Elon Musk tweeted the first picture of the Falcon Heavy rocket this Wednesday. This is the first heavyweight rocket from SpaceX & it will put SpaceX into the elite heavyweight class of spaceflights as well.
SpaceX’s ‘Falcon Heavy rocket is currently in Florida and is being prepared for its maiden launch in January. Musk also confirmed that Falcon Heavy will be launched from the same NASA pad as the Saturn V Apollo 11 moon rocket.
Building the powerful new rocket took a few more years than expected. It is basically a composition of 3 Falcon 9 rockets strapped together with a second stage added to the top of the center rocket. It will carry a rather puny load of a Tesla Roadster to the Mars orbit for its demonstration launch.
Falcon Heavy is capable of taking way more mass than that of just one Tesla out of the grasp of Earth’s gravity. It is powered by 27 Merlin engines, which can generate over 5 million pounds of thrust. That amount of thrust is enough to send a fully loaded 737 jetliner into orbit. Falcon Heavy is one of the most powerful rockets in operation till date, only second to the huge Saturn V rocket that sent astronauts to the moon. As a matter of fact, young Elon Musk was inspired by Saturn V.
Musk confirmed that they are being precautions for the first run of Falcon Heavy. On its first mission, the rocket will be running at about 92% of its full capacity while projecting its Tesla towards Mars. If that part goes perfectly according to plan, then all three Falcon rocket cores will be attempted to land in the same way the company has been recovering the Falcon 9 first stages. If they can get it done properly, it will be nothing short of an absolute brilliance.
The date of the first launch is yet to be declared officially by the commercial rocket company but before that, the Aerospace manufacturer will be launching 3 commercial satellites and 1 US Air Force payload using Falcon Heavy.
If Falcon Heavy rocket successfully pulls the entire mission off, it will be a massive boost for the company’s next projects. The successor rocket to Falcon Heavy, named “B.F.R.”, is already being worked on. It will send humans to Mars in coming decades, hopes Musk.
