The Real Reason SpaceX Developed The Falcon Heavy Rocket!

foreign the SpaceX Falcon heavy is the coolest rocket ever made it's not the most historically significant not the biggest or even the most powerful far from any of those things in fact but Falcon heavy is a spectacle from launch to Landing this machine is an awe-inspiring demonstration of Science and Engineering in action that first demonstration flight in 2018 created more rocket nerds than any singular event since the Apollo 11 moon landing this YouTube channel probably wouldn't even exist if Falcon heavy hadn't made a whole new generation fall in love with space flight there's just something visceral about watching those twin boosters come back down to land in unison it simply can't be matched at least not until they start doing those robotic Tower catch Landings with Starship that is going to be a whole new level of mind-blowing but until that time the crown still belongs to the Falcon heavy so we are paying our respects to the king while he still Reigns Supreme this is everything you need to know about these SpaceX Falcon heavy rocket this is the space race the concept for Falcon heavy goes almost as far back as the development of the original Falcon 1 rocket the idea was pretty simple in theory something like if we can make one medium strength rocket then why don't we just strap a few of them together and have a new heavy duty rocket sounds easy enough but in practice this would end up being spectacularly difficult to pull off the name was first referenced in 2005 at the time SpaceX had yet to even get their Falcon 1 into orbit but they already had plans for the Falcon 5 and Falcon 9. each variation using a higher concentration of their new Merlin engine the company described three Falcon 9 first stages strapped together in a booster configuration to provide the 25 tons to low earth orbit named the Falcon 9 heavy it would be the heaviest lifting launch system in the world A lot happened at SpaceX over the next few years it would take them until 2008 to get the Falcon 1 into orbit successfully an ordeal that brought the company to the brink of disaster the Falcon 5 concept was scrapped entirely and in June 2010 the Falcon 9 finally went into Service as the company's Workhorse vehicle on the success of the Falcon 9 SpaceX officially unveiled their plan for the Falcon heavy at a public news conference in Washington DC April 2011. Elon Musk expected the initial flight to happen by 2013. now the thing about the Aerospace industry that you learned pretty quickly is that everything is always delayed it is the only constant that you can rely on but in addition to the natural course of Rocket development the heavy rocket was set back even further by issues that developed with the Falcon 9. in 2012 there was a partial failure of a falcon 9 version 1. the second stage still reached orbit but it came in at an abnormally low altitude and the payload was lost that was caused by a shutdown on one of the nine Merlin engines during ascent in 2015 SpaceX had their first aerial failure of the Falcon 9. the crs-7 mission was 150 seconds into flight when an over-pressure incident in the second stage caused the vehicle to break up in mid-air it didn't explode it just kind of flew apart into a bunch of little pieces something Elon Musk would term a rapid unscheduled disassembly then in 2016 the mission ammo 6 on a falcon 9 full thrust blew up on the launch pad during propellant filling that was a gigantic explosion and luckily no one was hurt according to SpaceX a failed liner in the high pressure copv tanks allowed liquid oxygen to accumulate which was then ignited by friction obviously work on the Falcon heavy couldn't move forward until Falcon 9 was proven to be consistently reliable so engineering resources at SpaceX were concentrated on working all of the bugs out of Falcon 9 while heavy went on the back burner during those times even without the unexpected setbacks SpaceX was finding out that the integration and structural challenges of combining three rocket cores into one was more difficult than expected by July 2017 Elon Musk himself admitted quote it actually ended up being way harder to do Falcon heavy than we thought we were pretty naive about that even though the Falcon 9 and heavy share much of the same metal there were some crucial elements that needed to be redesigned and more that needed to be developed from scratch for one the center core of the heavy can't just be an off-the-shelf Falcon booster it needs to be specifically reinforced and strengthened to handle the additional stress Elon Musk has said that once you strap on the side boosters everything about the rocket changes all the load points change aerodynamics totally change you triple the amount of vibration and Acoustics because of this the loads imparted on the center core at launch are crazy this led SpaceX to redesign the whole Center core airframe with thicker tank walls and additional reinforcements the heavy core stage still uses the same metal as the regular Falcon an ultra strong alloy of lithium and aluminum in addition to that SpaceX had to design their own booster separation system not only does it have to hold hold the rocket together as it ascends but then needs to release the side boosters in a way that they can safely continue on to make their return flight you'll notice that Falcon heavy has three attachment points between the boosters one at the nose cones of the side boosters one at the base of the rocket and one in the middle at the heart of every SpaceX Falcon rocket ever flown has been the Merlin engine not only taking its name from the legendary Wizard of King Arthur's lore but also bearing the same title as the Rolls-Royce combustion engine that powered the British fighting planes of World War II including the Spitfire the hurricane and the Lancaster bomber the SpaceX Merlin is powered by a refined kerosene called rp1 in combination with liquid oxygen in a gas generator power cycle the Merlin was always designed for reusability with the original idea that they could be fished out of the sea and refurbished SpaceX went through a few iterations of the engine design before they arrived at the Merlin 1D that we know today it was developed between 2011 and 2012 and flew for the first time in a falcon 9 in 2013. since then SpaceX has been making minor tweaks to the engine performance and by 2016 had not only managed to increase the maximum thrust to just over 85 metric tons they also allowed the throttle to be dropped down to 40 percent of Maximum which allows the Falcon 9 booster to make soft controlled Landings on both floating platforms and Solid Ground every Merlin engine is controlled by three redundant computers each having two CPUs which constantly check the other two in the trio at the base of each Falcon booster the Merlin engines are arranged in a metal structure that SpaceX calls the octaweb the main purpose of this design is to maximize stability and it replaced the original Falcon V1 design of having all engines arranged in a 3X3 Square the octaweb reduces the length and weight of the Falcon 9 thrust structure simplifying the Rocket's design and assembly it also helps in isolating each engine in its compartment so a malfunction in one engine won't have a cascading effect of damage to all the others the trick of the Falcon heavy then is integrating all three individual octowebs to function in perfect Unison if you look at a similar rocket design with three individual cores like the Delta IV heavy each booster only has a single rocket engine so the complexity is relatively low meanwhile the Falcon heavy now has 27 Merlin engines spread across three separate booster cores and every single one of these need to function in unison three complex Rockets acting as one if anything is not singing in Perfect Harmony then the whole launch is headed straight for disaster if you watch the first test flight of the Falcon heavy really closely there is a solid few seconds after ignition when they just hold the rocket down before releasing the clamps and letting it Fly just to make a final assurance that everything is burning properly and it's actually going to go in a straight line when it lifts off all right apparently some people get upset when we put the real reason in the title but then don't explicitly say it in the video so here it goes the real reason that SpaceX developed a falcon heavy was to make a reusable heavy lift rocket that was incredibly cheap and economical to fly the cost of a reusable Falcon heavy launch starts at around 100 million US Dollars the cost of one Delta IV heavy which is the closest equivalent launch vehicle is somewhere between 400 and 600 million dollars and that rocket carries a maximum payload of 28 metric tons to low earth orbit in a reusable configuration Falcon heavy can put between 20 and 50 metric tons into low earth orbit if you sacrifice all three boosters and Go full send the heavy can get up to 64 tons into orbit and even a fully expended rocket launch would still cost about half the price of a Delta IV though reusability is the whole point of the Falcon heavy there are very few missions that would ever require 64 tons of mass going into orbit so the rocket will almost always be operating in its reusable range the versatility of the Falcon booster provides a number of different flight plans depending on how much weight needs to be inserted at what altitude the higher the orbit the lower the weight capacity for its most economical Flight Plan SpaceX can recover all three boosters with the side pair doing a return to launch site and the center core landing on a drone ship this is what they attempted to pull off on the first test flight obviously the two side boosters came back fine but the Center Court experienced an engine failure during the landing burn and it ended up striking the ocean like a giant 300 mile per hour flaming Javelin but on the launch number two SpaceX successfully recovered all three Falcon heavy boosters two on the land and one at Sea the reason that we like this flight plan is because Landing the boosters on the pads at Cape Canal April is way way cheaper than Landing them on drone ships so it's the most economical choice the downside is obviously that to perform a boost back burn and return to launch site the side boosters have to separate at a relatively low altitude which is actually pretty cool because you can still see the booster separation pretty clearly from the ground through a telephoto lens the USS f-67 mission on January 15th had an insane view of the booster return post separation they use side thrusters to flip over and then three of the Merlin engines reignite to send the rocket straight back the way it came the center core lands on a drone ship the same way as a regular Falcon 9. the center core will only burn at Full Throttle for a few seconds following liftoff and then it backs off on thrust to conserve fuel until after the side boosters are released then the center 9 engines will go back to max power until the first stage reaches the peak of its Arch where the main engines cut off the second stage separates and the booster begins to fall back down to earth it performs one burn to slow for re-entry and then a final Landing earn we've also seen a couple of Falcon heavy flight plans that were partially expandable in November 2022 and January 2023 the side boosters made a return to launch site but the center core was expended they were both top secret classified space Force missions so we really don't know too much about the payload or where it ended up but the flight plan necessitated that the center core reaches speed and altitude that was too high for a return in theory we could also get a scenario where the two side boosters go past the point of return to launch site but are still able to land at sea or there might even be some instance where all three boosters could land on drone ships there is still a lot to come for the Falcon heavy while the first five years of operation have only given us five launches that Cadence is about to increase drastically we have the next flight of Falcon heavy scheduled for April 26 2023 and then again in June July and October of this year there are another five flights scheduled for 2024 and some of these future launches are going to be really exciting and historically significant we have the psyche mission in October 2023 to explore a main belt asteroid there is the Europa Clipper in October 2024 that will study Jupiter's Most Fascinating moon in search of alien life November 2024 sends NASA's Viper Rover to the lunar South Pole beginning in December 2024 Falcon heavy will begin the process of delivering components of the lunar Gateway space station carrying five tons of cargo into orbit around the Moon on each flight obviously the future of SpaceX is going to be the Starship once they're able to master the full rapid reusability of both rocket stages it will be even more economical to fly than the Falcon 9 or Falcon heavy and that will become the company's single focus at that point the Falcon heavy will likely go down in history as a spectacular and extremely freaking cool stop Gap measure that came in between the Falcon 9 and the Starship it's a bit of a shame that we never really got to see this Rocket's full potential we could have easily done the first half of the Artemis program on the Falcon heavy in fact we probably should have there would already be people on the Moon by now if we did but either way we've got several opportunities still to come to experience one of the greatest shows on and off the Earth so we're going to enjoy those while we still can meet us back here every week for more updates on everything Aerospace industry and Interstellar exploration related make sure to give the video a thumbs up today if you liked it that really helps us out for real and subscribe to the Space Race for more videos just like this we do one long form essay and one news update every week and if you'd like more we've got two more on the screen for you right now

Channel: The Space Race

Views: 427,680

Keywords: spacex, spacex falcon heavy, spacex falcon heavy launch, spacex falcon heavy landing, falcon heavy, falcon heavy booster, falcon heavy explained, spacex rocket, spacex starship, falcon heavy landing

Id: -6fmZ_Dt56o

Length: 15min 16sec (916 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 22 2023