New Falcon Heavy Animation
SpaceX Releases New Animation of Falcon Heavy and Booster Recovery, SpaceRef Business
“SpaceX has released a new animation depicting the launch of a Falcon Heavy from famed Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) with the controlled recovery of both boosters and the first stage.”
Marc’s note: From animation to reality in a few years? Yeah, we like that. Why can’t other companies do this?
My money is still on spacex to advance space exploration further than any other company. Great leadership, lots of investor money, lots of great engineering talent, and most of all, it’s a private company. The other companies have other business on their plates and more interested in keeping the stockholders happy. Nothing wrong with that, but just look at the F-35.
I’m a big fan of SpaceX too. It’s great to see they’re now averaging about 1 launch every two months. Next launch in less than 2 weeks!
I would have to say that the F35 issues have a lot more to do with specification than they do with construction. Lots of over-reach on both promise and execution to be sure.
It is one helluva plane though.
Oh and lots of enthusiastic, cheap, young engineers. It is good to start a tech company when you have no legacy costs. Some of those employees are getting burned out, are underpaid, and feel used.
Anyone can complain there have been post here showing how hard SpaceX drives its young engineers.
Hey Tory! Looks like a military payload to me! 🙂
From animation to reality in a few years? Yeah, we like that. Why can’t NASA do this?
Senator Shelby
Senator Mikulsi
Senator Nelson
Congressman Smith
Congressman Brooks
Congressman Palazzo
Just a few of the usual suspects. NASA has the brain power but the liberty.
Not a few years, unless you mean THIS animation to the NEXT few years.
Falcon 9 Heavy was first announced sometime before March of 2007.
http://www.murc.ws/showthre…
Falcon 9 heavy and the Falcon Heavy are two different launch vehicles. The Falcon 9 heavy has been discontinued.
Bit disingenuous to make the distinction like that. Better, imo, to say that F9H was an early proposed design from before F1 flew, FH was the real design after F9 flew.
Like the many Phase A shuttle designs compared to the baseline that was actually developed. https://upload.wikimedia.or…
Musk noted the difference and the F9H was only going to lift 28,000kg or 61,000 pounds. The Falcon Heavy at 53 or 117,000 pounds utilzing the cross feed that the F9H didn’t makes them appear to be different animals.
When do you think this video will be a reality? Not that I’m a skeptic you understand.
Its possible one of the boosters in the late summer of this year on the barge. That is all the landing space available. The other two soft land in the water.
Next year I suspect either the Imarsat or Viasat launches for all three soft landing
Schedule is FH demo flight by the third quarter this year.
So late next year. 🙂
Interestingly, the LC-13 landing site’s (shown in video) EIS says only one core of the FH will land there. Unless a second barge is built, then one core is thrown away. I suspect SpaceX is going to revisit the matter in the future and use the “contingency pads” as shown in the video.
Pouring extra concrete pads can be done in a matter of weeks when needed. There should be little reason for pad 13 to have to be complete to land 2 or 3 boosters. U would use the same 888 crane and portable booster mounts to load the boosters on flat bed trucks. Since they have the Environmental approvaI. I would think landing pad is no reason for delay.
Yeah, the pads will be there day one. The video shows the same layout as the environmental assessment. It is just the EA that says only one core will be landed there:
“The scope for this EA is limited to the landing of the first stage of a Falcon 9 vehicle, or a Falcon Heavy single first stage, at LC-13, and the activities to support redeveloping LC-13 into a landing location. This EA does not include a multiple booster landing scenario since only one booster will be landing at this facility during a landing event.
…
“The contingency pads would only be utilized in order to enable the safe landing of a single vehicle should last-second navigation and landing diversion be required. There are no plans to utilize the contingency pads in order to enable landing multiple stages at LC-13 during a single landing event.”
So to be clear they only have permission to land one booster per flight at this time but have permission/plans to build all five pads so the site will be ready for three boosters per flight once they obtain permission in the future?
How is the construction on Pad 13 progressing? And when is it scheduled to be compete?
“So to be clear they only have permission to land one booster per flight at this time but have permission/plans to build all five pads so the site will be ready for three boosters per flight once they obtain permission in the future?
IF they obtain permission. Plus the barge is out there.
This stepwise approach is typical EA stuff.
A second barge is being built for Vandenberg.
I understand they are shopping for some islands to land stages
SpaceX has acquired SLC-4W, next to their Vandenberg pad, and is converting it to F9/FH landing pads akin.to KSC LC-13. With an ASDS to catch downrange cores one wonders if an island is necessary.
Oh, my… a simultaneous booster landing x2??? I hope it happens, and then have SpaceX do a special video showing a split screen comparison between the graphic and the real thing.
It it flies this year it would be over a 2 year delay since first announced.
So what John Thomas – it was at ZERO expense to the US Taxpayer… how much cash is the American Taxpayer shelling out for SLS and Orion, please again remind us…
It is a taxpayer expense if your US Gov payload is delayed.
What US gov payload?
There have been no US Government Payloads that have been delayed. Moreover, the cost of the FH program to the US taxpayer has been exactly Zero Dollars and Zero cents.
For all of you inside the 495 that would be $0.00
Space Act Agreements and milestone based contracting works… even for rocket science.
Falcon 9 underwent a major design revision in that time, plus there’s not a huge demand for heavy lift. i think SpaceX is okay with that delay.
SpaceX still made that claim that it was going to launch some 2 years ago. With that rationale, any claim they make and don’t meet are OK as long as they have an excuse.
Question: Do you have any skin in the game? Do you, or anyone in your circle, have any vested interest – either job or investments or otherwise – in a SpaceX competitor or competing system?
Just curious, because you seem so strenuous in your anti-SpaceX comments.
of course it’s OK if there’s a good reason for it.
the bottom line is, unless customers start bailing on SpaceX (and they haven’t) then they’re fine. customer satisfaction is #1 most important thing, not keeping some cynical space-fans happy.
Redesigning F9 into a F9R, rocket which is changing the history of spaceflight, and perhaps the history of the human race, is one hell of an excuse. 🙂
2 years late to bring an affordable reusable rocket to the world. Isn’t that better than 2 decades??
http://www.space-access.org…
I have seen no statements from SpaceX that the first launch, whenever it occurs, will be reusable.
The Q3, 2015 FH Demo, unless it is a full-out maxxed-out test of the cross-feed system would be a fine opportunity to capture a stage. Both for the experience and for recovering a multimillion dollar core. Don’t know if they are, but why wouldn’t they?
Spacex appears to have indicated that they will attempt a booster return on any flight that has enough fuel reserve and no objection from the customer. I would guess at very least one booster will be aimed at a barge on maiden FH flight, on Spacex dime.
The distinction between ‘excuse’ and ‘explanation’ or ‘reason’ might be useful here.
Remember that SpaceX decided to hold back the launches til it built out Pad 39A, rather than using Vandenberg. They also had so much business roll in that they reallocated cores to Falcon 9 launches. The upgraded Falcon 9 used in non-recovery mode was capable of lofting payloads earmarked for Falcon Heavies.
So they got 3 launchers rather than one.
As Musk pointed out about finding enough capacity when flooded with business:
“We need to find three additional cores that we could produce, send them through testing and then fly without disrupting our launch manifest,” Musk said in a Feb. 20 interview. “I’m hopeful we’ll have Falcon Heavy cores produced approximately around the end of the year. But just to get through test and qualification, I think it’s probably going to be sometime early next year when we launch.”
Still a delay, no matter what excuses they give.
Why are you so down on them? They are working to produce launchers that cost only $6 mill a flight. And a vehicle twice as powerful as any other on Earth. And rockets and cargo ships and crewed spacecraft MADE HERE IN AMERICA, and at a fraction of the cost. And a fleet of internet satellites. And to actually really truly get humans to another planet. Why does that so upset you?
I am glad to see naysayers here, although it would be more useful to know something about the thinking behind these statements.
Don’t forget they are doing it on their own dime.
Remember that when SLS is delayed to 2019 grasshopper…
….and how long did Angara take to get to first flight? SpaceX is doing pretty darned well in terms of large launcher development.
That’s pretty good performance; Boeing and Lockheed Martin would both call that ‘excellent’ and possibly even ‘beyond our most optimistic projections’!
The only thing missing from the Falcon first stage and Falcon booster landings at KSC/Cape Canaveral are the herd of annoyed cows. 😉
Have to settle for irritated alligators.
Looks like my backyard!
Is that in your yard in Vermont? Set up a petting zoo, did you?
Got gators in Vermont? Long walk! no wonder their little legs are so short 🙂
This is how they looked when they started their annual northerly migration from Florida:
There’s a story that the Acadians brought lobsters with them when they were driven out of Canada in the Great Expulsion around 1750 or so, eventually landing in southern Louisiana, where they became the ‘cajuns’. or, as they say, ‘les acadians’. They also say ‘Laissez les bons temps rouler’. Fun people for sure.
The poor lobsters, though, suffered the worst; the long trip wore them down so they became crawfish!
I love that story–and I loved my time in Louisiana earning my degrees. It’s wonderful place with amazing back country (and politics is a blood sport). One of the few truly authentic parts of our great country.
Way back, the story used to go that you never drove your VW Beetle into the Bayou because the mosquitoes would pick you up and carry you back to feed the youngin’s.
How soon will pad 13 have at least 3 landing pads like in the video?
http://spaceksc.blogspot.ca…
It’ll have 5 pads, per the environmental assessment.
Two cores doing simultaneous propulsive landings. The cross winds are likely to be enormous, like landing in a hurricane. I hope the cores have sufficient control authority to stay upright when they are nearly out of fuel.
Maybe they will have to delay the return of one by a minute or two??
I was thinking the same thing, a bit like separation between landing airliners but on a different scale (and axis, I suppose).
As to delay, those cores will be a bit like flying a rock. Maybe they could so some curlicues like shuttle did to shed speed but in this case to add time.
K.I.S.S. Shoot for airline like ops, only without the holding pattern. Airliners have done this at some airports on parallel runways separated by a safe distance. Just keep the boosters separated during flight (one takes a slightly northern programmed path and the other a slightly southern programmed path) and they will be just fine.
Likely that near simultaneous is for illustrative purposes only. Imagine how long the video would be should they show both landing in tandem. Agree with other responses- no reason to land exactly at the same time, given possible vortices caused by nearby landing (or just landed) rocket. Going only by Jet experience here- no knowledge of this issue when it comes to rocket landing(s)
Anyhow- kudos to Space X for continuing to raise the bar.
Curious as to whether or not Company has clearances to land back on the coast. How many barge demos would be necessary for Florida stakeholders give an ok for a propulsive rocket landing?
SpaceX does not yet have clearance to touch down on land, which is fine. their landing site has not yet been built!
one successful ASDS landing would probably be enough to prove to most range administrators that they can land accurately, though they will have to continue to use the ASDS until LC-13 has been converted into their landing site. i’m given to understand that the range safety people are all for bringing a stage back to land, so no problems there.
The outer stages should be easier to return and land than a normal Falcon 9, but how is the center stage supposed to make it back? The Falcon heavy has fuel crossfeed, so by the time the center stage is close to running out, it should be moving unreasonably fast downrange. I could believe landing it on a ship (way) out in the atlantic, but landing back at the cape? How much launch capacity would that waste?
depends on the payload mass, for very low-mass payloads, it could be possible to return all 3 cores back to the launch site. but you’re right, for most payloads, the center core will need a downrange landing site for sure. it wouldn’t be a “waste,” since it would just be using the excess capability to return to land.
If they get cross-feeding to work and meet their payload targets, for most payloads, they’ll have a lot of excess capability that can be traded for fly-back and landing fuel. LOX and kerosene are cheap. The trade off then becomes more LOX and kerosene for fly-back to solid ground versus the cost to send a barge out in the ocean to become a relatively stable landing platform (more landing risk). As an engineer, I’d pick the concrete landing pad every time.
Depends on what you are trying to launch. Musk has said that reusability on the center stage halves the payload to GTO vs outer stage reuse only (7000kg vs 14000kg). What isn’t clear is whether this refers to landing the center back at the cape. To get back, the center stage would have to do double its downrange deltaV. That has to mean a pretty hefty margin left in that tank at second stage separation.
Or
http://yellowdragonblog.com…
nice downrange island landing sites
and then you have to ship the rocket back to the launch site, at the costs of time and transportation.
It’s a fascinating animation which, like most of its breed, is more about illustrating aspirations and objectives than likely reality. For example, in a real launch, the central core would probably land on the barge in the mid-Atlantic for optimum efficiency on the upper stage. The animation also shows LC-39A as it will be probably about five years into the future.
None of this should be considered a criticism. However, if there is one thing that SpaceX’s history teaches us, it is that shiny new things often take longer to get up to speed than even their creators anticipate.
FWIW, I suspect that this might have been originally shown privately at the recent meeting with the new investors and got such a positive response from the corporate money-men that Marketing decided to make it public.
As for me? I’m cynical enough that I’ll be impressed by SpaceX getting their number of launches into double figures this year, make serious progress towards making Dragon-2 a flying spacecraft and recover several cores by propulsive landing in a routine and reliable manner. Achieve those things and SpaceX are making serious progress towards moving from being just the disruptive industry newcomer to being a major provider who has changed the nature of the game and left all the other players scrambling to catch up.
I left Florida gladly with no intention to ever return. But if they can pull this off, it would be worth going back to watch.
I am always surprised at those who mock SpaceX. A few quotes from Teddy Roosevelt are in order:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
“It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.“
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
Last night on PBS I saw for the first time a bio on the life of Thomas Edison. I was struck by many parallels between him and Mr. Musk.
The ability to take other Ideas and put them together and make something work.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/ame…
Mr. Edison (and Mr. Ford, life-long pals) were rabidly anti-Semitic. Much is made of Mr. Edison here in SW Florida, with the ugly side swept under the rug. Recently Edison College was renamed, I note.
All of that takes nothing away from the accomplishments of either man.
Mrs. Truman refused to have a Jew into her Missouri home. Times change.
We can’t even have our own little prejudices any more I guess without twitter finding out 🙂
unaware of that, thanks.
Hey, did you hiccup while clicking the Post key?
I replied to Mr. Spencer while in disqus. Then clicked to view this thread. Once teleported here, I saw that my reply had not arrived? In which case I scratched my “head” and wondered if my crappy cell had not completed posting my reply. Therefore, to make sure Michael knew I had read his comment, I regrugitated my response again. HICCUP excuse me 🙂
Hmmmmm…I see you put quotes around the word “head”. Is that a euphemism? ;-p
Now in my case if you look at my avatar I am all head (with a few tentacles)
So much for trying to be polite and not say “ass”
Rotflmao
Unaware of that. Thanks
Thought about that before with falcon 9. But forgot that with three core rockets they can have an LAS on the trap-on boosters. Wow! Imagine two used dragon V2s on each booster. Spacex dominates sub orbit market too.
You want the cheaper ride to Pad 13 or the one with the abort option and the cool parachute ride. I would think the Dragon V 2.1 sub orbital option could have extra draco fuel to abort and land softly, no parachute necessary.
SpaceX should rename Pad 13 to maybe 113. Or 12.9 or anything but 13, they get a discount or something? Pad 13 gesh 🙁
I thought about suborbital too when I saw the cores peel off.
Can’t wait to see this beauty soar!
Just put a recycled Dragon-2 on top of a Falcon-9r (aka ‘Grasshopper-2’). It would be capable of flying up to 100km/66mi and the subsequent RTLS.
It would do Virgin Galactic good to have a potential competitor. I also think that New Mexico Spaceport would enjoy having two separate ‘spacelines’ operating from it. Such an ‘anchor tenancy’ might also make it potentially viable to move non-NASA Dragon-2 landing and post-flight services there.
So now it may be possible that launches would have to be scrubbed due to weather violations at landing sites?