Historian: Rocket flight will boost industry
SpaceX aims at niche with its Falcon Heavy
A SpaceX maiden test flight of its behemoth rocket will mark the company’s latest step toward eventually reaching Mars.
The company’s Falcon Heavy, a vehicle powered by three boosters similar in size and power to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, has been delayed multiple times since it was first planned to launch in 2015. The Falcon Heavy is designed to carry heavier payloads into orbit and eventually take humans to Mars, with reusable vehicles that lower costs.
Experts say such a Falcon Heavy mission has the potential to magnify newer private companies’ place in the space industry compared to legacy counterparts.
It can also expand competition in a niche — the heavy-lift rocket — that has been missing from the industry for some time, experts say. But SpaceX would not be alone. NASA has also been developing its Space Launch System. United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy, which hasn’t flown since June 2016, remains an option.
“Whether it’s just a market niche or not remains to be seen,” space historian John Logsdon said.
As powerful as Falcon Heavy could be, SpaceX has promoted it as its next product.
“Like any business, you continue to innovate,” said Logsdon, a George Washington University professor emeritus who established the school’s Space Policy Institute in 1987. “This is just their newest product. They wouldn’t have gone down this route without anticipating a market for it but to penetrate any market you have to prove your product works.
“It’s like any other iPhone, Samsung or Tesla.”
The timeline has not been established for the Falcon Heavy’s maiden voyage, which CEO Elon Musk has said would eventually carry a Tesla Roadster intended to reach orbit around Mars. Why? The unorthodox entrepreneur said he wanted the cargo for this first trip to be “something unusual” instead of something “extremely boring” such as concrete or steel blocks.
The company scrapped a plan to test fire all 27 engines on the three-rocket Falcon Heavy on Thursday. A test flight, which could happen this month, had first been planned for 2015 but was repeatedly pushed back. It’s listed for late this month with no specific date. It could be hindered by another SpaceX launch from Florida — a Falcon 9 scheduled for no earlier than Jan. 30.
“No matter how the first launch turns out, there will be a lot of data learning and the establishment of this heavier launch vehicle in the marketplace,” said Frank DiBello, President and CEO of Space Florida.
Florida’s Space Coast will be one of the main benefactors of the emerging competition, DiBello said.
If anything, it will give government-led programs a better look at how businesses can affect the space program.
“It will demonstrate, even more broadly, the power of the private sector to fundamentally change the way we do things,” he said. “It will impact our ability to get things to and from the moon.”
SpaceX’s plan has caused companies like United Launch Alliance, long a preferred launch provider for the U.S. government, to rethink their approach, Logsdon said.
“SpaceX is after ULA’s business,” said Logsdon, noting that ULA was essentially an exclusive government launch provider until last year. “This is one more element of that competition. Competition is the American way of life.”
Traditional space companies such as United Launch Alliance already have been researching similar techniques to compete, Logsdon said.
“We are at a disruptive point in the industry,” Logsdon said. “The competition between the old ways of doing the space program and the newer ways is very real.”