpass NASA’s Saturn V moon rocket, still alltime king of the launch circuit. It won’t even approach the liftoff might of NASA’s space shuttles.
But when it departs on its first test flight the Heavy with its three boosters and 27 engines will be the most powerful working rocket out there today, by a factor of two. Picture SpaceX’s frequent-flyer Falcon 9 and its single booster and multiply that by three; the Heavy’s three first-stage boosters are strapped side by side by side.
The Heavy represents serious business for the private space company founded 16 years ago by Elon Musk. With more than 5 million pounds of liftoff thrust the Heavy will be capable of lifting supersize satellites into orbit and sending spacecraft to the moon, Mars and beyond.
Using another airplane analogy, SpaceX boasts a Heavy could lift a 737 into orbit, passengers, luggage and all.
The company already has some Heavy customers lined up, including the U.S. Air Force.
“I can’t wait to see it fly and to see it fly again and again,” said the Southwest Research Institute’s Alan Stern. He’s the lead scientist for NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which made an unprecedented flyby of Pluto and is now headed to an even smaller, icy world on the fringes of the solar system.
Cape Canaveral hasn’t seen this kind of rocket mania since the last space shuttle flight in 2011. Huge crowds are expected for the afternoon launch from Kennedy Space Center. Visitor center tickets for the best up-close viewing, called “Feel the Heat” and “Closest Package,” sold out quickly.
The Heavy is capable of delivering, in one fell swoop, 140,660 pounds of cargo to low-Earth orbit, nearly 60,000 pounds to high-Earth orbit, 37,000 pounds to Mars or 7,700 pounds to Pluto. But for this inaugural flight, the rocket will carry up Musk’s cherry-red Tesla Roadster. In addition to SpaceX, he runs the electric car maker Tesla.
“Red car for a red planet,” Musk tweeted in December, when announcing the surprise cargo.
Fresh-off-the-drawing-board rockets typically carry steel or concrete blocks in place of true cargo.
“That seemed extremely boring,” Musk said.