Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket in
the world by a factor of two.
With the ability to lift into orbit nearly
64 metric tons or approximately 141,000 pounds.
It can lift more than twice the payload of
the next closest operational vehicle, the
Delta IV Heavy.
Falcon Heavy is composed of three Falcon 9
nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines
together generate more than 5 million pounds
of thrust at liftoff, equal to approximately
eighteen 747 aircraft.
On february 7, 2018, Falcon Heavy made its
first launch to orbit, successfully landing
2 of its 3 boosters and launching its payload
to space.
Curious to know more about Falcon Heavy spacecraft
configuration and objectives?
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Cost Effectiveness
The Falcon Heavy is SpaceX's entry into the
heavy-lift launch vehicle market.
As the name suggests, the Heavy is a larger
vehicle than Falcon 9, comprising a Falcon
9 with two more Falcon 9 stages strapped on
either side.
Each of the strapped-on rockets has nine engines,
which work together as boosters to lift a
heavy payload.
SpaceX predicted that the Falcon
Heavy would launch twice the payload of the
Shuttle at about one-fifteenth of the cost
of a Shuttle launch, which equates to an approximately
97% reduction in launch
costs compared with the Shuttle!
How could SpaceX reduce launch costs by such
a margin?
Before answering that
question, it's worth clearing up how launch
prices are determined.
When it comes to
calculating the costs of government launches,
the actual taxpayer cost can only be
guessed at by calculating from the cost-plus
contract costs, which are usually for
multiple launches from the same customer.
Now, if SpaceX has multiple launches on
its books, the posted price will obviously
be reduced according to the number of
launches; more launches equals lower costs.
At the time of the Intelsat contract, for
example, SpaceX had a launch manifest of over
40 payloads divided between Falcon
9 and Falcon Heavy.
This number far exceeded any current government
contracts,
and SpaceX was adding more flights every month.
Another factor determining cost is rocket
performance.
The only rocket in service comparable to the
Falcon Heavy is the Delta 4 Heavy;
While a Falcon Heavy looks similar to a Delta
4 Heavy, its performance is much higher, which
means its cost per launch is much lower; a
Falcon Heavy can put 53 metric tonnes in
orbit compared to the Delta 4 Heavy's 23 metric
tonnes - a 230% improvement.
More importantly, from a customer perspective,
a Falcon Heavy costs only about
US$100 million per launch, whereas the Delta
4 Heavy costs US$435 million per
launch based on an Air Force contract of US$1.74
billion for four launches.
When it comes to calculating payload costs,
the Delta 4 Heavy, with its 23-metric ton
LEO capability, costs about US$19 million
per tonne, or about US$8,600 per
pound, compared to the Falcon Heavy's price
of about US$850 per pound or
US$1.9 million per tonne - almost exactly
one-tenth of the current Delta 4 Heavy
price.
It's a huge price differential- one that often
prompts the inevitable question:
how can the Falcon outperform the Delta by
such a wide margin?
The main reasons
can be found in the development and design
of the Falcon 9:
1- low manufacturing cost
2- low operational cost such that the low
man-hours needed per launch
3- high-efficiency performance in flight
The low manufacturing cost is a result of
the Falcon Heavy's design, which uses three
nearly identical rocket stages that is a design
strategy that translates into more production
of the same units and a reduction in unit
cost.
For example, SpaceX is building towards producing
a Falcon 9 first stage or Falcon Heavy side
booster every week and an upper stage every
two weeks at their plant in Hawthorne, California.
At this rate, if this production schedule
is achieved, within a few years, SpaceX will
be producing more rockets per year than all
the rocket companies on the planet combined.
The next key factor in reducing payload costs
to LEO is high flight efficiency
(although not always resulting in successful
launches) - a goal that SpaceX has achieved
in the Falcon 1 and 9 rockets by using a short
upper stage which consists of a single Merlin
engine to place the payload into orbit; for
the Falcon Heavy, spaceX has used the possibility
of creating a hydrogen-oxygen upper stage,
which could boost the Falcon Heavy payload
up to 70 tonnes.
In addition to the development of the hydrogen-oxygen
upper stage, the Falcon Heavy has benefited
from propellant cross-feeding from the side
boosters to the center core.
During flight, the Falcon Heavy's two outer
stages pumped part of their propellant into
the center stage which is similar to how the
Shuttle's external tank fed its main engines.
This means these stages exhausted their propellant
faster, but it also meant that the center
stage had almost a full load of propellant
at separation, where it is already at altitude
and at speed.
Which is a method that gave the Falcon Heavy
performance comparable to that of a three-stage
rocket.
Falcon Heavy Objectives
So far, we’ve shown that Falcon Heavy is
a powerful and cost-effective spacecraft but
the main question is what it’s used for?
The good news for the commercial launch industry
is that the Falcon Heavy opened the door to
much larger payloads thanks to the vehicle's
large payload fairing - a capability that
can be exploited by launching more than just
one communications satellite in a single payload.
The Falcon Heavy is also able to launch heavier
payloads, including space station modules
such as the Centrifuge Accommodation Module,
which was the victim of ISS budget-cutting.
The Falcon Heavy also plays a role in human
missions beyond LEO, perhaps ferrying a long
duration Dragon capsule attached to a crew
habitat for an asteroid mission.
Beyond the Falcon Heavy, SpaceX is building
a Falcon Super Heavy rocket along with SpaceX
Starship Spacecraft.
They represent a fully reusable transportation
system designed to carry both crew and cargo
to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond.
Starship will be the world’s most powerful
launch vehicle ever developed, with the ability
to carry in excess of 100 metric tonnes to
Earth orbit.
Musk has always indicated that he intends
to continue trying to lower launch costs and
improve capability, which means it's unlikely
that the Falcon Heavy is the last vehicle
in the SpaceX family of launchers.
In fact, the Falcon Heavy, with its 53 metric
tonnes of payload, can't be considered a true
heavylift vehicle (HL V), since these are
generally considered to be ones that can lift
70 metric tonnes or more.
For example, NASA's planned Space Launch System
is a HLV that will lift 70 metric tonnes in
its fIrst version and 130 metric tonnes in
a later version.
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Falcon Heavy Rocket Configuration:
Falcon Heavy was launched 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, that were reused
from the CRS-9 mission in July 2016 and the
Thaicom 8 launch in May 2016.
Only the central core was newly built because
it needs to support stronger forces during
ascent, so that a regular first stage could
not be used.
The upper stage was the same as on a Falcon
9.
Being equipped with a nose cone, the side
boosters have different aerodynamic properties
than the usual Falcon 9 boosters with cylindrical
interstage.
Therefore, SpaceX equipped them with larger
and sturdier grid fins made of titanium in
order to guide the atmospheric descent accurately.
However, the central core still used conventional
aluminum grid fins due to the fact that aerodynamic
properties are very similar to those of a
conventional Falcon 9 First Stage.
Moreover, the Roadstar was mounted on the
second stage using a custom made payload adapter,
and was encapsulated in a conventional fairing
which is a structure whose primary function
is to produce a smooth outline and reduce
drag forces.
Falcon Heavy also supports the launch of Dragon
capsules without a fairing.
Falcon Heavy Launch
Falcon Heavy rocket took off from Kennedy
Space Centre at Cape Canaveral, Florida, after
a delay of over two hours due to high winds.
The Roadstar was successfully placed in its
orbit and its two booster cores returned to
land at landing zones 1 and 2 several minutes
later.
The landing of the central core failed while
its fate was initially ambiguous due to signal
loss and heavy smoke.
Several hours after the launch, Musk confirmed
that the booster had not survived the recovery
attempt due to the fact that two of the three
engines necessary to land were unable to reignite,
the booster hit the water at 500 kilometers
per hour and 100 meters away from the drone
ship.
Which caused damage to two of the drone ship’s
station-keeping thrusters.
On the post-flight conference, the central
core ran out of the igniter fluid.
However, the central core loss did not impact
future SpaceX operations.
In conclusion the Falcon Heavy flight mission
was intended to accomplish several objectives
such as:
To Launch the Falcon Heavy from the pad through
the atmosphere including Max Q flight phase.
To Separate the side booster cores from the
continuing first centre core and upper stage.
To Return to the two side boosters to Cape
Canaveral and land them simultaneously at
landing zones 1 and 2.
To Separate the centre core and light the
upper stage to orbit insertion.
To land the first stage booster core on an
autonomous spaceport drone ship, Of Course
I still Love You, in the Atlantic ocean.
To relight the upper stage to orbit in the
Van Allen Belts for several hours to shoe
radiation resistance.
To relight the upper stage again and put the
payload into its heliocentric orbit in order
to demonstrate the lifetime for the upper
stage that’s suitable for orbit insertion.
And finally to recover the payload fairing.
Additionally, the sole purpose of including
the Roadstar on the Falcon Heavy flight was
to demonstrate that it can launch payloads
as far as the orbit of Mars, and it exceeded
its projected route by extending its aphelion
to near the asteroid belt beyond Mars.
However, it did not test or demonstrate the
separation of the second stage and payload.
At the end of this video, you may need to
know in some terminologies in depth such as:
The Van Allen radiation belt, which is a zone
of energetic charged particles, most of which
originate from the solar wind, that are captured
by and held around the planet by its magnetic
field.
Earth has two such belts and sometimes others
may be temporarily created.
They are named after James Van Allen, who
is credited with their discovery.
They also extend from an altitude of about
640 to 58,000 km above the surface in which
region radiation levels vary.
The heliocentric orbit, which is an orbit
around the barycenter of the solar system
that is usually located within or very near
to the surface of the sun.
All planets, comets and asteroids in the solar
system and the sun itself are in such orbits;
as are many artificial probes.
The moons of planets in the solar system,
by contrast, are not heliocentric orbits,
as they orbit their respective planet despite
the fact that the Moon has a convex orbit
around the sun.
The barycenter of the solar system is always
very near to the sun, however, it moves through
space as time passes depending on where other
large bodies in the solar system; such as
Jupiter and other large gas planets, are located
at that time.
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