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| SpaceX`s Falcon Heavy
Patience was in short supply during the leg-jiggling, finger-tapping, tension-filled hours before the launch of the Falcon Heavy, which would, if successful, become the most powerful operational rocket on the planet. From thousands of miles away viewers obsessively checked Twitter for live updates from the hundreds of reporters and thousands of visitors who showed up to witness history.
The knotted insides of space enthusiasts clenched tighter as the launch slipped from 1:30 to 2:20, to 2:50, then 3:15. Fast-moving winds had stirred the blue skies and the upper atmosphere above the rocket sitting on launchpad 39A. The countdown clock stopped, along with the hearts of people who had been waiting seven years for this moment—when Elon Musk introduced the idea of the Falcon Heavy to the world in 2011.
On Tuesday afternoon, winds in the upper atmosphere were blowing at speeds 20 percent higher than the acceptable level for rockets of this kind to take off safely. Anxiety rose as time dribbled out of the 2.5 hour launch window. Then, the countdown clock restarted and a new launch time was set for 3:45.
They started fueling up, adding purified kerosene known as RP-1 to the rocket. Spirits and hopes rose once again as the engineers poured liquid oxygen into the Falcon Heavy, a vote of confidence that the rocket would actually take off as planned.
Hundreds of thousands of people tuned into the live webcast long before it went live, patiently awaiting the first glimpse of the Falcon Heavy. In the end, 2.3 million people tuned in to watch the big event.
Then, there it was, surrounded by a cloud of vented oxygen. The weather held. No technical errors arose. It was five minutes to launch, then 30 seconds, then, 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1... flame and fire roared along with the crowd, and the most powerful rocket in operation today was on its way up, burning its path in the sky.
The scene was breathtaking, but could the rocket stick the landing? The Falcon Heavy approached the darkness at the edge of our atmosphere, and cheers arose once again as two Falcon cores on the sides broke cleanly away from the center core, pivoting back towards two landing pads on Cape Canaveral. Shortly afterwards, the last segment of the first stage separated, and headed back towards a drone ship. Landing the rockets carefully (instead of smashing them into the ocean) makes it more likely that they can be reused on another flight.
The two side cores were already veterans, having launched and landed in previous missions. They touched down in unison, a dramatic flourish to cap off a successful launch. It was, according to Popular Science gathered around their computers, “strangely beautiful,” and “like watching synchronized swimmers, but rockets.” In the words of the jubilant SpaceX flight engineer, “The Falcons have landed.”
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The synchronized landing of the two side engine cores was a dramatic moment in Falcon Heavy's test flight.
The remaining Falcon, the center core, headed towards a drone ship just as the video feed of the landing cut off. Hours later, The Verge's Loren Grush reported that two of the core's three engines failed to fire, sending it into the sea just 300 feet from the drone ship at miles per hour. The impact was enough to knock out two of the ship's engines, and scatter shrapnel on the deck.
One other aspect of the launch went ever-so-slightly off: A cherry-red Tesla roadster ('driven' by a mannequin clad in a SpaceX-branded spacesuit) was meant to enter orbit around Mars. The spaceman is headed out into space, but he's overshot his orbit and will instead go into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
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