From The Planetary Society: Falcon Heavy Test Sure To Be A Blast

EdwardHeisler · 2018-02-02 13:22:17

[Excerpt]

Jason Davis • February 1, 2018
Preview: Succeed or fail, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy test sure to be a blast
The Planetary Society

At long last, SpaceX is ready to send its mythical Falcon Heavy rocket on a test flight next week. It's a huge deal, even for a spaceflight company that routinely accomplishes huge deals. An operational Falcon Heavy will make SpaceX the proud owner of the most powerful rocket system since the Saturn V*, and opens up yet another corner of the launch industry to serious competition.

The main goal of the test flight is straightforward: launch something into space without blowing up. CEO Elon Musk, never one to settle for something boring like an inert block of concrete, decided the sacrificial payload would be his Tesla Roadster, aimed for a Mars-adjacent trajectory.

"I love the thought of a car drifting apparently endlessly through space and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future," he said on Twitter.

I'll break down the Tesla aspect of the launch in a followup story coming out Monday, and I'll also be in Florida covering the launch in person. My boss, Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye, is scheduled to make an appearance at the Kennedy Space Center visitor's center. The first launch window opens Tuesday, February 6 at 1:30 p.m. ET (18:30 UT).

So, about that rocket

The Falcon Heavy is essentially three of the company's Falcon 9 rockets bolted together in a row, a design that makes it outwardly similar to United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy. For those not up-to-date on SpaceX nomenclature, "Falcon” is an homage to the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, and "Heavy" simply means the rocket can carry heavy things to space.

SpaceX revealed the Falcon Heavy in 2011, predicting it would fly as early as late 2013. Musk is known for his ambitious timelines, and it turned out the rocket's design was more difficult to perfect than originally thought. Initially, SpaceX considered equipping the Heavy with a complicated propellant crossfeed system, in which the two side boosters re-fill the center booster as the rocket ascends. When the side boosters are empty, they drop away, leaving the center core with a full fuel tank. This ultimately makes the rocket more efficient.

The crossfeed feature ended up being too complex, but even without it, the Falcon Heavy was a challenge to bring to fruition. Whereas the Delta IV Heavy has just one engine for each of its three boosters, the Falcon Heavy has nine, for a grand total of 27 engines that must all ignite and work in tandem without tearing the rocket apart. SpaceX's two disasters in 2015 and 2016 delayed things further: the 2016 accident damaged the company's only launch pad, Space Launch Complex 40, forcing SpaceX to rush to get pad 39A operational. But since there's a chance the Heavy flight will end in disaster and damage pad 39A, SpaceX also needed to get pad 40 operational again.

There's actually a further bit of controversy surrounding this point. Only pad 39A is outfitted for crew flights, which are expected to start later this year (an ambitious timeline, according to the Government Accountability Office). Should the Falcon Heavy damage 39A, how will that affect NASA's commercial crew program, which has been waiting to launch astronauts from American soil since 2011? It's a fair question, and you can bet NASA officials will be watching this demo flight with clenched teeth.

On December 28, 2017, SpaceX raised the Falcon Heavy demo rocket into position at pad 39A for the very first time, and following a month of tests and tweaks, conducted a static fire on January 24.

SpaceX's website pegs the cost of a Falcon Heavy at $90 million. That number will get repeated a lot as the demo flight draws closer, so it's important to note it comes with some caveats. Buying a rocket is a little like buying a car: extra trim levels and extended warranties add up quickly and frequently put you above the starting price.

Case in point: Space Test Program-2 (STP-2), the Air Force launch that will carry multiple payloads to three different orbits, including The Planetary Society's LightSail 2 spacecraft. The Air Force will actually end up paying SpaceX a maximum of $160.9 million for that launch, depending on the completion of various milestones leading to launch, including mission success.

Here's why. First of all, there's oversight. The government requires its rocket providers to present lots of reviews as launch preparations progress. At those reviews, the provider updates Air Force officers and contracted, subject matter experts from organizations like The Aerospace Corporation on how things are going. If there are problems, deeper investigations may be required.

Secondly, STP-2 is a complex mission. 25 different spacecraft will be deployed into three different orbits. In addition to providing the Falcon Heavy rocket itself, SpaceX is responsible for designing and building the adapters to hold all those spacecraft inside the rocket's payload fairing, and also making sure they get deployed at exactly the right moments.

On STP-2 launch day, the Falcon Heavy will first place 12 satellites into an initial low-Earth orbit, before transferring to a circular, 720-kilometer circular, low-Earth orbit to deploy a constellation of six identical satellites called COSMIC-2, along with five smaller auxiliary payloads. (One of those auxiliary payloads is Prox-1, containing LightSail 2).

Then, the Falcon Heavy upper stage re-ignites and flies to an elliptical, medium-Earth orbit (12,000 by 6,000 kilometers), where it will drop off another spacecraft called DSX. After that, there's an Air Force certification objective to show the upper stage can coast for at least three, and ideally five, hours, before restarting for another five-second burn. To pull all of this off, SpaceX has to carefully configure the Falcon Heavy's flight software and test it to make sure it all works.

Even with all those extra options and requirements, the Falcon Heavy is still cheaper at $160.9 million than its competitors. A Delta IV Heavy flight can cross the $400 million threshold, and SLS will be even more expensive. (At one point NASA was hoping to keep the cost of an SLS flight to about a half-billion dollars, but that estimate has grown—how much depends on who you ask.)

SpaceX now routinely recovers and re-uses its Falcon 9 boosters by either flying them back to land or a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. For Falcon Heavy, SpaceX plans to recover all three of the Falcon Heavy's booster rockets. All three! The two side boosters will return to Cape Canaveral, and the center core will land on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You.

There are a variety of possible outcomes for the demo flight: complete success, partial success, total disaster, loss of one or more boosters attempting to return to Earth, and the usual litany of everything that can go wrong during a rocket launch. In any case, it will be quite a thing to see.

If things go completely awry, it's unclear how soon SpaceX would continue marching through its Falcon Heavy manifest. Ultimately the big rocket is an interim solution; SpaceX plans to merge both the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy into a single, larger vehicle called BFR (Big Falcon Rocket, if you want to avoid expletives).

The company has already bounced back from two operational failures of its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, so a disaster for this Falcon Heavy demonstration flight shouldn't be a huge setback—especially considering the low expectations Musk set. The only scenario that could cause the company significant problems would be if the Heavy badly damages the launch infrastructure at pad 39A and delays NASA's commercial crew program.

As far as I know, there's never been a rocket launch where the vehicle provider openly told the public there was a high chance things might end catastrophically. Succeed or fail, the demo flight is sure to be a blast!

Read the full article at:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-da … eview.html

kbd512 · 2018-02-02 17:53:34

SpaceX's mythical Falcon Heavy sitting on that pad looks pretty real to me. I'm crossing my fingers that it makes orbit. If it does that, then mission accomplished. If they get the boosters back, that's icing on the cake. If it sends its payload where Mr. Musk intends for it to go, that'd be the cherry on top. Like Mr. Musk said, it's sure to be interesting no matter what happens.

Void · 2018-02-10 21:48:30

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=el … F8028278OK,

I can't help it I have visions of Elon Musk eventually having his roadster and Starman fetched to Mars.

He fixes up his roadster and upgrades it and adapt it to Mars, and he sits in the passenger seat, and tells the roadster where he wants to go. Starman still seems to have the wheel.

Last edited by Void (2018-02-10 21:54:53)

tahanson43206 · 2019-07-05 13:18:22

http://www.planetary.org/explore/projec … nouncement

The Planetary Society sent an email to me today, along with (probably) a million other people.

The link above provides up to date feedback from the Light Sail, with the caveat that messages cannot be received if the system is not in range of a ground station set up to communicate with it.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2019-07-05 14:32:02

I recently posted about the launch elsewhere for the solar sail and we do have topics with tons more information about them.
Will and to add the links into the topic since the first post was more about the heavy lift launcher....

Solar Sails

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Plane … y_999.html

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Light … l_999.html

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#1 2018-02-02 13:22:17

From The Planetary Society: Falcon Heavy Test Sure To Be A Blast

#2 2018-02-02 17:53:34

Re: From The Planetary Society: Falcon Heavy Test Sure To Be A Blast

#3 2018-02-10 21:48:30

Re: From The Planetary Society: Falcon Heavy Test Sure To Be A Blast

#4 2019-07-05 13:18:22

Re: From The Planetary Society: Falcon Heavy Test Sure To Be A Blast

#5 2019-07-05 14:32:02

Re: From The Planetary Society: Falcon Heavy Test Sure To Be A Blast

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