Falcon 9 version
Falcon 9 Full Thrust
The third major Falcon 9, also called v1.2 or Block 3. Sub-cooled propellants packed more mass into the same tanks, the upper stage was stretched and thrust rose by roughly a third. On its maiden flight, on 22 December 2015, it achieved the first vertical landing of an orbital rocket's first stage.
- December 22, 2015
- First launch
- 22,800 kg
- LEO capacity
- 6,800 kN
- Thrust
- Yes
- Reusable
History
Development
The upgrade was worked out across 2014 and 2015 with one goal above the rest: make booster recovery compatible with demanding missions, including heavy payloads bound for geostationary orbit. The trick was thermodynamic. Chilling the liquid oxygen far below its boiling point and the kerosene below ambient temperature squeezed more propellant into the same tank volume and raised the mass flow through the turbopumps.
Around that came a stronger booster structure, longer upper-stage tanks, a tougher 4.5-metre interstage, a centre pusher for staging, better legs and grid fins, and a redesign of the helium bottle struts implicated in the 2015 failure. The vehicle gained 1.2 m in height and about a third in overall performance.
In service
The debut on 22 December 2015 placed eleven Orbcomm satellites in orbit and flew the booster back to a landing zone at Cape Canaveral — the first orbital-class stage ever returned upright and intact. A flight-proven booster was reused operationally for the first time in March 2017, and reuse quickly stopped being remarkable. That same year a fairing half was recovered for the first time, guided down by thrusters and a steerable parachute.
The version also brought in the autonomous flight safety system, which replaced the ground radars and range personnel used for six decades and became the company standard from 2017.
Legacy
Full Thrust was the trunk from which two branches grew: Block 4, a transitional step that carried little more than incremental engine uprating, and Block 5, the definitive version built to fly dozens of times. It is also the direct ancestor of the Falcon Heavy, whose three boosters derive from this first stage. The last flight in its original configuration came on 22 February 2018.