Falcon Heavy is Sitting on the Launchpad

Was that a Tesla car in the capsule shroud?

Artist's rendition...

Let me interject just a bit of history ..... into all of this gushing

SPACEX 's Falcon-Heavy will have all 27 independent rocket engines firing and performing at the same time.

After a massive development program with the best and the brightest, the USA developed the five engine Saturn 5. The most massive and powerful rocket in history. It performed superbly

In 1969 the Russians also attempted a heavy launch with their 30 smaller engined N1 moon rocket. Spectacular failure .... and failure three more times. The Russians never did get a man to the moon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)

I do hope that Elon is successful..... but the old engineering maxim is that complexity begets failure...

We shall see.....

That maxim may yet hold true, however, if each independent engine is stable, not likely at all to fail, then the overall chances of success remain about the same. If not more reliable than any one Saturn V engine (of the five), then obviously the chances of success are relatively poor with 27 engines.

Short version: I completely agree.

When is the launch date ???

Supposedly, this month sometime, no specific date was mentioned on response to my search.

They're shooting for late Jan, but it has to pass all the testing first, so no date set yet....

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018/01/spacex-static-fire-falcon-heavy-1/

My Dad was an engineer on those Saturn V engines during the Apollo program (launches 8 through 13). Each one was a hugely complex engineering effort due to shear size and I'm pretty sure once lit they could not be stopped. One thing I clearly remember him telling me was that nearly every system throughout the Apollo craft had 3 back-up systems just in case. This triple redundancy increased cost and complexity but enhanced reliability.

Maybe Spacex is on the right path with multiple identical systems so the mission is not as dependent on each single engine as the Saturn V was.

Then again, maybe not. I wonder if Falcon Heavy will fly with only 26 or 25 engines going?