SpaceX Falcon Heavy First Flight! (Part 4)
1,659Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket in the world by a factor of two. With the ability to lift into orbit nearly 64 metric tons or approximately 141,000 pounds. It can lift more than twice the payload of the next closest operational vehicle, the Delta IV Heavy. Falcon Heavy 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. On february 7, 2018, Falcon Heavy made its first launch to orbit, successfully landing 2 of its 3 boosters and launching its payload to space.
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Cost Effectiveness
The Falcon Heavy is SpaceX's entry into the heavy-lift launch vehicle market. As the name suggests, the Heavy is a larger vehicle than Falcon 9, comprising a Falcon 9 with two more Falcon 9 stages strapped on either side. Each of the strapped-on rockets has nine engines, which work together as boosters to lift a heavy payload. SpaceX predicted that the Falcon
Heavy would launch twice the payload of the Shuttle at about one-fifteenth of the cost
of a Shuttle launch, which equates to an approximately 97% reduction in launch
costs compared with the Shuttle!
How could SpaceX reduce launch costs by such a margin? Before answering that
question, it's worth clearing up how launch prices are determined. When it comes to
calculating the costs of government launches, the actual taxpayer cost can only be
guessed at by calculating from the cost-plus contract costs, which are usually for
multiple launches from the same customer. Now, if SpaceX has multiple launches on
its books, the posted price will obviously be reduced according to the number of
launches; more launches equals lower costs. At the time of the Intelsat contract, for
example, SpaceX had a launch manifest of over 40 payloads divided between Falcon
9 and Falcon Heavy. This number far exceeded any current government contracts,
and SpaceX was adding more flights every month. Another factor determining cost is rocket performance. The only rocket in service comparable to the Falcon Heavy is the Delta 4 Heavy;
While a Falcon Heavy looks similar to a Delta 4 Heavy, its performance is much higher, which
means its cost per launch is much lower; a Falcon Heavy can put 53 metric tonnes in
orbit compared to the Delta 4 Heavy's 23 metric tonnes - a 230% improvement.
More importantly, from a customer perspective, a Falcon Heavy costs only about
US$100 million per launch, whereas the Delta 4 Heavy costs US$435 million per
launch based on an Air Force contract of US$1.74 billion for four launches.
When it comes to calculating payload costs, the Delta 4 Heavy, with its 23-metric ton
LEO capability, costs about US$19 million per tonne, or about US$8,600 per
pound, compared to the Falcon Heavy's price of about US$850 per pound or
US$1.9 million per tonne - almost exactly one-tenth of the current Delta 4 Heavy
price. It's a huge price differential- one that often prompts the inevitable question:
how can the Falcon outperform the Delta by such a wide margin? The main reasons
can be found in the development and design of the Falcon 9:
1- low manufacturing cost
2- low operational cost such that the low man-hours needed per launch
3- high-efficiency performance in flight
The low manufacturing cost is a result of the Falcon Heavy's design, which uses three nearly identical rocket stages that is a design strategy that translates into more production of the same units and a reduction in unit cost. For example, SpaceX is building towards producing a Falcon 9 first stage or Falcon Heavy side booster every week and an upper stage every two weeks at their plant in Hawthorne, California. At this rate, if this production schedule is achieved, within a few years, SpaceX will be producing more rockets per year than all the rocket companies on the planet combined. The next key factor in reducing payload costs to LEO is high flight efficiency
(although not always resulting in successful launches) - a goal that SpaceX has achieved in the Falcon 1 and 9 rockets by using a short upper stage which consists of a single Merlin engine to place the payload into orbit; for the Falcon Heavy, spaceX has used the possibility of creating a hydrogen-oxygen upper stage, which could boost the Falcon Heavy payload up to 70 tonnes.
Credits: Ron Miller
Credits: Nasa/Shutterstock/Storyblocks/Elon Musk/SpaceX
Credits: daniel oberhaus (cc by 2.0)
Credits: kevin gill (cc by 2.0)
Credits: bruce irving (cc by 2.0)
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