“When Falcon Heavy lifts off, it will be the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two. With the ability to lift into orbit nearly 64 metric tons (141,000 lb)—a mass greater than a 737 jetliner loaded with passengers, crew, luggage and fuel–Falcon Heavy can lift more than twice the payload of the next closest operational vehicle, the Delta IV Heavy, at one-third the cost.
Falcon Heavy’s first stage is composed of three Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines together generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, equal to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft.
Following liftoff, the two side boosters separate from the center core and return to landing sites for future reuse. The center core, traveling further and faster than the side boosters, also returns for reuse, but lands on a drone ship located in the Atlantic Ocean.
At max velocity the Roadster will travel 11 km/s (7mi/s) and travel 400 million km (250 million mi) from Earth.”
“The SpaceX CRS-13 mission begins with an on-time liftoff of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Launch occurred on December 15 at 10:36 a.m. EST. The Dragon is carrying equipment, science and supplies to the International Space Station on SpaceX’s 13th commercial cargo resupply mission.”
“SpaceX’s Rocket Development and Test Facility in McGregor, Texas is used for research and development of new rocket engines and thrusters as well as for testing final manufactured engines, various components, and engines during development. Although SpaceX manufactures all of their rocket engines and thrusters at their Hawthorne headquarters, each must pass through McGregor where the company tests each new engine off of the assembly line as well as those being developed for future missions to orbit and beyond before each one can be used on a flight mission. […] Extensive and repeated rocket engine testing is a key to increasing reliability and thereby mission success, while lowering operating cost for SpaceX. Dragon spacecraft, following use on a space mission, splashdown and recovery, are shipped to McGregor for de-fueling, cleanup, and refurbishment for potential reuse in flight missions. The first scaled methane-fueled Raptor rocket engine, manufactured at the Hawthorne facility in California, shipped to McGregor by August 2016 for development testing.
In 2011, the company announced plans to upgrade the facility for launch testing a VTVL rocket, known as Grasshopper, and then constructed a half-acre concrete launch facility in 2012 to support the test flight program. After 8 flights of Grasshopper, and 5 flights of its successor “F9R Dev1” between 2012 and 2014, the FAA permit to fly Grasshopper flight tests in Texas expired in October 2014.
The company originally purchased the McGregor testing facilities of defunct Beal Aerospace—on land which was formerly a munitions manufacturing plant during World War II — where it refitted the largest test stand at the facilities for Falcon 9 engine testing. SpaceX has made a number of improvements to the facility since purchase, and has also extended the size of the facility by purchasing several pieces of adjacent farmland. The area to support the test facility was initially just 256 acres (104 ha) but by April 2011 this more than doubled to over 600 acres (240 ha). With only three initial employees onsite, the facility grew to over 140 employees by late 2011. As of October 2012, the McGregor facility consisted of seven test stands operated 18 hours a day, six days a week, and was building more test stands because production was ramping up and the company had a large manifest in the next several years. As of September 2013, the McGregor facility operated 11 test stands involved in the rocket engine test program, and was averaging two tests each day. The largest test stand by 2013 was the 82 meters (269 ft) tall Falcon 9 tripod. As of March 2015, the facility comprised 4,000 acres (1,600 ha), with 12 test stands; it had run over 4000 Merlin engine tests, including some 50 firings of the integrated nine-engine first stage.
In May 2016, the McGregor City Council instituted more restrictive rules on rocket engine, rocket stage, and low-altitude flight testing. SpaceX has not commented publicly on how the new rules will affect their testing operations, nor whether they will be evaluating other locations where they might conduct such testing.”
“The BFR, which is variously said to stand for either Big Falcon Rocket or Big F@#$%^& Rocket, announced in September 2017, is SpaceX’s privately-funded launch vehicle, spacecraft and space and ground infrastructure system of spaceflight technology—including reusable launch vehicles and spacecraft. The system includes Earth infrastructure for rapid launch and relaunch; low Earth orbit, and zero-gravity propellant transfer technology. The new vehicle, while much smaller than an earlier version of SpaceX composite material vehicle design, is much larger than the existing SpaceX operational vehicles which it is intended to replace.
The new launch vehicle is planned to replace both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles and the Dragon spacecraft, in the operational SpaceX fleet in the early 2020s, initially aiming at the Earth-orbit market, but explicitly adding substantial capability to the spacecraft vehicles to support long-duration spaceflight in the cislunar and Mars mission environment as well. SpaceX intends this approach to bring significant cost savings which will help the company justify the development expense of designing and building the new launch vehicle design. BFR is a 9 meters (30 ft)-diameter launch vehicle.
An earlier larger design for the first non-Falcon launch vehicle from SpaceX was known as the ITS launch vehicle in 2016–2017. The design for all of the ITS vehicles were 12 meters (39 ft) diameter. While the earlier SpaceX designs had been aimed at Mars transit and other interplanetary uses, SpaceX pivoted in 2017 to a plan that would replace all SpaceX launch-service-provider capacity—Earth orbit, the Lunar-orbit region, and interplanetary space transport—with a single 9 m (30 ft)-diameter class of launch vehicles and spacecraft.
Development work began on the Raptor rocket engines to be used for both stages of the BFR launch vehicle in 2012, and engine testing began in 2016. New rocket engine designs are typically considered one of the longest of the development subprocesses for new launch vehicles and spacecraft. Tooling for the main tanks has been ordered and a facility to build the vehicles is under construction; construction will start on the first ship in 2Q2018. The company publicly stated an aspirational goal for initial Mars-bound cargo flights of BFR launching as early as 2022, followed by the first BFR flight with passengers one synodic period later, in 2024.”
“The SpaceX/Dragon cargo craft departed the International Space Station September 17, one month after delivering more than three tons of supplies and scientific experiments for the station’s residents. Expedition 53 Flight Engineer Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency and station Commander Randy Bresnik used the Canadarm2 robotic arm to release Dragon after it was detached from the Earth-facing port of the Harmony module. Dragon was scheduled to move to a safe distance away from the station for its engine to conduct a deorbit burn, enabling it to drop out of orbit for a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific southwest of Long Beach, California. Dragon was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center on August 14, arriving at the orbital outpost August 16.”
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