Falcon Heavy is ‘ready for launch’ – What is Elon Musk’s super rocket for?

The possible Martians have been anxiously waiting for it for ages. The Falcon Heavy is finally launching after years of delays, meaning Elon Musk’s own red Tesla Roadster sports car will make a one-way trip “toward” Mars. The car wouldn’t look out of place on the red planet color-wise, even though the vehicle doesn’t come anywhere near there and, thanks to the rear-wheel drive and missing parts, would probably get stuck in the sand in no time.

This curious Falcon Heavy missile payload is little more than a fun publicity stunt; everything revolves around the launch of the Falcon Heavy itself, the most powerful rocket currently operational. This rocket from SpaceX is in fact a large variant of the Falcon 9 rocket. In what ways does the new rocket differ from the Falcon 9, what does SpaceX want to launch with the Falcon Heavy and how exciting will the ‘maiden flight’ be on February 6 from 7:30 PM Dutch time?

High expectations?

In April 2011, SpaceX announced that ‘ the world’s most powerful rocket ‘ had a launch date. In the press release, however, the company did not get further than “late 2013 or 2014”; a concrete date was not mentioned. In the end, 2013 or 2014 was nowhere near achieved. The rocket turned out to have been assembled only in the second part of December last year , after which the colossus was put upright on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral in Florida in early January.

In the course of January, the short-term shutdown of the US government, among other things, threw a spanner in the works, but soon after, on January 24, the Falcon Heavy performed the long -awaited static fire test , during which all engines were turned on. From then on, a launch date could not be long in coming; Musk announced at the end of January that the Falcon Heavy will be launched on February 6 .

Musk often makes very optimistic predictions about, for example, launch windows and launch schedules, but with regard to the first Falcon Heavy launch, he has so far been surprisingly realistic. In July last year, Musk said it’s going to be a great vehicle, but he added that it was much more difficult than expected to realize the Falcon Heavy, which probably contributed to the delay of the maiden flight .

The SpaceX CEO said it sounds easy to simply add two boosters, but this changed everything. For example, he said that the vibrations increase by a factor of three and that more is demanded of certain parts than they can actually handle. In addition, the entire middle coreframe had to be redesigned, because the two boosters on either side would otherwise exert too much force on it. New decoupling mechanisms also had to be installed so that the two boosters can be side-jetted.

“There’s a lot that can go wrong,” Musk said. “Due to all the risks, there’s a good chance the rocket will never make it to space, so I want to make sure that expectations are aligned with that. I hope the Falcon Heavy gets far enough away from the launch pad that the platform doesn’t crash.” is damaged. To be honest, I would even consider that a profit.”

Off to Mars?

Given the not too high expectations, Tuesday evening will be a nail-biting moment, provided the launch goes ahead as planned. In any case, nothing went wrong during the static fire test, as was the case with a Falcon 9 rocket in September 2016. During engine testing , the missile exploded on the launch pad of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Whether the Falcon Heavy and the launch pad are spared a large fireball and destruction remains to be seen on Tuesday evening.

If all goes well, the Tesla Roadster, including David Bowie’s song Space Oddity, which plays in an endless loop , will be sent toward Mars. However, the payload does not go to the red planet in a straight line. Via a trans-mars injection, the payload is placed in a heliocentric orbit, an orbit around the sun. Viewed from the sun, this is simply an elliptical orbit whose farthest point coincides with Mars’ orbit around the sun. So the payload will not enter Mars orbit. If Musk’s wishes come true, he will fly endlessly through space, after which the craft may be ” discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future.”

Before the Tesla Roadster leaves the earth, a number of crucial steps must go well. The Falcon Heavy is a two-stage missile whose first stage consists of the two side and center core boosters, each with nine Merlin 1D engines. These operate at full power during launch, generating a thrust of 22,819kN at sea level. Shortly after launch, the burn of the mid-core engines is scaled back . Once the two boosters on the side are disconnected, the middle core’s motors will operate at full power again. After the middle core is also decoupled, the second stage is powered by a single Merlin engine, which generates 934kN of thrust in vacuum and will burn for 397 seconds.

In fact, the Falcon Heavy is a reinforced core frame of the Falcon 9 with two additional boosters mounted on either side. The Falcon Heavy therefore has a total of 27 rocket engines, three times as many as the Falcon 9 has. This means that Falcon Heavy can carry a payload of 63,800kg into low Earth orbit, while the Falcon 9 can handle a payload weighing up to 22,800kg.

Other current operational missiles also come nowhere near the thrust of the Falcon Heavy. The Space Shuttle, decommissioned by NASA in 2011, was able to carry a payload of 24,000 kg into low Earth orbit. The Delta IV Heavy does not exceed 22,560 kg and the European Ariane 5 ES rocket from ESA is 20,000 kg.

All this is in stark contrast to the Saturn V launch vehicle, which was operational from 1967 and 1973 and carried the first man to the moon. This rocket could carry a payload of 140,000 kg into low earth orbit. However, a comparison between the two quickly falls short, because this was not a commercially deployable rocket, which was also more than ten times as expensive per launch compared to the Falcon Heavy and was built for a completely different purpose, with technology from more than fifty years ago.

Recycling in space travel, or rather the reuse of parts such as rocket stages, is a proven concept that SpaceX has been using for several years with the Falcon 9 to reduce the costs of the launches as much as possible. Twenty successful landings have been made since December 2015, fourteen of which took place in 2017. These were all on a first stage core, of which the Falcon Heavy has three. All three of these cores must also return to Earth in one piece after the disconnection.

The two boosters on the side are so-called Block 3 boosters, which are usually used no more than twice for a launch. Both boosters have already been used in a previous Falcon 9 launch: one in July 2016 to resupply the International Space Station, the other in May 2016 to launch a Thai satellite .

Even though these boosters will probably not be used after the launch of the Falcon Heavy and may end up in a museum, they are not treated as disposable. The two boosters on the side must land on two landing spots on Cape Canaveral, while the middle core must also make a vertical landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean after decoupling. Musk indicated in March last year that SpaceX would at least try to return the upper, second rocket stage of the Falcon Heavy to Earth. He does not consider the chances of success too great, but called it ‘worth a try’.

Then there’s the top part of the missile, the nose cone, which is basically the protective shell of the payload. This is not yet eligible for reuse at the first launch of the Falcon Heavy, but SpaceX has previously carried out tests with the landing of these casings, known in English as fairings . In March, Musk’s company successfully landed a Falcon 9 rocket fairing for the first time. Musk said in April 2016 that recovering fairings is ultimately also a goal of SpaceX. Reusing this component can further reduce launch costs. The fairings, made of a honeycomb structure of aluminum and carbon fiber, cost several million dollars , according to Musk .

What else is the Falcon Heavy used for?

While the first launch of the Falcon Heavy on Tuesday evening is not intended to deliver a payload to the surface of Mars, in the not-too-distant future the rocket may be intended to be used to launch a spacecraft on the red planet. to land. It was originally planned that a Red Dragon capsule would land on Mars as early as 2018, but in early 2017 Musk indicated that this would be postponed to sometime in 2020 and in July 2017 it appeared that SpaceX will not deploy such capsulesfor Mars landings. Musk thinks there is a better way with bigger spacecraft for landings on the red planet. The Red Dragon capsule is a modified version of the Dragon capsule used by SpaceX to supply the International Space Station.

The idea was that the Red Dragon would use eight downward-facing, so-called SuperDraco engines that are incorporated in the hull of the craft for landing. These engines should have slowed the Red Dragon’s descent through the thin Martian atmosphere, allowing for a smooth, safe landing. This mission will therefore not take place, but Musk has indicated that he wants to land larger spacecraft or capsules on Mars using this technology with engines. Musk is referring to the Big Falcon Rocket, the ‘successor’ of the Falcon Heavy.

The Falcon Heavy is capable of transporting a payload of 16,800kg to Mars. In principle, that is enough to take astronauts to Mars, although the Big Falcon Rocket is much better suited for this. This giant rocket, if it were up to Musk, will turn humans into an ” interplanetary species ,” using a reusable space supply system.

The rocket that has to go into the air on Tuesday will mainly be used for cargo missions in which satellites are placed in orbit around the earth, for example the somewhat heavier ones of, for example, the US government. In addition, the rocket is used for moon missions. At the end of February 2017, SpaceX announced that it would fly two private space tourists around the moon in 2018. The space tourists will travel close to the moon, then leave the moon behind and go deeper into space before returning to Earth.

The mission will take place with the Crew Dragon spacecraft, the second version of the Dragon capsule, which will operate largely autonomously during spaceflight. NASA has accounted for the lion’s share of the Crew Dragon’s development costs, and because NASA is prioritizing SpaceX with Crew Dragon missions, it’s likely that the two space tourists will have to wait until 2019 . And then nothing can go wrong with the first test flights of the Dragon 2, which will take place this year. Ultimately, the Falcon Heavy should also be used for manned missions to the moon or as a science delivery platform for scientific missions to, for example, Europa, a moon of Jupiter that most likely has an ocean below the surface.