SpaceX Falcon Heavy 1 Full Thrust - Launching February 6, 2018
Screenshot of Falcon Heavy 1 February 6, 2018 - B1023-2, B1033 and B1025-2 in view
Mission Rundown: SpaceX FH 1 - Test Flight 1
Written: January 19, 2021
Falcon Heavy. Triple the fun in one trip
Following its first test launch, Falcon Heavy is now the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two. With the ability to lift into orbit nearly 64 metric tons (141,000 lb) - a mass greater than a 737 jetliner loaded with passengers, crew, luggage and fuel - Falcon Heavy can lift more than twice the payload of the next closest operational vehicle, the Delta IV Heavy, at one-third the cost. Falcon Heavy draws upon the proven heritage and reliability of Falcon 9.
Its first stage is composed of three Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines together generate 5,13 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, equal to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft. Only the Saturn V Moon rocket's first stage delivering 7 891 000 pounds of thrust, last flown in 1973, delivered more payload to orbit. Falcon Heavy was designed from the outset to carry humans into space and restore the possibility of flying missions to the Moon or Mars, using Crew Dragon with an extended trunk fully loaded.
Configuration of Falcon Heavy
Falcon Heavy flew in its reusable configuration, allowing for a landing approach of both side boosters and the central core. The side boosters consisted of two previously flown Falcon 9 first stages, being reused from the CRS-9 mission in July 2016 and the Thaicom 8 launch in May 2016. The central core was newly built because it needed to support stronger forces during ascent, so that a regular first stage could not be used. The upper second stage was the same as on a regular Falcon 9.
Side boosters equipped with a nose cone have different aerodynamic properties than the usual Falcon 9 boosters with a cylindrical open interstage. For this reason, SpaceX equipped them with larger and sturdier grid fins made of titanium, to help guide the atmospheric descent accurately and to ensure survivability of the side boosters.
The central core, however, still used conventional aluminum grid fins, as its aerodynamic properties are very similar to those of a conventional Falcon 9 first stage. But with the reinforcements of the booster to carry the side booster fittings its dry mass is higher, so it will fall faster, generate a larger bowchock front and be harder to reignite just before reentry and landing burns. B1033's fate during its landing suggests so.
The Roadster was mounted on the second stage using a custom-made payload adapter fitting, and was encapsulated in a conventional fairing. Falcon Heavy also supports the launch of Crew Dragon capsules without a fairing.
The payload
The dummy payload for this test flight was a sports car, Tesla Roadster, owned by Elon Musk. SpaceX stated the payload had to be "something fun and without irreplaceable sentimental value". Sitting in the driver's seat of the Roadster is "Starman", a dummy astronaut clad in a SpaceX spacesuit. It has his right hand on the steering wheel and left elbow resting on the open window sill. Starman is named for the David Bowie song "Starman". The car's sound system was looping the symbolic Bowie songs "Space Oddity" and "Life on Mars?".
It was launched with sufficient velocity to escape the Earth and enter an elliptic orbit around the Sun that crosses the orbit of Mars, reaching an aphelion (maximum distance from the Sun) of 1.66 AU. During the early portion of its voyage it functioned as a broadcast device, sending video back to Earth for four hours. The Roadster remains attached to the second stage.
This launcher demonstration made the Roadster the first consumer car sent into space. Three manned rovers were sent to space on the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 missions in the 1970s, and these vehicles were left on the Moon. The Roadster is one of two formerly manned vehicles (albeit not a manned space vehicle) derelict in solar orbit, joining LM-4 Snoopy, Apollo 10's lunar module ascent stage. Also included was Arch Mission 1.2, which is a crystal disk with Isaac Asimov's Foundation series of books in the Tesla Roadster.
There is a copy of Douglas Adams' 1979 novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the glovebox, along with references to the book in the form of a towel and a sign on the dashboard that reads "Don't Panic!". A Hot Wheels miniature Roadster with a miniature Starman is mounted on the dashboard. A plaque bearing the names of the employees who worked on the project is underneath the car reads:
"Made on Earth by humans".
Falcon Heavy on a personal note
SpaceX should have equipped the “Dummy payload” with a Dragon Trunk for power supply and cooling of whatever available scientific instruments that would have been possible to scrape together before launch. The DSCOVR mission comes to mind.
They had 5 years to lumb something together. Radiation instruments, magnetic field sensors, solar wind detectors, a small earth telescope, cameras, radar range finders, lidar topography mapmakers of whatever they fly by or find by chance.
Krypton Ion thrusters could have given this test mission wings. It could have been a contender. It could have taught students worldwide about “Rocket Science”.
It could have taken very long exposure pictures of stars, the planets or Earth like a small cheap Hubble telescope. It could have made science on a low budget. Even a change in its orbit would have revealed a source of gravity, aka. an asteroid passing close by. High School students would have learned something new.
The world is experiencing something not seen since the glory days in the sixties with Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. It’s a second chance to better mankind out there and through the development of new techniques to better mankind downhere.
Once I was a child looking at a man walking on the moon,
now I’m an old man watching rockets land like it was nothing.
What more will my eyes see before they close?
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