66 The EconomistJanuary 20th 2018
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ECHNOLOGICAL progress is not al-
ways straightforward. Before Con-
corde’s first commercial flight in 1976 super-
sonic passenger-travel was science fiction.
Since that aircraft’s last hurrah, in 2003, it
has become historical fiction instead. Simi-
larly with rockets, the most powerful built
(almost five times more powerful than
anything flying today) was the Saturn V,
which carried human beings to the moon.
It last flew in 1973.
These days, though, big rockets are
coming back. On a launching pad at Cape
Canaveral, Florida, sitsthe Falcon Heavy,
the latestoffering from SpaceX, a private
space-flight firm. It is 70 metres tall and
sports 27 engines (see picture above). Col-
lectively, these generate 22.8m newtons of
thrust—about as much as eighteen 747 jet-
liners. That is enough oomph to put almost
64 tonnes of payload into low-Earth orbit.
This is, admittedly, still less than half of
what the Saturn V could once manage. But
it is more than twice as much as the Delta
IV Heavy, the current champion.
SpaceX’s engineers are now testing
their machine, and—assuming those tests
do not blow the rocket up—at some point
in the next fortnight or so they hope to take
the final step and actually try to launch the
beast into orbit. If they succeed, the Falcon
Heavy will become by far the beefiest rock-
et presently flying, second only to the Sat-Lockheed Martin and Boeing that makes
the Delta IV Heavy, announced that it
would cut its workforce by a quarter, and
the prices on a range of rockets called Atlas
by a third.
Conceptually at least, the Falcon Heavy
is a simple machine. Itconsists ofthree Fal-
con 9 rockets lashed together like a set of
pan pipes. SpaceX had originally pencilled
in its first launch for 2013. But Mr Musk has
admitted that he had been “naive” about
just how difficult thingswould prove. The
middle of the trio needs to be fortified to
deal with the stresses imposed by thrust
from its neighbours. The aerodynamics of
three linked rockets are different from
those affecting a single one. And Mr Musk
hopes to try to recoverall of the Falcon
Heavy’s rockets at once—something that
has never been tried before.
With all this in mind, Mr Musk has been
careful to play down expectations. In July
2017 he told a space-flight conference in
Texas that “I hope it [the Falcon Heavy]
makes it far enough away from the pad that
it does not cause pad damage [if it ex-
plodes]. I would consider even that a win,
to be honest.” But he cannot resist having
at least a bit of fun. Like all debutante rock-
ets, the Falcon Heavy will carry a test pay-
load rather than a payingcustomer’s satel-
lite. Usually, these are blocks of metal or
concrete. In April Mr Musk, who is also the
founder of Tesla Motors, an electric-car
company, said he was looking for some-
thing more interesting. He eventually
chose his own cherry-red Tesla Roadster
sports car. The mission calls for the car to
be blasted into orbitaround the sun, where
it should remain for billions of years.
Even if the firstmission doesend up in a
fireball, though, the Falcon Heavy’s extra
capacity and the savings from recyclabilityurn V itself in its capacity to lift things into
orbit (see chart on nextpage).
A successful launch would be another
vindication for SpaceX’s founder, Elon
Musk, who started the firm to shake up the
rocketry business and to slash the cost of
getting into orbit. After a rocky start, he has
succeeded admirably. The launch price of
the firm’s existing machine, the Falcon 9, is
thought to be around half of what some of
its competitors charge. That has helped
SpaceX to win a big order book, launching
commercial satellites for companies, secret
ones for America’s armed forces, and mak-
ing cargo runs to the International Space
Station on behalf ofNASA, that country’s
space agency.Pile ’em high. Sell ’em cheap
SpaceX’s prices can go even lower if cus-
tomers are willing to fly on one of its re-
used rockets, a technology that the firm has
pioneered. It now routinely flies the first
stage of a Falcon 9 back to Earth, landing it
either near the original launch site or on a
robotic ocean-going barge. In March one of
these recovered rocket stages was re-
launched for the first time, hoisting a com-
munications satellite into orbit on behalf
of Airbus, a big European firm. All this adds
up to a serious squeeze on the industry’s
incumbents. In April 2017 United Launch
Alliance (ULA), the joint venture betweenSpace flightSize matters
The biggest rocket in the world prepares for its maiden voyageScience and technology
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