Complete text of Elon's comments on Falcon Heavy:First of all I should say that Falcon Heavy requires the simultaneous ignition of 27 orbital class engines. There's a lot that could go wrong there. And I encourage people to come down to the Cape and see the first Falcon Heavy mission. It's guaranteed to be exciting. But it's one of those things that's really difficult to test on the ground. We can fire the engines on the ground and try to simulate the dynamics of having 27 orbital booster engines and the airflow as it goes transonic. It's going to see heavy transonic buffeting. It's behavior at Max Q, there's a lot of risks associated with Falcon Heavy. Real good chance that that first vehicle doesn't make it to orbit. So I want to make sure to set expectations accordingly. I hope it makes it far enough away from the pad that it's not going to cause damage. I would consider that a win, honestly. And yeah. Major pucker factor is the only way to describe it. I think Falcon Heavy is going to be a great vehicle. There's just a lot that's impossible to test on the ground. And we'll do our best. And it ended up being way harder to do Falcon Heavy than we thought. Because at first it sounds really easy to just stick to first stages on as strap-on side boosters. But then everything changes. The loads change, the air dynamics totally change. You triple the vibration and acoustics. So you break the qualification levels and so much of the hardware. The amount of load you’re putting through that center core is crazy because you have two super powerful boosters also shoving that center core. So we had to redesign the whole center-core airframe on the Falcon 9 because it’s going to take so much load. And then you’ve got the separation systems... and, yeah, it just ended up being way way more difficult than we originally thought. We were pretty naive about that. But the next thing is that we're going to fully optimize it. It has about 2.5 times the payload capacity of the Falcon 9. We’re well over 100,000 lb to LEO payload capability. And then it has enough thrust performance to put us in a loop with Dragon 2 around the moon. And Dragon itself, the heat shield is designed with a huge amount of margin. So it has enough margin to handle a lunar reentry. But no question, whoever is on the first flight, brave.
A new generation of giant rockets is about to blast offhttp://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-heavy-lift-rockets-20170716-htmlstory.html
“There is a part of the commercial market that requires Falcon Heavy,” said Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX. “It’s there, and it’s going to be consistent, but it’s much smaller than we thought.”...Shotwell said the company is currently working to see if it can bring the side boosters back to land, which would require overhauling its landing zone at Cape Canaveral. SpaceX may also need to build more droneships if the company chooses to land the side boosters at sea, she said.
Thought I remember reading somewhere that there's a possibility of Falcon Heavy going through more than one static fire on 39A before the actual launch count. Am I making that up, so can someone point me to where I ready that?
There will be a combined booster static fire. Maybe a few.
Quote from: ChrisGebhardt on 07/19/2017 09:30 pmThought I remember reading somewhere that there's a possibility of Falcon Heavy going through more than one static fire on 39A before the actual launch count. Am I making that up, so can someone point me to where I ready that?I think this is what you are thinking of:https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/867667009839931393QuoteThere will be a combined booster static fire. Maybe a few.
They're setting expectations for FH to be really low, I understood it to be a difficult task but they've clearly run into more issues than expected.
Quote from: Khadgars on 07/19/2017 09:47 pmThey're setting expectations for FH to be really low, I understood it to be a difficult task but they've clearly run into more issues than expected.Yeah, I'm surprised how heavily Elon is caveating the first launch. And I'm even more surprised how severely SpaceX underestimated FH challenges per the Chris Gebhardt quote. Or perhaps, how much Elon underestimated things? I'd be shocked if many of the engineers didn't know how complicated things were going to get. I know that former Boeing/ULA engineers worked on Delta IV Heavy went on to SpaceX, so at the very least those people knew what was coming ...
But if you think about it, they do have to have some confidence that it'd work to some extent right? I mean, it wouldn't be good if it went boom since 39A is sort off vital to commercial crew. Would they seriously risk that?
Quote from: Krankenhausen on 07/19/2017 10:46 pmBut if you think about it, they do have to have some confidence that it'd work to some extent right? I mean, it wouldn't be good if it went boom since 39A is sort off vital to commercial crew. Would they seriously risk that?Have you ever heard of the concept of "managing expectations"? This is what Elon does. He routinely low-balls the chances of success whenever something new is tried for the first time. (and even after that too) FH won't launch until SpaceX is very confident it will hold together enough to clear 39A and beyond.
People entering into a complex challenge always underestimate its complexity. Kinda like Trump saying "Who knew how complex healthcare was?" Well, the experts know. But most people don't realize just how deep the rabbit hole goes for any given field. See the Dunning-Kruger Effect for more details.
Quote from: whitelancer64 on 07/19/2017 10:38 pmPeople entering into a complex challenge always underestimate its complexity. Kinda like Trump saying "Who knew how complex healthcare was?" Well, the experts know. But most people don't realize just how deep the rabbit hole goes for any given field. See the Dunning-Kruger Effect for more details.thanks, while I was all too aware of the phenomena and its corollary I never knew there was a name for it. Perhaps I have given Elon too much credit regarding his genius -- I always thought Elon knew he was making ridiculous schedule claims as a way of drumming up hype and pushing his workforce, but perhaps he really does believe the dates he puts out. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle...
So can anyone share a little bit about the development of Delta IV Heavy?