A recent video of Elon mentioned that it was really hard to strap them together, but if they've overcome that, why build BFR?
He argued exactly why in his 2nd presentation (with the revised and smaller BFR).
His belief is that a launch of the BFR will actually be cheaper than a launch of a Falcon Heavy, or even a Falcon 9. This isn't accounting for payload, he was saying the cost of of single launch would be lower for the BFR - it's a bombastic claim.
Having read about this subject, I can at least grok the economic argument. SpaceX is already in the rocket reuse business, and over the long run their costs will limit to the costs involved with refurbishment. Falcon Heavy will always have a higher operational cost because of the management of the 3 separate cores. Having only a single massive core offers obvious cost reduction.
There's also the business case for reducing the number of products they are supporting. Since the large rocket can launch small payloads, they can just use it for all their customers. Cost savings come in the form of simplification of the company's processes. Again, since they are now a rocket reuse business, this is possibly their primary cost driver.
While I understand that all in business terms, they're missing a critical component - sufficient proven demand to support enough volume to justify these investments and consolidation. Right now, there are not enough customers in the world to justify an investment to replace all Falcons with BFRs. They have an answer to that (however flawed), and that answer is simply "Mars".
Probably BFR will lower the launch cost low enough that would create new customers.
I didn't think he actually said it'd be cheaper. If it's not, there will be room for a competitor.
>> There's also the business case for reducing the number of products they are supporting.
That was my take on what he said, and if there's a case for BFR then perhaps it makes sense.
>> Right now, there are not enough customers in the world to justify an investment to replace all Falcons with BFRs. They have an answer to that (however flawed), and that answer is simply "Mars".
Nice thing about a private company. Elon doesn't really have to answer to anyone. Well, actually he's got enough investors that maybe he does, but they all understand his goals are bigger than just making money. BFR will be the ferry to mars and that opens a door. Nobody know what lies behind that door and I think his investors want to know as much as anyone.
I agree, they are taking on huge risk attempting something on the scale of BFR. It seems likely that development will take much longer than planned giving their competitors time to catch up.
Plus faring size is much bigger on the BFR, which is needed for the Mars plans.
A single core makes more sense, specially because you can put a bigger space ship on top for a rocket of equal power.
The 3 core design is only a economic way to get a bigger rocket with a existing design. Look at the Delta 4 Heavy for example.
I wonder if that is possible. The weight of the car is much less than the 140,000 pound payload it could carry, so it could be sent much further if they wanted to.
From a response from Elon Musk:
> It’s going near Mars. He said it’ll be placed in “a precessing Earth-Mars elliptical orbit around the sun.” What he means by this is what’s sometimes called a Hohmann transfer orbit, an orbit around the Sun that takes it as close to the Sun as Earth and as far out as Mars. This is a low-energy orbit; that is, it takes the least amount of energy to put something in this orbit from Earth. That makes sense for a first flight.
http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/elon-musk-on-the-roadster-to-ma...
Needless to say, I'm extremely excited to even see a static fire of this monster. Re-using boosters for your early development is pretty nice and efficient too I imagine.
It sounds good on paper but it's not easy in practice, see: the Russian N-1 moon rocket, which basically just took the R7 rocket and scaled it up with more engines. Turns out too many engines means too many points of failure, and the rocket never worked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)
Much like in computing, you can't substitute one oxen with a thousand chickens and expect the same outcome when you plow your field.
SpaceX has already shown that with modern control systems, you can bundle a bunch of chickens together to plow a field. Having 9 engines has already helped them complete missions where one failed. The Falcon Heavy problem isn't scaling from 9 to 27 per se, it's building a new structure to handle all the new stresses that will occur, from the launch sequence to aerodynamic.
Which is too bad, because it would be really awesome if they had managed to make it work.
This is easier then one would think because the rocket is fuelled and the engines already have a hard time living the rocket at all.
They use the same launch pad during launch and the clamps only release when the computer has made sure all engines have correctly stared and are running correctly.
Check out the video from RocketLab when they had a launch abort to see a example of this.
I'm not even joking. That's the goal.
How do we know that the Elon Musk of 3000BC didn’t just build a big obelisk for the lulz?
Probably a bigger question of the problems of inferring great significance from extremely few samples...
Mars would be a new thing. If this fails it will still be orbiting the sun, but as a distributed cluster this time.
I find it disappointing, however, that a worthy scientific payload isn't being launched. There was a late cancellation of a moon orbiter mission a few years back because of European Space Agency budget concerns (http://www.esa.int/Education/ESA_concludes_student_ESMO_Moon...). Could they not have adapted something for a Mars mission?
Seems a waste to send an automobile advertisement into orbit around Mars for eternity.
Funny how this will probably be the best preserved Tesla Roadster in a couple of decades.
On the mars orbit thing - I think we have people who try to make sure that we don't contaminate Mars with Earth bacteria any more than we can avoid. You would think people would take a dim view of sticking a random car in Mars orbit, where it will probably decay and crash to the surface eventually.
As they have excessive load capacity for the second stage with this test mission, but no commecial cargo to transport, if Elons tweets are to believed, they plan to send his 2008 Tesla Roadster into a Mars orbit. Beyond winning any award for sillyness, if SpaceX manages to do that, it would be the first private mission to the Mars orbit, which would be another big feat.
Good god that's funny. I didn't realize the roadster was going anywhere, so it seemed stupid. But just imagine once people forget about this in 50 years. Perhaps we even have people on mars. But every few years someone post to the equivalent of HN a link to a wikipedia article about this car orbiting the sun... Or what if modern society suffers a setback (an actual nuclear war or something) and knowledge of this is forgotten and centuries hence, people redevelop technology and get images of it. Best joke ever.
https://i.redd.it/whrexuerscpz.png
Of the rockets in that photo however, everything other than the Falcon 9 either isn't in production yet, or isn't anymore.
[1]: https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/explore-attractions/race-...
And then, after walking quite a distance down the length of the rocket, realising they’ve left out the middle stage because it doesn’t fit in the vast building it is in. I laughed in disbelief.
It is really cool to see such a large rocket on its side, and to walk through the control room they used.
Tell you what why don't I actually read the wiki
1. Electronics issue
2. turbo pump exploded - material science
3. aerodynamics
4. blew the plumbing when 6 engines were planned shut down at higher altitude. I'd argue that's a control issue.
I wonder which method the Falcon Heavy uses.
The many smaller engines approach is useful for re-using boosters. When coming back in to land, the stage is almost empty, so very light compared to when it launched. The problem then is reducing thrust far enough to be able to do a propulsive landing. Even with one F9 engine lit, and it throttled down, there's still too much thrust to hover, so the timing has to be really good to reach zero velocity at zero altitude.
The Soviets didn't produce anything rivaling the F-1 until the RD-170 in the mid-80s, and that uses 4 thrust chambers instead of 1 as the F-1.
Beyond being just a cool new rocket, what faszinates me most about the F9Heavy, is the clever system approach by SpaceX. They are not only reusing the F9 design, but two of the three first stage cores alreay had launched cargo into the orbit. This is just mindblowing.
And Ariane 6.
And Falcon 9 (which can lift as much as the Ariane rockets)
And BFR.
Yea, the US really should be spending $20B in taxpayer dollars building a new heavy lift rocket system that has zero re-usablity.
between this and deep sea exploration it just amazes me that technology has opened this to private industry and people. that is the science "fiction" I have been waiting to see come about
Here are both the landing videos of the side cores that will be flying on the F9H https://youtu.be/4jEz03Z8azc https://youtu.be/DKqY8sy3nkM?t=55s
[0] https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/launches-and-events/event...
Low Earth Orbit Payload: Falcon Heavy: 140,000lb, Saturn V: 260,000lb
Launch cost: Falcon Heavy: ~$140M, Saturn V: $185M ($1B+ in 2016 dollars)
It blows my mind how crazy Saturn V was and it was 50 years ago.
Giving up the capabilities of the Saturn V hurt and cost every other project there after.
Look at the Space Station. It was way way more expensive because it had to be assembled in lots of flights.
The same goes for some of the deep space probs and space telescopes, they had to be designed often limited by small rockets.
Giving up the Saturn V was the biggest mistake the US Space program ever made. We are still working under that mistake and now have 3 groups trying to finally achieve something like it again, SLS, BFR, New Armstrong.
Also it's 140000 lbs, or 63800kg.
I'm curious to know more about the engineering constraints/trade-offs this puts the rockets under, so if anyone knows more I'd love to hear it!
With a rocket like the Atlas V, the upper stage and payload are integrated with the first stage while it is vertical. This is a common approach taken with rockets that frequently fly satellites with big mirrors in them (if the payload is never tipped on its side, it's a lot easier to secure the heavy optics inside).
SpaceX does not currently support vertical integration, they only support horizontal integration. Generally speaking customers prefer vertical integration, since it makes their payload design easier (and in some cases it's a hard requirement), so SpaceX will be adding vertical integration support at their LC-39A launch pad (mostly for government launches).
Essentially it boils down to what g-forces your rocket components and payload are able to withstand. Designing for zero (in orbit) and high vertical (during liftoff) is tough enough, but a rocket that's horizontally built/integrated _also_ needs to withstand ~1G laterally. It may not sound like a big deal, but when every kg counts, I believe it adds up to a bunch of additional strengthening parts, plus a lot more FEA at design time.
Rockets are fabricated and transported horizontally. The distinction is whether the rocket is vertical or horizontal when the payload is attached.
And of course Blue Origin has a lot riding on this as well :-) If SpaceX can get the heavy operational before BO gets the New Glenn operational, its going to be that much harder for Bezos to find any customers left for his rocket.
Given the lower costs of the re-usable platform one would hope we could effectively address some of the space junk issues.
But that isn't really "private space flight" where I imagine tourists flying up to Bigelow inflated habititats for a three day stay where couples can experiment with zero g sex after getting over their motion sickness issues. That market seems a bit fanciful yet.
http://spacenews.com/blue-origin-signs-up-third-customer-for...
Edit. Looking closer I'm wrong - the titanium grid fins are on the side boosters and the the centre core is aluminium
Not sure why they went with the new fins on the side cores and not the center core... The side cores are going to have a pretty tame reentry (gentler than a Falcon 9 to LEO), while the center core will be coming in very hot. Currently they only use the titanium fins on very hot GTO reentries.
Photos from Elon Musk, mentioned in the Techcrunch article:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bc62hfJgf8K/
Looking at the last one... that's an amount of engine nozzles I've never seen together before, beyond works of sci-fi and (obviously) Kerbal Space Program.
Edit: still had the app installed. Nothing to see here....
But this thing is going further from the earth than all but a few dozen man-made things in history. I have to wonder if some scientist has been waiting their entire life for an opportunity like this, and we're blowing it on a Tesla Roadster?
They should just test it and then the scientists can argue for cheaper and larger projects because they have a rocket option now.
Good luck to them. Will be interesting to watch this beast launch!
Honestly; thank you for taking the time to spread the knowledge.
I can highly recommend going. I saw a launch in January, from the LC39 gantry, and it was truly stunning. Be prepared to go several days in a row though, in case of scrubbed launches. You’ll need to buy a new ticket if the launch gets scrubbed as well, they don’t issue refunds once you’ve left on the shuttle bus I think, so it’s worth thinking about when budgeting the trip.
Also, pro-tip: get a yearly pass. Gets you in to the visitor complex as much as you want for a year, and becomes economical after two or three admission tickets, and also includes parking which is $10 or so otherwise I think. I got a yearly pass, and saved on admission and parking a fair bit since I went back probably 5-6 times. The launch I saw was scrubbed once. The other times I just geeked out. ;o)
Example of past availability: https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/launches-and-events/event...
