It’ll be the largest demo ever when the Falcon Heavy, a rocket the size of a 20-story building, containing 27 engines, will lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida tonight. It’s the most powerful rocket by far. It can lift 63 tonnes of cargo into a low Earth orbit, almost three times more than the Space shuttle.
Barry Zandbergen, senior lecturer at the TU Delft Aerospace Faculty will watch the launch via the livestream. As a member of the Spaceflight department, he is especially interested in SpaceX’s technological innovation. The most spectacular innovation is the reusability of three of the rocket’s cores. Two of them will return to land, and one of them is to land on a floating platform.
Zandbergen thinks that SpaceX is more innovative than NASA or ESA because it’s lead by the visionary entrepreneur Elon Musk. “When the launch proves to be a success, it is a further stimulus for ESA to consider reusable booster cores again,” says Zandbergen. The problem is that much of the engineering needed to land the booster is still in its infancy in Europe and that SpaceX doesn’t share detailed data on how they did make it work. “In the Apollo space-age, American scientists published all their results openly. Nowadays, with commercial space companies, research has become confidential.”
If all goes well, Elon Musk’s red Tesla Roadster, the demo cargo, will be put into an elliptical orbit around the sun that in its furthest point will go just beyond Mars. “Musk’s message to America and the world is clear,” says Zandbergen. “If you want to go to Mars, SpaceX can get you there.”
That said, Musk is very aware of the risks and sensitivity of the project. “Whether the launch succeeds or fails, its gonna be exciting,” he tells CNN reporter Rachel Crane.
Read also:
Landing a rocket booster proved challenging:
Registration of a flawless launch and boosters landing
Elon Musk in post-launch press conference
- 06-02-2018: correction 01:30 Eastern US time = 19:30 Dutch time – has been changed in lead
- 07-02-2018: videos luanch and press conference added
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