37 thoughts on “Falcon Heavy”

  2. They are also using a metric calendar, though, so the “third quarter of 2015” really means sometime early in 2016.

    1. Yeah but it is still better and faster than everyone else. Including some government programs that have a lot more funding.

  3. I wish the author hadn’t cut off the end of this paragraph:

    When asked if attempts would also be made to have the Falcon Heavy first stage conduct returns to the launch site, Taylor responded that it would. Given the complexity involved with flying not one, but three F9 booster cores to Launch Complex 13,

    It’d be nice if SpaceX had permission to land first stages on dry ground before the first Falcon Heavy launch, rather than having to either lose the stages or deploy multiple drone ships.

    1. The truncated paragraph has been updated:

      When asked if the Falcon Heavy first stage would be reusable, Taylor responded that it would, making it, as with other members of the Falcon family – unique. SpaceX made its first attempt at landing a Falcon v1.1 first stage booster on a floating launch pad on Jan. 10 of this year. However, the test was not a complete success as the booster did not make its landing.

      With a full 2015 launch schedule, the company has plenty of opportunities to get it right, however. They plan to eventually move the landings to Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 13; however, given the complexity involved with landing not one, but three F9 booster cores, this would be quite an ambitious task.

  4. I find it useful to compare SLS with Falcon Heavy when it comes to payload.

    There’s much chatter about SLS having a capacity of 120 or so tons to LEO. That’s very misleading, because that’s a claim for the later, MUCH later (2035 or so) versions, and it’s based on wildly optimistic expectations for engines that don’t yet exist.

    What we need to look at is the Block 1 SLS, which will be the initial version. Claimed capacity 70 metric tons to LEO – and even that’s based on some very, very optimistic assumptions. An aerospace engineer friend of mine has crunched some numbers, and he thinks the Block1 SLS will have a max LEO capacity of about 63 tons – and they’ll have to admit it fairly soon due to the design firming up. Interestingly, he thinks SpaceX is understating max LEO for FH and thinks it’s closer to, but short of, 57. But, let’s ignore that and assume the claimed numbers for both.

    So, if both FH and SLS perform as claimed, 70 vs. 53 tons, that’s not that big a difference in payload to LEO.

    But where it’s hugely different; development and cost. SLS has been in development a lot longer than FH (and to be fair, we have to count the development of F9 1.1, which is what FH is based on). The entire amount SpaceX has spent on, well, everything (and we’ll ignore every penny of income for this) is vastly less than has been spent on SLS. And in Space’x case, they are doing a lot of things that aren’t FH.

    Timeframe? I’m willing to bet money that FH flies before SLS. SLS is still claiming a 2018 launch date, but… I’m betting 2019 at the earliest. FH is claiming late 2015… but my guess is early 2016. So, FH will fly at least 2 years before SLS.

    However, setting all that aside, the most important number in spaceflight isn’t a date, and it isn’t payload capacity or thrust. It’s cost per pound to orbit, and FH wins that one by so much it’s not even funny.

    2. I also think it makes a lot more sense to improve a design incrementally. First Falcon 9 v1.0, then v1.1, then Heavy. That’s much better than building a BFR from scratch.

      1. Yeah. SpaceX has been using a similar development model to the currently used software development models. This is the launch early, launch often model. I know some people in the DoD don’t like it because the design keeps changing all the time. I guess the DoD no longer remembers how they did successful military hardware development during WWII. I mean just look at the P-51 development cycle.

        Spiral development is a lost art in aerospace.

        1. Spiral development isn’t completely lost on aerospace. The original Block 10 F-16As were pretty basic aircraft with limited all-weather capability. Over the decades, they’ve evolved the plane through many blocks (IIRC, they’re up to Block 52 now) that have greatly increased the plane’s capabilities. With the much lamented F-35, the Marines hope to reach IOC this year on Block 2A software. That software will only allow them to fire AMRAAM missiles and drop two kinds of bombs. They won’t even be able to fire Sidewinder missiles or their cannon. Those capabilities won’t come until Block 3F at least two years from now.

          I do like Musk’s approach to booster development much better than NASA’s or the DoD’s approach.

    3. To be fair, I have seen estimates the true throw-weight of the Block 1 SLS is closer to 85-90 tons instead of 70. The shuttle could do around 100 tons when you counted the weight of both the Orbiter and max internal payload.

      Think about it, it has 4 SSMEs running at 111% vs 3 running at 109%, a larger ET with more fuel, larger and more powerful solids, it should at leas equal the Shuttle.

      That said, it appears Elon has a new trick up his sleeve that might wring a bit more performance out of the Falcon 9 and Heavy than published to date, he seems to be going big into super-chilling the propellant to densify it. Rumor is he has brought the machinery to accomplish this, it has been seen at MacGregor and he mentioned it in his interview on the web last week.

      1. One of the huge performance hits for SLS block 1 is the upper stage, which is basically the same as the upper stage of the Delta IV and Atlas. It’s a huge mismatch for the SLS first stage, hence a performance hit.

        They are developing a better suited upper stage, and that’ll be on SLS Block 1b. That might well get to the performance figures you mention.

        However… NASA rules prohibit manned missions from using non-flight-tested hardware, so they can’t use the new upper stage for a manned mission. On the other hand, it’s scheduled to be used on the second launch of SLS, the ARM manned mission. I egarly await their explanation of that.

        As for SpaceX and subcooling… I’ve been hearing rumors on that too, since last summer. I wonder how much of a performance gain that’ll give? It’ll be interesting to see, and I hope it works.

        1. Block 1B is supposed to have 105-110 tons to LEO capability.

          The upper stage makes most of the difference in it’s TLI/TMI performance, the core burns mostly to orbit anyways. You could likely do away with an upper stage anyways for LEO use.

          1. The guys at Nasaspaceflight has hashed all this to death and many on there work in the industry and have beaucoup analytic tools to play with. If you are really curious, that is where I would look.

      2. That said, it appears Elon has a new trick up his sleeve that might wring a bit more performance out of the Falcon 9 and Heavy than published to date, he seems to be going big into super-chilling the propellant to densify it. Rumor is he has brought the machinery to accomplish this, it has been seen at MacGregor and he mentioned it in his interview on the web last week.

        It might be new in the US but the Russians have done that on Soyuz a long time ago. People usually call them chilled or densified propellants.
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP-1

        At one point the Russians even replaced RP-1 with Syntin on Soyuz-U2:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntin

        Which is a synthetic hydrocarbon with higher density than RP-1. RP-1 is a mix of hydrocarbons with varying densities in a given range.

        The Russians also made a system to fast load propellant on R-7. That was from the time when Soyuz it was supposed to be an ICBM and it needed prompt launch capacity.

    4. “most important number in spaceflight isn’t a date, and it isn’t payload capacity or thrust. It’s cost per pound to orbit, and FH wins that one by so much it’s not even funny.”

      Another way to look at the comparative space launch economics of Monster Rockets is with two new monetary units to pay for tonnage to orbit: the Shelby or the Nelson.

      Where 1 Shelby is equal to one SLS Block 1-Equivalent Lift Mass to LEO on a given Launch Vehicle given the Fully Loaded Cost of SLS Flight

      Where 1 Nel$on is equal to SLS Block 1-Equivalent Lift Mass to LEO on a given Launch Vehicle per Year given that year’s SLS development expenditure.

      Even before SLS starts operating, if today you need to start launching massive tonnage to orbit via Falcon 9.1, it would be worth the equivalent of either 17 Shebies or 7 Nelsons.

      1. If we define a Nelson as equal to the throw weight of a Saturn V, the Falcon Heavy would be a half-Nelson.

  5. If you were sensible you’d conclude that SLS was a dead duck, but congress won’t reach that conclusion for at least another 2 years.

  6. You’re right about spiral development being a lost art, which is weird because it was only explicitly identified about 20 years ago. It was all the rage (like Six-Sigma and TQM) for a while, though (of course) never in practice. Only in PowePoints…

      1. The F-35 suffered from a requirements bloat which no project management technique can ever solve.

        The brilliant idea to rewrite all that ADA software accumulated in decades in C++ did not help either.

    1. Seems like a good idea to me. The satellite business could use some innovation. Current satellites are way too expensive. There are some companies which can make cheaper satellites like Surrey Satellite Technology in the UK and there are efforts like the University Cubesats but the main market is still really inefficient.

      Try reading about how they designed and built the Iridium satellites. That was an interesting project that managed to churn out satellites a lot cheaper than the usual.

      If SpaceX wants to grow the launch market they need to not only make the launch cheaper but the satellites need to become cheaper as well. I guess they got fed up of waiting for the satellite market to shape up.

      1. To me it sounds a little like being AOL instead of the internet. If SpaceX succeeds in making space access much cheaper, perhaps a lot of people will start thinking about cheap satellites. Why would they be “fed up waiting” for the satellite market? They did six launches last year, not because there aren’t satellites waiting to launch but because that’s how many they could. If they do a dozen this year and two dozen next year, so that satellites stop being stacked up in a big line waiting for launch, it would make more sense to me.

      2. So long as the cost of space launch is outrageous, the demand on satellites for shaving grams and extra reliability outweighs cutting cost of the satellite itself. Reduced price for launch changes the incentives for satellite design.

    2. Perhaps Elon looked at the 100+ billion dollar market in “satellite services” (communication mostly) and thought, that would be a good way to make some money. But launching satellites is ridiculously expensive, unreliable and politically difficult. So he started SpaceX first.

    3. Elon may also be looking at the anti-competitive consolidation of broadband delivery in the USA, and elsewhere, and considers satellite broadband (albeit laggy) delivery as a viable player alongside the Comcast and Verizon pipes and terrestrial 4G/LTE/5G.

  8. It’s a pity so many people keep focussing on the 53 mt to LEO as an expendable, instead of more interesting figures like expendable payload to GTO and fully reusable payload to LEO.

    1. A discussion of FH reusable payloads is even more appropriate once you realize that while an expendable FH puts 53 mtons in orbit, a reusable FH puts (40X37)mtons= 1480 mtons in orbit, before its engines have to be pulled for rework. That’s a single vehicle putting nearly 3 times the mass of ISS in orbit.

      Some, who see an inflexibly flat demand curve for spaceflight in the future view this as a bug, not a feature. Of course, this flatness depends on a total program cost point sufficiently low to get new customers into spaceflight. Oddly enough, cheaper satellites may be an excellent sales multiplier for both Falcon9R and FHR, because it lowers total program costs. That alone is a good reason for SpaceX to be interested in them.

        1. I usually read 10 launches and Gwen Shotwell stated once in an interview that they routinely do 20 test firings on engines. Have not noticed a 40 reuse senerio posted before.

          1. Begs the question; does one test firing adequately duplicate the demands on an engine through the whole launch burn, otherwise, why so many test firings on each engine?

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