I think we will see a FH debut only after SpaceX has landed a F9 booster at the Cape (RTLS). They will attempt to recover all three boosters of the FH Demo flight. There is simply no good reason to speed up the FH Demo flight (except us waiting for it... ) ...
Quote from: Bynaus on 02/16/2015 02:50 pmI think we will see a FH debut only after SpaceX has landed a F9 booster at the Cape (RTLS). They will attempt to recover all three boosters of the FH Demo flight. There is simply no good reason to speed up the FH Demo flight (except us waiting for it... ) ...That's not true. There's a big portion of the launch market, the part with the most revenue in it (or at least comparable to F9's market), that can't be addressed until Falcon Heavy has flown.The sooner they fly Falcon Heavies, the sooner they can compete for all the defense payloads. F9 can only serve about half of those, and the revenue on that lighter half is significantly less than the heavier half.There are also a lot of commercial payloads which they can't compete for without Falcon Heavy, the highest revenue commercial payloads....lots of very good reasons to speed up the Falcon Heavy Demo (although even more crucial will be ensuring it launches without major failure). They may still do the FH flight after the first RTLS F9s, but that's a different issue. (I personally think FH probably won't launch until 2016.)
...Falcon Heavy is not using cross-feed. They're not developing it. I was at SpaceX several months ago and asked about cross-feed and was told by one of the people working on the rocket that they are not developing it....
@Blackstar posted some interesting tidbits about the Falcon Heavy in the "Proposed Europa Missions" thread.Quote...Falcon Heavy is not using cross-feed. They're not developing it. I was at SpaceX several months ago and asked about cross-feed and was told by one of the people working on the rocket that they are not developing it....link
Back in October I had lunch sitting next to a guy from Aerojet who was working on an upper stage for (I think) Falcon Heavy to enable SpaceX to compete for the Solar Probe Plus mission. Dunno if that's gone public anywhere, but it may be mentioned elsewhere on this site. Anyway, they're locked out of a number of missions unless they upgrade their hardware.
One other thing: Falcon Heavy is not using cross-feed. They're not developing it. I was at SpaceX several months ago and asked about cross-feed and was told by one of the people working on the rocket that they are not developing it. It's a potential upgrade if somebody pays for it, but they're not doing the development. So you shouldn't use it in your calculations.
Hopefully this is the right thread for this question.Has SpaceX said anything for sure about if they plan to upgrade LC-40 to handle FH?I'd assume they would, perhaps after 39A is up and fully functional becuase an upgrade to LC-40 like that will mean it'll be out of commission for awhile, and their manifest is packed right now. But I don't recall anything for sure about it, other than an old comment by Elon saying they might build a FH HIB at a 90 degree angle to the F9 HIB. I think that was before 39A was in the mix, so they could keep flying F9 while upgrading to FH. With 39A operational, I think they can just fly from there and tear down the F9 HIB and build the FH HIB thereOr will they just leave LC-40 launching F9 only?
Quote from: Robotbeat on 02/16/2015 04:09 pmQuote from: Bynaus on 02/16/2015 02:50 pmI think we will see a FH debut only after SpaceX has landed a F9 booster at the Cape (RTLS). They will attempt to recover all three boosters of the FH Demo flight. There is simply no good reason to speed up the FH Demo flight (except us waiting for it... ) ...That's not true. There's a big portion of the launch market, the part with the most revenue in it (or at least comparable to F9's market), that can't be addressed until Falcon Heavy has flown.The sooner they fly Falcon Heavies, the sooner they can compete for all the defense payloads. F9 can only serve about half of those, and the revenue on that lighter half is significantly less than the heavier half.There are also a lot of commercial payloads which they can't compete for without Falcon Heavy, the highest revenue commercial payloads....lots of very good reasons to speed up the Falcon Heavy Demo (although even more crucial will be ensuring it launches without major failure). They may still do the FH flight after the first RTLS F9s, but that's a different issue. (I personally think FH probably won't launch until 2016.)Yes, these are good points. But then, competing for defense payloads means going for certification, and this means you need to have a near-final version of the vehicle you want to certify ready, otherwise the clock is reset every time you re-introduce a new feature (e.g., cross-feed, fuel densification, uprated Merlins, RTLS etc.). From this point of view, it might be better to have all that ready for FH Demo, which will take time. ...
If that guy's project is official it sounds like Aerojet Rocketdyne is trying to build a future for itself that doesn't rely on ULA. I was going to write that this was surprising back-stabbing of its close business partner ULA but then I remembered that ULA has already cheated on that marriage with their funding of XCOR's RL-10 competitor.
From the Europa science thread Blackstar posted some juicy Falcon Heavy info:Quote from: Blackstar on 02/16/2015 02:20 pmBack in October I had lunch sitting next to a guy from Aerojet who was working on an upper stage for (I think) Falcon Heavy to enable SpaceX to compete for the Solar Probe Plus mission. Dunno if that's gone public anywhere, but it may be mentioned elsewhere on this site. Anyway, they're locked out of a number of missions unless they upgrade their hardware.I wonder what sort of fuel that upper stage would use. Aerojet Rocketdyne has a suitable hydrogen engine (RL-10), various hypergolic engines (e.g. Shuttle OMS) and solids experience (e.g. Orion FTS jettison motor) so there are a lot of plausible options.If that guy's project is official it sounds like Aerojet Rocketdyne is trying to build a future for itself that doesn't rely on ULA. I was going to write that this was surprising back-stabbing of its close business partner ULA but then I remembered that ULA has already cheated on that marriage with their funding of XCOR's RL-10 competitor.QuoteOne other thing: Falcon Heavy is not using cross-feed. They're not developing it. I was at SpaceX several months ago and asked about cross-feed and was told by one of the people working on the rocket that they are not developing it. It's a potential upgrade if somebody pays for it, but they're not doing the development. So you shouldn't use it in your calculations.Without cross feed Falcon Heavy can send 45 tonnes to LEO according to http://www.spacex.com/falcon-heavy. I suppose that's the best estimate of Falcon Heavy performance to LEO we have currently?SpaceX's plans for the heaviest payloads involve the BFR so it makes sense that they don't see a need to optimize FH's capacity.