Falcon Heavy

It's just down the beach a ways, probably watch it...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy

Watch live...update: launch window moved to 3:45 pm ET

"UPDATE: Liftoff window has been delayed to 3:45 p.m. ET.

On Tuesday afternoon, a rocket the size of a 20-story building, containing 27 engines and a cherry-red Tesla Roadster as its payload, is slated to lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will be the maiden flight of Space X’s Falcon Heavy, the most powerful rocket to launch in 45 years, since NASA’s Saturn V, which last flew in 1973."

Tesla with StarMan driver in space!!

http://www.spacex.com/webcast

I wonder how long the batteries will last?

I was impressed with the whole thing, especially the coordinated booster landings. Were you able to see that live and in person? I guess maybe the middle booster crashed?

Yes I can see it from here, feel it, hear it...It's exciting to watch...really magnificent...

Middle booster is trickier because it's landing on a barge in the ocean. This leads to a harder touchdown so they probably will have to examine it to be sure that it is reusable. That would be my guess on the delay.

Nope, looks like the middle booster hit the drone ship at 300 mph. Apparently, two of the engines necessary to slow it's decent didn't fire. Still a pretty big success though, even with this understandable failure to recover a new type of booster.

There's another reason for trying to land on a barge at sea, scattered water does not become shrapnel.

Last night Spacex announced they ran out of a liquid used to ignite the engines for the final burn and only one lit, but two didn't. The control program for the landing has the booster coming down to one side of the barge until the last instant and then if things look good, a final correction is done to put it on the dot. The last video before the drone barge picture was lost looked a lot like steam and water rather than flame and shrapnel.

I wonder if the missing fuel is why the payload overshot its orbital velocity vector.

No missing fuel. They ran the insertion booster as long as possible to see what it would do. It ran longer than expected, and the result was that the payload perihelion went nearly to the asteroid belt. If I understand the diagrams, the orbit is highly elliptical with the high point near the asteroid belt and the low point near earth orbit. I suppose it's possible that one day it will become a near earth object and when it collides with the earth a few thousand years in the future, whomever finds it will conclude that it's proof of intelligent life out there.

I was referring to the presumed missing fuel that prevented the middle booster from slowing down for a safe landing on the barge, not any missing fuel for the insertion booster that they never expected to recover.

The engines are individually ignited by a hypergolic fuel-oxidizer.

Elon Musk explained that the center booster core consumed an unexpectedly large amount of the hypergolic igniter, leaving too little for the landing burn. Only one engine lit (the center), instead of three in-a-line as required for part of the landing burn.

(I had been speculating that when a problem occurred igniting one of the perimeter engines, the software was not prepared to immediately try a different pair. However, Elon did not say this.)

There was a telescope aimed at one of the side boosters during the Cape Canaveral landing. You can see how the center engine was lit, then two more on opposite sides of the perimeter, then back to only the center engine. The length of time the trio operated was calculated to slow the booster core to zero velocity at exactly touchdown.

This process of using three Merlin engines during part of the landing burn was tested on the previous Falcon-9 flight, and proved that less propellant was consumed.

Correction: the ignitor is TEA-TEB pyrophoric fuel which is hypergolic together with LOX.

I re-watched the launch and I'm sure I saw three engines fire on the second stage before they cut to the boosters landing. Maybey they only lit for a moment. The center engine ran fine I think. It lit up first. So maybe something happened to some fuel flow to the other two engines.

Yes, the simultaneous landing of 2 boosters was most impressive; I heard the 3rd booster missed the landig barge in the Atlantic and sank.

Not most powerful ever, but most powerful active. I'm interested to see if they are able to recover all three 1st stage boosters. That would be huge. Also hoping it doesn't blow up, that also would be really good.

Apparently, if successful, this Falcon Heavy will launch Elon's Tesla Roadster into a trans-Mars orbit. Perhaps setting up a triumphant retrieval several decades from now when Elon has his Mars colony up an running.

I thought you were joking about the Tesla Roadster. I guess this is Elon's way to prove the lift capability.

lol, that's exactly what he's doing. Sometimes reality is weirder than fiction! I feel like it could have been colonization supplies or something else more practical. Then again, it's his company so I suppose if he wants to shoot his car into a trans-Mars orbit, it's his right.

A good PR stunt, but it is also a good "proof of concept", before more valuable cargo (humans) are sent.

Who's the public relations with, martians ? He could of sent up a box of half eaten Twinkies, as far as most people care.

Twinkies do not have a similar mass nor density of a communication satellite or deep space probe, an under used roadster does.

Need mass and density? Go to home depot and pick up 40, 50lb bags of concrete mix

Would you blog for days about Home Depot concrete in space?

Maybe not, but 40 bags of concrete would sure cost a whole lot less than $ 200,000

Our group of watchers decided that the roadster/payload adapter is going to make a great participation trophy for the aliens who find it.

Anybody ever read "Motels of Mystery"?

By the way, we loved the DON'T PANIC on the roadsters display screen.

Did he "take a Towel?"

I'm told there was a copy of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and a towel in the glove compartment.

I watched it live. It reminded me of the old days when we'd all skip out of work and go across the street to a department store and watch the launches on a big screen TV.

I'm not involved any more, but it was still exciting to watch.

I wonder if Elon's Tesla had any batteries inside it?

Here's the replay. The launch happens about 30 minutes into video.

Wow. I haven't been that excited or impressed since I worked for NASA in the '60's and '70's.

SpaceX might just get people excited again, even if the center booster didn't survive the barge landing. The simultaneous landings back at the Cape were a momentous event, IMO.

Hooker

The thing I really like from SpaceX is they seem to learn quickly from failure. I think this was their first attempt at landing a booster of this type (I hadn't realized it was different than the side boosters.). It will be fun to watch them figure it out and get it working over the next few Falcon Heavy launches.

My reaction when I saw the Falcon Heavy loss was "Wow, this could be the start of something important if we don't somehow screw it all up"

Get people excited again ? I doubt it. Anybody that does watch the launch will say, " that's neat or that's cool, then flip the channel to watch something like, naked and afraid.

If musk really wanted people to get excited, he would launch a whole lot of little rockets into earth orbit and build a ship in space, then launch that to the red planet.

Then each launch and build could be an episode, then people would be hanging onto their seats waiting for next week's show.

SpaceX might just get people excited again,

When you look at a video at the people that work there, it appears everyone there not only enjoys what they do, but also takes their work personally.

Something that seems to have cooled off since the Apollo Missions.

As one who was at NASA during the Apollo program I can certainly validate your feelings. We felt the fear of failure, and excitement and pride of the successes no matter which center we worked at. I envy the crew at SpaceX immensely, and through them, can relive NASA's glory days.

Hooker

I both envy them,.. and don't want to be them...

From experience, having drive like that can be self-consuming.

Of course the people that work there would be excited, come Friday there is a paycheck in your name. Nothing worse than going to school for 10 years and finding your an out of work engineer. The people that need to be excited are the ones that don't work there.

I literally laughed and cried when those two boosters came down together! Beautiful! What an amazing achievement!

I would suspect the Tesla roadster had the batteries and motors removed. The roaster is probably the shell only.

Nope, Elon said it is a full car.

Falcon Heavy was not billed as "the most powerful rocket ever", just that it would be "the most powerful rocket in use today". The most powerful ever is in the design stages now. The first BFR, (Big Falcon Rocket), could be launched in the early 2020s.

Astronomers give us one last look of this Roadster. AFAIK no provision for a long range RF communication has been made. Maybe a radio telescope or even the Allen array can still pick up a signal.