Elon Musk's huge Falcon Heavy rocket set for launch (~8:45pm)

Elon Musk will attempt to fly the world's most powerful rocket later with his own sports car on the top.

The US entrepreneur's Falcon Heavy launcher is designed to have twice the lifting capacity of any other vehicle.

But because of the historic high failure rate of maiden flights, only a dummy payload is being risked.

Mr Musk has decided this should be his old cherry-red Tesla roadster with a space-suited mannequin strapped in the driver's seat.

David Bowie's classic hit Space Oddity will be looping on the radio as the car is hurled into an elliptical orbit that stretches out to Mars' orbit around the Sun. q

"[The roadster will] get about 400 million km away from Earth, and it'll be doing 11km/s," he told reporters in a briefing on Monday. "We estimate it will be in that orbit for several hundred million years, maybe in excess of a billion years."

Three cameras attached to the car would provide "epic views", Mr Musk added.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42950957

So yeah, maiden test flight for Falcon Heavy is occuring at ~8:45pm, with Elon Musk's car on board. If it goes well, it will enter an elliptical orbit around the Sun that will take it close to that of Mars. Purpose of this is to show such payloads can reach the orbit of Mars. Alternatively it could just fail.

If you want to watch it, there's a livestream that will start sometime near the launch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbSwFU6tY1c

And some guys have a livestream with some pre-launch commentary here: https://www.twitch.tv/dasvaldez (They're going offline, but will be back around ~7:15pm).

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 1

dhr90

I'm guessing it will probably fail, will still watch though, always impressive to see the sheer power of a space rocket.

Reply 2

MrSuavetopia

Original post by dhr90

I'm guessing it will probably fail, will still watch though, always impressive to see the sheer power of a space rocket.

Yup, I always loved watching the Space Shuttle launches, such a sight of my childhood :biggrin:

Reply 3

dhr90

Original post by MrDystopia

Yup, I always loved watching the Space Shuttle launches, such a sight of my childhood :biggrin:

Only saw a few online, gutted to have never seen one in person :frown:

Reply 4

dhr90

That was bloody brilliant. Didn't realise they were going for the return to earth and landing of the boosters and core. 2018 has peaked far too early though.

Reply 5

uberteknik

Outstanding achievement. Watched it on the live feed and felt the goose bumps and hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

Science, engineering, technology and teamwork at it's finest. The people who worked on this will be on a well earned blinder tonight - but not the peeps controlling the mission.

This capability has just undercut the next largest heavy lift vehicle (Delta IV) by a whopping 80+ % in launch cost per Kg to LEO.

The Falcon Heavy is entirely funded by a private company with private money. Another first is that Tesla Roadster now in LEO. Within the next two hours, if confirmed, it will be placed in a trans-Martian orbit. The first payload to ever leave Earth orbit beyond geostationary on a commercially funded, designed, built and launched mission..

The Lunar surface is within reach of the Falcon as is commercial deep space missions to Mars and beyond.

Elon Musk is the inspiration for Robert Downey's character, Tony Stark, of the Iron Man movie fame.

[video="youtube;sB_nEtZxPog"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB_nEtZxPog[/video]

Watch the speed increase and altitude in the top RH boxes of the video. Also watch the return and landing of the booster rockets as they touch down upright simultaneously at the end of the video.

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 6

Manitude

Original post by uberteknik

Outstanding achievement. Watched it on the live feed and felt the goose bumps and hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

Science, Engineering, technology and teamwork at it's finest. The people who worked on this will be on a well earned blinder tonight - but not the peeps controlling the mission.

This capability has just undercut the next largest heavy lift vehicle (Delta IV) by a whopping 80+ % in launch cost per Kg to LEO.

The Falcon Heavy is entirely funded by a private company with private money. Another first is that Tesla Roadster now in LEO. Within the next two hours, if confirmed, it will be placed in a trans-Martian orbit. The first payload to ever leave Earth orbit beyond geostationary.

The Lunar surface is within reach of the Falcon as is commercial deep space missions to Mars and beyond.

Elon Musk is the inspiration for Robert Downey's character, Tony Stark, of the Iron Man movie fame.

[video="youtube;sB_nEtZxPog"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB_nEtZxPog[/video]

I just missed the launch as I was out with my parents, but my god it was fantastic. That footage of the two booster stages touching back down to Earth at exactly the same time is probably going to be shown in documentaries for a long long time.

Reply 7

uberteknik

Original post by dhr90

That was bloody brilliant. Didn't realise they were going for the return to earth and landing of the boosters and core. 2018 has peaked far too early though.

Some really exciting stuff to launch this year. Watch out for:

Parker Solar Probe (PSP) July 31st Cape Canaveral. This mission will study the sun's outer corona and will 'skim' the sun's photosphere at a distance of 3.7 million miles! That is less than 13% of Mercury's closest orbital distance from the sun. It will be the fastest man made object ever, reaching a speed of 124 miles per second (446,000 mph) relative to the sun.

Bepi-Colombo launch. ESA/JAXA mission to place two probes in orbit around Mercury.

NASA's Osiris-REX and JAXA's Hayabusa-2 missions both reach their respective asteroid targets to return samples to Earth.

NASA's Juno mission will end with a dive into Jupiters atmosphere.

China and India both have mission launches as well. India to the Moon and China will place the first module of it's new space station in orbit.

Then there's 2019 and the NASA SLS launch, also the James Webb Space Telescope will be a nail-biter and the DAWN probe fly past of a Kyper-belt object!

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 8

Fullofsurprises

Not too keen on such large portions of the earth's disposable wealth being in individual hands, this more than anything illustrates the sheer scale of the fortunes now at the disposal of the digital oligarchs.

Also, it would have been nice if he'd given the dummy cosmonaut something more to listen to than just the one Bowie track. By the time he reaches the asteroid belt, he's going to be longing for some Bob Marley or even Ed Sheeran.