Hi! It’s me Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut.
Falcon Heavy.
It’s ALMOST HERE!
When it flies, it will be the most powerful and highly anticipated rocket of the 21st century.
SpaceX will be attempting the ultimate feat in rocketry, strapping three orbital class
boosters together to form a heavy lift launch vehicle.
As if that weren’t enough, the Falcon Heavy will be attempting to land ALL THREE of its
massive first stages boosters, two by land one by sea.
SpaceX first announced the Falcon Heavy in 2011 saying the vehicle would be ready to
launch in 2013…
So why exactly has it taken five additional years to develop a rocket that’s essentially
just three Falcon 9’s strapped together?
Well, we’re going to dive into what all has changed since the 2011 announcement including
what specific hardware and technology had to be developed.
We’re also going to compare the Falcon 9 to the Falcon Heavy in a side by side comparison
and explain just why exactly there’s so much more to the Falcon Heavy than just strapping
three Falcon 9’s together.
Let’s get started!
Now that we’re closer than ever from seeing the Falcon Heavy fly, the excitement is THROUGH THE ROOF.
For the past four years, SpaceX has been claiming the Falcon Heavy is only 6 months away, but
for once, we’re WELL within that!
In case you don't know, all the hardware for Falcon Heavy is sitting inside the hanger
at Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center.
YES.
This means the Falcon Heavy exists.
For the first time in its long history, it’s not just a paper rocket!
Elon Musk even revealed the payload of the Falcon Heavy, and I have to rub it in, I WAS RIGHT!!!!
I think it should be a bunch of Teslas that are like made to just be dummy payloads that
end up going into orbit.
That orbit either the Earth or the moon and we get all these live feeds of Teslas in space
and you can just go to Teslasinspace.com.
MAKE IT HAPPEN!
Although I’ve kind of been kind of half joking for the past couple years, it still
blows me away that this truly is the payload.
A midnight cherry Tesla Roadster…
And not just any Tesla Roadster, but Elon’s personal roadster at that!
And to top it all off, it’s not just going to space, it’s going to MARS.
Now before we get too far into this, we should probably probably do a quick comparison of
the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy… and in order to best do that, we should tune into
my favorite home rocket shopping network, TVC!!!
You need one booster, WRONG.
Three boosters!!!
Today only, not only do you get one booster with nine merlin engines, call now and you'll
get three boosters with 27 merlin engines.
Now you might be asking yourself, how much thrust does this thing have?
Well guess what, I've got those numbers.
The Falcon 9 is capable of 7,600 kNs of thrust.
The Falcon Heavy, guess what.
Three times the thrust.
That's right ladies and gentlemen, not one time which would be the same, not two times
which would be two times, not three times, but THREE times the thrust of the Falcon 9.
That's right 22,800 kNs of thrust.
Now this is the one that you're looking for.
Because obviously if you need to send a big heavy old thing up to low Earth orbit, you
have the ability to launch 63,800 KGs to low Earth orbit.
That's right folks.
You heard me, 63,800.
But what about Geostationary transfer orbit you ask?
Well, it just gets better because this thing is capable of 26,700 KGs.
Remember earlier when you wanted to launch 8,300 KGs on your Falcon 9?
This thing can do it and still reuse all three of those cores!
So you get three cores back instead of none!
I might as well be giving them away, you get a Falcon 9, you get a Falcon Heavy, you get
a Falcon 9!
Uh that guy is so annoying.
Next up, let’s give you a quick history run down of how the Falcon Heavy came to be
and how it’s changed over the years.
Despite Elon Musk mentioning a Falcon 9 Heavy at the Mars Society way back in 2008, SpaceX
didn’t reveal their official plans for Falcon Heavy until April 5th, 2011 at a news conference
in Washington, DC.
Here, Elon Musk announced his ambitious timeline for Falcon Heavy…
"I think most likely what you'll see is (the) rocket at the pad towards the end of next
year um and a launch sometime in 2013."
At the time, SpaceX’s plans were to have three Falcon 9 cores put together to form
a heavy lift launch vehicle.
The Falcon Heavy would be able to lift 53,000 KG or 117,000 pounds into orbit.
This is enough to launch of a fully loaded 737 into space!
It would have 16,900 kN’s or 3.8 million pounds of thrust coming from 27 of their Merlin engines.
The Falcon Heavy was also to be touting propellant cross-feed which means the outer cores were
to be continually topping off the center core, so once the side boosters were empty, the
center core would still be full which maximizes Delta V and payload mass.
Elon also announced the price, a shocking $80 million to $125 million dollar price tag
per mission.
This would be the cheapest ride to space, beating out the competition by 4 to 10 times
when it comes to dollar per kg ratio.
An interesting note was how often Elon foresaw the Falcon Heavy flying, claiming it would
be flying about as often as Falcon the 9, with each vehicles hopefully seeing about 10 launches per year.
According to their estimates, the Falcon Heavy filled a gap in the market that the Falcon
9 was currently unable to fulfill.
More on that later…
Before we continue with how the Falcon Heavy wound up changing so much beyond this, we
need to take a look at how the Falcon 9 evolved since then to gain some insights on how SpaceX’s
continual evolution of their Falcon family is a different philosophy than traditional
aerospace companies.
In this video I don’t want to get super deep into the history of specific changes
to the Falcon 9, since I’ll be covering that in an upcoming video, but let’s just
do a quick run down on the major changes the Falcon 9 has experienced since the announcement
of the Falcon Heavy.
When Falcon Heavy was announced in April 2011, the Falcon 9 had only flown twice.
Back then, the Falcon 9 was a much smaller vehicle.
The entire version 1.0, including the 1st stage, 2nd stage and payload, was almost exactly
the same size as only the first stage of today’s Falcon 9, version 1.2.
Version 1.2 has almost 50% more thrust than version 1.0, they’ve added landing legs,
grid fins, nitrogen thrusters, super chilled propellant and stretched the tanks of both
stages…
SpaceX was very busy tweaking the Falcon 9 in just 20 flights!
So already, just by looking at how much the Falcon 9 has evolved, two things become clear.
First off, some of the missions Falcon Heavy was slated to fly could now fly on the much
upgraded Falcon 9 such as Inmarsat-5 F4 and Intelsat 35e both of which flew in 2017.
The other thing is SpaceX realized the Falcon 9 still had so much maturing to do, it seemed
silly to put all the research and development into the Falcon Heavy if the core of the vehicle
wasn’t even mature yet.
Obviously the SpaceX team knew about the future of the Falcon 9, something that in hindsight
clearly led to delaying the Falcon Heavy.
This pivot is the opposite of the sunk cost fallacy.
This is perhaps the biggest paradigm shift in SpaceX’s philosophy compared to more
traditional aerospace companies.
This approach allows SpaceX to be nimble enough to evolve with their rocket and not say “well
we’ve already put this much effort into Falcon Heavy, let’s just fly it as is.”
Imagine if they had committed to launching a Falcon Heavy based on version 1.0 of the
Falcon 9…
All of the engineering on the loads and stresses would be out the window, let alone recovery
hardware would’ve been non-existent.
So it was clearly the right move to wait until the Falcon 9 was more mature.
So let’s move on to what things actually had to be developed for Falcon Heavy.
What exactly do we know is new with Falcon Heavy that’s unique compared to the Falcon 9
First off, we keep saying the Falcon Heavy is essentially 3 Falcon 9’s strapped together…
so what exactly holds them together?
Well here’s a fun word for you, LONGERONS!
The Falcon Heavy is held together by 8 relatively thin rods that hold the entire vehicle together.
Four at the top of the boosters and four at the bottom of the boosters.
There’s also 4 additional supports that tie the centers of each core together, again,
2 at the top and 2 at the bottom for a total of 12 supports.
Longerons might be more commonly known as struts….
Especially if you’re familiar with Kerbal Space Program!
MOAR STRUTS!!!!
A few common examples of rockets with obvious struts are the Space Shuttle and ULA’s awesome
awesome Delta IV Heavy.
"Oh amazing. Beautiful"
Back to the Falcon Heavy, the four Longerons let go of the top of the boosters first and
then tuck in tight against the fuselage of the center core while the two side boosters
begin to peel away.
The four longerons at the base are tied into the octawebs of all 3 cores.
They'll release after the top of the side cores tilt away from the center core.
SpaceX is against using pyrotechnics.
They want things to be testable, repeatable and most importantly, reusable.
This means SpaceX tends to rely on hydraulics for all those moving parts, so get ready to
see some awesome shots of them in action.
Another aspect is the loads the center core will encounter.
Don’t forget, the Falcon Heavy can loft a payload around three times heavier than
a standard Falcon 9, so this means the stresses through the center core of the vehicle, including
the second stage and the payload adapter could be about three times as high as well.
SpaceX had to carefully redesign the center core to deal with these heavier loads.
It’s fairly safe to say there’s not as much in common with the center core of the
Falcon Heavy and a standard Falcon 9 as you may think.
Considering the center core has an entirely different interstage, a different octaweb,
and the fuselage needs to handle much higher loads, there’s a lot more engineering involved
than just swapping out a few parts.
Another thing to notice is the grid fins.
The side boosters of the Falcon Heavy have a more aerodynamic nose cone compared to the
interstage of the Falcon Heavy center core or a standard Falcon 9.
This means the grid fins actually have less control authority due to the aerodynamic properties
of having less drag at the tail end of the falling rocket… remember when it comes back
down, the nose cone is now the tail cone.
We first saw the next generation titanium grid fins on the Iridium NEXT launch which
took place June 25th, 2017.
To date, that was the only launch that SpaceX has launched with the upgraded titanium grid
Beyond preparing them for the upcoming block V version of Falcon 9, SpaceX was probably
just testing their work to make sure these could be used for Falcon Heavy as well.
Now here’s a shot of the two grid fins side by side.
We can see the titanium grid fins have a much larger surface area than the aluminum grid fins.
The titanium grid fins also feature a “bear trap” serrated leading edge.
Typically when the vehicle is transitioning from supersonic to subsonic, otherwise known
as the transonic region, grid fins become less effective because a shockwave forms within
the lattice structure and the air flows around the grid fin instead of through it.
These serrated grid fins do the trick to allow for greater control during this otherwise
dicey period.
On a funny side note, when researching this particular topic, I found out there’s ENTIRE
BOOKS about the aerodynamic analysis of lattice grid fins in transonic flow, such as this
book titled, “Aerodynamic Analysis of Lattice Grid Fins in Transonic Flow“!!!
One more fun aspect I wanted to make sure we mention is the fact that SpaceX essentially
got nearly 2/3rds of the rocket for free in a sense.
The two sidecore boosters are previously flown and recovered Falcon 9 boosters.
One of these boosters is from CRS-9 which flew July 18, 2016 & the other from Thaicom
8 which flew on May 27th, 2016.
The two side cores were lightly refurbished and outfitted with everything necessary to
transition from being a Falcon 9 to being a Falcon Heavy side core.
Since the side core boosters don’t have to deal with the same loads as the center core, they
didn’t have have to make any major changes to the fuselages.
Considering how risky this Falcon Heavy launch is, the fact that SpaceX was able to use two
previously flown boosters is probably another reason they waited so long to make Falcon
Heavy happen.
I mean, prior to December 22nd, 2015, there just simply hadn’t been any recovered boosters
in existence… and now SpaceX have over a dozen!
So I think it was the right move to wait.
Remember how earlier I had mentioned plans of propellant cross-feed in the initial announcement?
Well, unfortunately, Elon mentioned they are currently no longer pursuing cross-feed with
Falcon Heavy.
Awwww
Although they may pursue it later.
This is most likely due to the 50% increase in thrust SpaceX has been able to squeeze
out of the Merlin engines.
They’re already increased the performance of the vehicle drastically and they just simply
don’t need the propellant cross-feed.
Besides that, Falcon Heavy is plenty capable until SpaceX gets their next generation rocket,
the BFR online.
Let’s move onto what the biggest risks Falcon Heavy encounters for its first launch.
Let’s start with the biggest elephant in the room… igniting 27 orbital class engines
at once…
Those of us familiar with spaceflight history may have flashbacks to the last time a rocket
tried to fly with so many engines.
The massive and ludicrous N1 rocket.
The N1 was the Soviet Union’s counterpart the United States’ Saturn V moon rocket.
The first stage had 30 NK-15 engines which were all lit simultaneously.
The N1 launched 4 times… and all four ended with massive fireballs, and some blasts were
so big, it shattered windows 6 miles away.
So what’s changed since 1972 and today that ensures the Falcon Heavy can safely manage
27 engines?
Well, a lot.
But take for example the fact that SpaceX has fired the Merlin engine over 5,600 times
and they have only experienced one Merlin engine fail in flight… so they’re working
with a much more mature and much more robust engine as well as much more advanced engine
control systems.
Also, don’t forget, 27 engines, although a lot, isn’t that much more tihan the 20
engines on the Soyuz rocket.
And the Soyuz is one of the most reliable and most flown rockets in history.
So…
I don’t think they’re getting too far out there on this one.
While we’re talking about 27 engines lighting at once, we need to be pedantic for a minute.
Technically, they won’t actually light simultaneously.
They will need to stagger the ignition of the engines so the instant torque thrust doesn’t
rip the octawebs apart.
This might be something we can’t even see in real time, but I hope we can see it in
some high speed footage.
Another major risk is the vibrations of having 27 engines chugging along at full thrust.
The three cores have a total a total of 22,819 kilonewtons or just over 5 million pounds
of thrust at liftoff.
Despite being able to model these vibrations in highly accurate computer simulations, there’s
nothing like the real thing.
Another major unknown is the stresses the vehicle will experience at Max Q, or the point
of maximum aerodynamic pressure.
These forces, although fairly well understood, will be entirely new for Falcon Heavy.
And again, there’s been wind tunnel testing, computer models and the like, but there’s
nothing like the real thing.
If the Falcon Heavy makes it through Max Q, I'll consider that a success.
But there’s one more major portion of flight that will be unique to the Falcon Heavy compared
to the Falcon 9.
And that's booster separation.
Now we’ve already talked about how longerons work, but there’s a lot of unknowns here.
This will certainly be another major pucker moment.
If the two boosters separate cleanly, I'll will be cheering so loud…
I’m not sure I’ll be able to contain myself.
"Come on!" (Cheering)
Booster separation will probably happen a little earlier than stage separation of a
standard Falcon 9.
At this point the two boosters will turn around and head back to LZ-1 and LZ-2 the two landings
pads at Cape Canaveral where they’ll land virtually simultaneously.
Ahhhhh!!!!
Yeah, I won't be able to handle that at all.
I'm going to actually crap my pants.
Despite the lack of propellant crossfeed like we mentioned earlier, the center core will
throttle down during ascent so it has propellant remaining to give an additional boost to the
second stage.
Most likely, depending on the profile of the mission, this means the center core will always
be too far down range to ever do a return to launch site landing or RTLS.
Most likely, the center core will be landing on a drone ship very far down range, potentially
much further down range than a standard Falcon 9.
Once there’s stage separation of the center core and the second stage, the second stage
will continue along much like a standard Falcon 9 and take its payload to its intended destination.
And for the demo mission of Falcon Heavy, the intended destination is Mars!
So what are your thoughts on Falcon Heavy?
Do you think it's going to succeed or are you a little bit skeptical?
And what about the time?
Do you think it's going to fly anytime soon or will it be another 6 months away?
Well, let me know.
I have two polls.
I want to hear when do you think it's going to fly and the other if it's going to succeed
or if it's going to fail.
And we'll have different options of when it might encounter a failure.
So I want to hear from you.
But personally.
I actually think it's going to be a complete success and I think we're going to see a Tesla
heading to the red planet.
But that's just me, forever an optimist.
Good rocket.
I owe the biggest thanks to Oli Braun, the wizard behind those beautiful models and the
3D renderings.
Make sure and find him on twitter to keep up with his amazing work @Oli_Braun.
There's a link in the description.
Make sure you're subscribed so you can join the discussion when we continue to learn more about
the Falcon Heavy.
Also I live host SpaceX launches starting about 30 minutes before liftoff.
So come ask questions and join the conversation live!
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Tell a friend!
Thanks everybody that does it for me.
I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut.
Bringing space down to Earth for everyday people.
As a matter of fact I'm gonna take a phone call here real quick from Jerry.
(Yeah you guys sold me a rocket and it destroyed my family)
Ok I.
(It ruined them.
Now they don't even exist anymore)
Listen I didn't do that to your family, that was Steve.
(it's actually very tragic and I'm VERY MAD AT YOU)
Ok I hear you loud and clear, so Jerry on the phone is asking
Today this is the best we have folks.
This is it.
This is the kum de gra.
This is the cream de flem.
This is the mart de gra.
This is the bull le kell.
This is the Bill Nye.
This is the Science Guy.
This is it folks!
I don't know what you heard.
I don't know who told you!