World's most powerful rocket, Falcon Heavy launches by SpaceX

          SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Feb. 6, 2018

 Finally the SpaceX team have just successfully launched and landed the Falcon Heavy rocket. This is the largest rocket in operation and during the launch the atmosphere was electric 

The Falcon Heavy consists of 27 engines with five million pounds of thrust that's as much as eighteen Boeing 747.         

In fact it's so much thrust that there's no need to run the engines at max capacity during the launch.

Instead the thrust is throttled and optimized throughout the flight.

So here's the plan for the test launch mission , the Falcon Heavy rocket would take off from Kennedy

Space Center and then releases payload out into space. Two of the rocket boosters would be

programmed to return back to Cape Canaveral and to be recycled, while a third booster which will

be traveling much too fast to the Cape which would be landing on a floating platform 500 kilometers

offshore.

With the Boosters measuring 16 stories in height, it was a tall task.  The Falcon Heavy is

essentially three Falcon nines strapped together with some modifications carried out,

but it wasn't as easy to get flying as it may first seem.

According to Elon at a press conference post launch, they had to be alterations to the Boosters and

the main core had to be almost completely custom built.

Additional idea was just that I thought you know you stick on to two first stages of side boosters how

hard can it be, It's like way hard where to redesign the center core completely

This was due to the changes and forces and hence stresses and into the new setup.

There was 10 million pounds of force in some areas, the challenge was so drastic that the team

considered abandoning the project three times, but it's a good thing that they stuck with it because

now the Falcon Heavy is the largest and most powerful rocket available, capable of carrying twice

the payload of its closest competitor.

The mission was largely a success and the payload was delivered without a hitch.

Speaking of the payload, it was pretty interest in it happened to be one of Ellen Musk's original

cherry red Tesla Roasters with a mascot dubs star man, he was looking pretty chill wearing the

SpaceX spacesuit.

           Photo: Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster in space with SpaceX's "Starman" (YouTube: SpaceX)

Star man and his Tesla now we'll be getting thrust into deep space on its way to an elliptical orbit

around Mars for about a billion years. Meanwhile, the 16 story tall rocket boosters returned down in

or inspiring fashion.

Alden go exactly according to plan though two of the three rockets required to turn the main stage

back to earth failed causing the main stage rocket to be lost.

It slammed into the ocean at over 400 kilometers an hour 100 meters away from the floating barge. 

Regardless, the launch was hailed as  success and is a huge step in the road towards regular space launches as now the price has been cut by four and a half times.

For the equivalent competing rocket United Launch Alliance as delta 4 heavy which is less powerful costs around 400 million dollars and the Falcon Heavy 90 million and this is one-tenth the cost of NASA's planned space launch system that's in development to venture out to the Moon and Mars. The main cost savings here come from the fact that the Falcon Heavy is a reusable design.

One of the aims of the mission was to collect vast amounts of data in order to perfect launch procedures the end goal was to make such launches commonplace and as safe as aircraft travel which is the safest and has ever been by the way.

In the press conference Elon stated that the Falcon Heavy opens up a new class of payload and can send cargo all the way to Pluto if we wanted to, no gravity sling needed.

He states that this could encourage other countries and companies to do bigger and better.

He wants a new space race but I think it's going open up a sense of possibility.

 I think it's  going encourage other companies and countries to say hey if SpaceX which

is a commercial company can do this they could go to some things can encourage other countries

and companies to raise their sights and say hey could you're bigger and better which is great we

want any space race

Elon also did mention that the before method is the way forward. But this Falcon Heavy launch gave him more confidence in that project.

And as a side note is kind of strange thing like this, I often get people commenting that scientific discovery is somehow a zero-sum game.

They say why waste money on something like this when you could be spending their money eradicating cancer.

It's a strange world view position, but I believe that engineers and scientists are free to follow their passions and can work on different things at once and it's not to mention that progress in space exploration can have spin-off effects.

For example, we wouldn't have aircraft anti-icing technology or the digital image sensor in your smartphone or solar panels in their current form if it weren't for NASA's space program

But in closing off this article, as I thought about the Falcon Heavy launch it's just really insane that this company was the result of a private startup not some government initiative and it was a very hard road 

                                                      SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket at Space(YouTube:SpaceX)

You know there are American heroes who don't like this idea Neil armstrong Eugene Cernan have

both testified against commercial spaceflight in the way that you're developing it and I wonder what

you think of that.

I was very sad to see that you know those guys are heroes of mine so it's really tough,

I wish they would come and visit and see the hardware that we're doing here and I think that would

change their mind

They inspired to do this and to see them casting stones in your direction

SpaceX was so close to failing when they attempted to launch their first rocket the Falcon 1, 

they failed three times and they had just barely enough money for one more try.

It turned out that the third failure was caused by a two-second glitch in the timing if that poor force

hadn't worked that would have been that would have not had the resources to the larger faith.

And on September 28th 2008 on the 4th and final attempt, SpaceX became the first private company

to launch a liquid-fueled rocket that could reach orbit.

Fast forward a decade later and they're making history again and the future looks at the very least exciting with bigger plans on the horizon for the BFR.

This whole story makes me smile and I wish the SpaceX team more success in the future.

It's great innovation and I think it's good for this generation to see things like this anyway

Thanks for reading this article.