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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Business
Alan Yuhas

Falcon Heavy, world's most powerful rocket, launches – as it happened

Summary

We’re going to close our live coverage of the historic Falcon Heavy launch with a summary of the afternoon’s events.

  • Through a waterfall of cascading fire and smoke, SpaceX successfully launched its first Falcon Heavy, the most powerful rocket in operation anywhere in the world, and second only in strength to the Apollo-era leviathans that took crews to the moon.
  • The company then successfully separated its three rocket boosters, and landed two in a ballet of controlled burns. They landed onto parallel launchpads near where they took off in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
  • The third booster was unaccounted for by the company. It was meant to land on a droneship in the Atlantic ocean, but the company did not explain its fate after a camera feed cut out from the vibrations of the rocket.
  • Billionaire founder Elon Musk successfully launched one of his Tesla Roadsters on a course toward Mars. He revealed surreal live video feeds of the car cruising around the planet, complete with a “Don’t Panic” dashboard message, a dummy astronaut in the driver’s seat, and David Bowie on the radio.
  • The success is a major step toward cheaper, more frequent spaceflight, making it easier for governments and businesses to lift massive projects into space or set off on deep space missions. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy is estimated to cost $90m per launch; Nasa’s planned SLS rocket, a comparable system, is expected to cost about $1bn per flight.

Updated

Roadster clear, core booster unaccounted for

The car continues its surreal path around the planet, somewhere distant above an entire continent.

Still no word from Musk or SpaceX about what happened to the core rocket booster, however. Their long silence suggests it did not land as planned on a ship in the Atlantic, but likely crashed into the sea.

Updated

Two former astronauts (one a sitting senator) and Nasa’s acting administrator tweet their congratulations to SpaceX.

Senator Bill Nelson spoke with reporters shortly after the launch, too, saying, “we’re going to Mars!”

There is a car with a dummy in it circling the Earth. This is real.

Screen Shot 2018-02-06 at 4.58.03 PM
Screen Shot 2018-02-06 at 4.58.03 PM Photograph: Screengrab

You can watch the car on its journey on the live stream below.

SpaceX has started a live stream of its “starman” – the dummy in the Tesla Roadster cruising toward Mars.

If you rewind to about the five-minute mark, you can catch a spectacular view of Earth. Musk tweets the highlight clip.

Updated

Elon Musk has tweeted out an update on the upper stage – his Tesla Roadster is cruising through high-energy radiation belts circling the Earth, toward deep space.

The projected path of the car would bring it close to Mars, but Musk has said there is only an “extremely tiny” chance that it might crash into the planet. If it stays on course, it would instead drift through space, potentially for millions of years.

Updated

Reporting from Cape Canaveral, Richard Luscombe has spoken with fellow spectators – most in some stage of frazzled awe at the launch they just witnessed.

Sean Clark and his six-year-old daughter Maia watched the Falcon Heavy power into Florida’s clear blue skies, listened to the double sonic boom as the rocket’s boosters returned to Earth, and declared themselves stunned.

“It’s just wow,” said Mr Clark, who got Maia up before dawn to drive across Florida from Newport Richey to watch the launch at the space centre.

“It’s a whole new generation of kids getting excited about space. This is her third launch, she’s into space and science and I wanted to keep that interest going for the future. I came here for her future. It’s just amazing what Elon Musk has done and is doing.”

Cindy and Patrick Salkeld came from California to watch their first rocket launch.

“It was was overwhelming, better than expected, unbelievable. We couldn’t just see it, we could hear it and feel it vibrating the ground. It was emotional,” said Mrs Salkeld.

Elon Musk, her husband said, was “brilliant”.

“It’s incredible that not only did he get that rocket up there, but then he lands those two pieces right back on the ground upright, right on the circle. How on earth do you do that, it was spectacular.”

Nearby were other reporters, including Miriam Kramer for Mashable. She filmed the launch, capturing the liftoff’s roar. It’s palpable.

There’s still a mystery about the core rocket booster: it was supposed to land on SpaceX’s drone ship in the Atlantic, but smoke obscured the camera and then the feed cut out from vibrations on the deck.

Space Twitter is concerned. Some photos to tide us over.

The blast.
The blast. Photograph: Cristobal Herrera/EPA
Liftoff.
Liftoff. Photograph: Joe Skipper/Reuters
Flight.
Flight. Photograph: Joe Skipper/Reuters
Escape.
Escape. Photograph: Joe Skipper/Reuters

It’s difficult to overstate what SpaceX has just accomplished: it’s successfully introduced a new heavy rocket to the world, the most powerful in operation and second only to the Apollo era, all through a private company and at a fraction of a cost of other systems currently in construction.

Nasa is working on its own heavy launch system, called the SLS, but it is estimated to cost about a billion dollars per flight. SpaceX estimates that Falcon Heavy launches will cost about $90m per flight.

What’s more, just a few years ago the notion of re-landing reusable rockets seemed like a pipe dream, and yet SpaceX has made it routine, with regular landings on land and on a drone ship floating in the Atlantic Ocean. Today it managed to land two Falcon 9 rockets simultaneously, each dropping gracefully from the sky with a controlled burn.

Updated

Meanwhile, sitting in a tin can far above the earth, nothing he can do, a dummy driver in a Tesla Roadster.

An earlier photograph from inside the rocket revealed that the words “DON’T PANIC” on the dashboard computer.

In a surreal, beautiful image straight out of science fiction, the twin Falcon 9 boosters landing at Cape Canaveral in Florida, after a flawless test launch of the most powerful rocket in operation.

The drone ship is obscured in smoke and the camera cuts out thanks to vibrations from the landing burn.

But SpaceX is suggesting that this doesn’t mean anything’s amiss. Pending confirmation of landing.

Here’s another couple shots of that synchronized landing form the other two boosters:

Two rockets land on Earth

Landing burn is on track for the two landing pads at Cape Canaveral – perfect landings. The two Falcon 9s have landed.

One more is due for a barge ship in the Atlantic.

Updated

The side boosters are now re-entering the atmosphere as they plummet back toward the Earth – a landing process that engineers have compared to trying to balance a building-sized broom on a table in wind.

Musk's car reaches outer space

Another angle on the Roadster.

A billionaire has sent a car into space on a route toward Mars on the most second-most powerful rocket humans have ever designed.

Updated

In the last moments before launch Musk revealed interior cameras on the payload, and it pays off now: his car is in outer space.

Life on Mars is now playing at the SpaceX launch center.

The Tesla Roadster is on course in outer space for an orbit near the planet.

Boosters separate

Side boosters separate successfully! Each of them is a modified Falcon 9 rocket – the smaller reusable kind – and they’re now going to attempt to land at three different sites back on Earth.

Updated

Engine performance is nominal, and a cascade of fire is pouring out of the rockets boosters.

The photographs are spectacular.

The Falcon 9 is away and clear, supersonic and casting upwards through the atmosphere.

A successful launch!

Liftoff

Billowing smoke, a blast of fire, and the rocket is up!

Updated

The rocket is shrouded in steam and mist, T-minus 30 seconds, a huge cheer.

The rocket is on internal power. T-minus one.

T-minus two

T-minus two minutes.

Occasionally you can hear spectators, reporters, and engineers clap or make a nervous whoop.

Stage-two lock is complete.

The rocket is almost ready to launch.

Updated

T-minus five. Musk tweets out images from inside the payload.

(On Instagram, so screengrabs via Twitter below.)

T-minus 10 minutes to launch.

SpaceX has kicked off its live webcast (linked above), and warned that if any problems come up in the final few minutes, they’ll scrub the launch and try again tomorrow.

But with only a few minutes to go, the sky is clearing and the weather balloon is not reporting problematic winds.

Stage 2 Kerosene loading just finished on the rocket. The 3.45pm launch target is still on course. Elon Musk has clicked the “holy mouse click”.

But looming at this launch is a question: What if the rocket explodes?

If the Falcon Heavy flies high enough above the Cape Canaveral so that an explosion doesn’t damage the launchpad – and then it explodes – Elon Musk has said he would call the day a success.

He estimated the chances of a fully successful launch, from takeoff through separations and landing, at somewhere around 50.50. Not only is SpaceX testing its new rocket, but also a system to separate side boosters in flight, and to simultaneously land the three main boosters after separation.

The rocket will have to reach a high altitude to spare the base: its fuel has the explosive equivalent of four million pounds of TNT, Musk told reporters on Monday.

An explosion on the pad would cause massive damage. In September 2016, a smaller Falcon 9 exploded on a separate launch zone at Cape Canaveral, forcing it closed for repairs for over a year afterward. A Falcon Heavy explosion at the 39A launchpad could require closure and repairs for nine months to a year, Musk said.

SpaceX rocket explodes on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral

Less than an hour to go, the crowds are ready, Richard Luscombe reports.

With less than 40 minutes to go until the scheduled lift-off, spectators at the Kennedy Space Centre have already taken their seats, with a warning from Jeff Lucas, a Nasa communications staffer and compere of the viewing party at the Saturn V Centre.

“If it goes, don’t clap,” he said. “I’m not a Debbie Downer, but on a couple of occasions before we would have 3,000 of you doing the countdown, then when we’re all screaming the numbers we can’t hear the launch director going ‘Hold, Hold, Hold!’

“So don’t clap until you see those orange flames clearing the tower.”

The Heavy.
The Heavy at Cape Canaveral. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

The boosters are fueled, less than an hour till they’re scheduled to fire, the explosive culmination of a billionaire’s ambitions years in the making.

Elon Musk’s has wanted to revolutionize spaceflight for over a decade, and the Falcon Heavy is central to realizing his dreams.

If SpaceX can manage a successful launch, the Heavy will be the most powerful rocket currently in operation anywhere in the world. Its boosters – modified reusable rockets, bolted together – can provide five million pounds of thrust and move 140,000lb of cargo into low earth orbit.

The rocket could help build a new space station above the moon, carry new telecom or spy satellites, and shuttle people to deep space destinations. Last February SpaceX said it intends to send two private citizens on a trip around the moon, possibly as soon as this year.

Most importantly for SpaceX, the rocket would be vastly cheaper than government alternatives. Nasa is working on its own heavy rocket, called the Space Launch System, which remains untested and is projected to cost around $1bn per flight. The Falcon Heavy would cost less than a tenth of that, at $90m per flight.

SpaceX has already turned its Falcon 9 reusable rockets into a reliable business for the government and private flights. Only three years ago, no company or space agency had ever landed a spaceflight rocket before. Then another private company owned by another billionaire, Jeff Bezos, landed a smaller rocket on land, and not long afterward SpaceX succeeded in landing a Falcon 9 on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully lands on ocean platform

Updated

Richard Luscombe is in Cape Canaveral to watch the launch – the rocket is being fueled on schedule for a targeted 3.45pm launch, after hours of delay.

Hundreds of thousands of eager spectators have packed the beaches and other decent vantage points around Florida’s space coast in anticipation of what promises to be the most spectacular rocket launch since Nasa’s space shuttle fleet was retired in 2011.

At the Kennedy Space Centre, there is a party atmosphere at the Saturn V visitor centre just 3.9 miles from the Falcon Heavy launchpad, where visitors paid $195 per ticket for a prime viewing site. Spectators sheltered in the bleachers from the Florida sun under sunhats and umbrellas, drinking beer and champagne and eating sandwiches and fried chicken as they await the launch.

There are also long lines at the souvenir stand for T-shirts and mission patches, while cheers greet any announcement from launch control over the loudspeakers, even news of delays, all prolonging the party. Nobody seemed to mind that SpaceX put back the originally scheduled launch time of 1.30pm until 3.45pm because of strong winds in the upper atmosphere.

Children whose parents allowed them to miss school for the day are passing the time by building rockets from sets of Lego laid out for them on the lawn.

“Watching a rocket launch is almost a bucket-list thing for a lot of people, and the causeways are always packed for any kind of launch. But this one’s going to be big,” said Dale Ketcham, a senior manager at Space Florida, the state agency that promotes the aerospace industry.

Cape Canaveral
Cape Canaveral Photograph: Richard Luscombe

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the first ever launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket, a gigantic new rocket from the private spaceflight company SpaceX, which hopes to use it for missions to the moon, Mars and other deep space ventures.

SpaceX has set a launch time for 3.45pm eastern – a slim 15-minute window to 4pm, at which point the company will cancel launch and try again Wednesday. The company already delayed for over three hours today, citing high winds.

The rocket’s payload is a Tesla Roadster owned by Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of both the automaker and SpaceX. The rocket will launch the car on a course to approach Mars, playing David Bowie’s Space Oddity on a loop.

The Heavy.
The Heavy. Photograph: UPI / Barcroft Images

Musk’s aspirations for the Falcon Heavy are less whimsical, if still ambitious. The next generation rocket, should it succeed, will be the second-most powerful ever after the Nasa’s Saturn V, which the space agency used in the Apollo moon missions.

Along with the company’s Falcon 9 rocket, which has become a reliable, reusable rocket that lands after launch, the Falcon Heavy is central to Musk’s hope of making spaceflight cheaper and easier for governments, businesses, scientists and, someday, citizens.

But the rocket has to get off the pad first. SpaceX rockets have exploded before, most destructively in September 2016, forcing extensive launchpad repairs. And it took many failed landings before SpaceX managed to stand one of its reusable rockets upright after flight.

If the launch succeeds, SpaceX will then attempt to land its three first-stage rocket boosters, which are essentially modified Falcon 9s. Two will return to landing zones at Cape Canaveral, and one would fly to a barge in the Atlantic that the company uses as an additional landing pad.

Musk has downplayed expectations for Tuesday’s launch. “There is so much that can go wrong,” he told reporters on Monday. “We don’t want to set expectations of perfection.”

“The weather’s looking good, the rocket’s looking good. It’s going to be exciting one way or the other, it’s either going to be an exciting test or an exciting failure – one big boom.”

Updated

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