The Hard Part Is Making It Look Easy
Feb. 7th, 2018 08:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerLaunches of the Falcon 9 rocket seem to happen often enough now that I've got out of the habit of marking them here. There was, however, another evolutionary step approaching. The Falcon Heavy, three Falcon 9 first stages side-by-side just to start with, promised more mass put into orbit than any rocket launching nowadays. The thought of twenty-seven engines burning all at once, though, did remind me of the Soviet N1 meant to race the Americans to the Moon, even if its assorted test flight disasters seemed to have hinged in part on the system that was supposed to balance out one of its thirty first-stage engines shutting down tending to cut out all the engines at once. An official comment that the first test flight would be considered a success if it didn't destroy the historic launch pad wasn't quite inspiring.
As the test flight approached last afternoon, I did wonder about the news channel the TVs in the elevator lobbies at work are tuned to showing it. However, I was sent into the field to do some work there, and supposed whatever happened would happen while I couldn't see it. On my way out from work, though, I happened to walk by a TV to see the rocket just clearing the launch pad, and realised it was a live feed. I managed to stay and watch until the side boosters separated; after that, it felt familiar enough to get moving myself.
Since then, I've heard those side boosters managed to turn around and land on the shore, although the central stage crashed in the ocean just short of SpaceX's giant barge. The red electric car on top of the last stage also got boosted into a solar orbit, past the declared target of Mars's orbit and into the asteroid belt, where I suppose its paint may get scratched up faster than I'd imagined. The attention-grabbing oddity aside, the Falcon Heavy does seem a lot closer to reality now, but I am conscious it's one thing to have a heavy-lift rocket and another thing to build payloads massive enough to need it. It will have to launch twice more before it's beat the record of the Soviet Energia from the late 1980s, a rocket I have happened to have seen some old "this changes everything" declarations about.
As the test flight approached last afternoon, I did wonder about the news channel the TVs in the elevator lobbies at work are tuned to showing it. However, I was sent into the field to do some work there, and supposed whatever happened would happen while I couldn't see it. On my way out from work, though, I happened to walk by a TV to see the rocket just clearing the launch pad, and realised it was a live feed. I managed to stay and watch until the side boosters separated; after that, it felt familiar enough to get moving myself.
Since then, I've heard those side boosters managed to turn around and land on the shore, although the central stage crashed in the ocean just short of SpaceX's giant barge. The red electric car on top of the last stage also got boosted into a solar orbit, past the declared target of Mars's orbit and into the asteroid belt, where I suppose its paint may get scratched up faster than I'd imagined. The attention-grabbing oddity aside, the Falcon Heavy does seem a lot closer to reality now, but I am conscious it's one thing to have a heavy-lift rocket and another thing to build payloads massive enough to need it. It will have to launch twice more before it's beat the record of the Soviet Energia from the late 1980s, a rocket I have happened to have seen some old "this changes everything" declarations about.