Falcon Heavy Test Flight

Video from the channel SpaceX about Falcon Heavy, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 34:19. Language: English. Video type: Livestream.

SpaceX's official broadcast of the first test flight of the Falcon Heavy, from the historic Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. The webcast is hosted by engineer Lauren Lyons and engineer Michael Hammersley, with John Insprucker, Falcon integration principal engineer, reporting on countdown status. As a test flight there is no customer payload. As a mass simulator, Elon Musk's red Tesla Roadster flies with a mannequin named Starman, wearing SpaceX's spacesuit. Also on board are a miniature replica, an Arch storage device containing Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy, and a plaque with the names of more than 6,000 employees.

Before liftoff the configuration is explained: three Falcon 9-derived cores with 27 Merlin 1D engines producing about 5 million pounds of thrust, equivalent to 18 Boeing 747s. The loading of liquid oxygen and RP-1 kerosene is also explained, along with the fact that the side booster engines ignite two seconds before the center core's. SpaceX's history since the Falcon 1 is reviewed. The side boosters had already flown on the Thaicom 8 and CRS-9 missions. During the flight, supersonic passage, Max Q, side booster separation, center core cutoff, stage separation, MVac D ignition, and the first images of Starman in the Roadster above Earth follow in sequence.

The two side boosters land simultaneously at Landing Zones 1 and 2 at Cape Canaveral. Signal from the center core is lost as it approaches the drone ship, and the broadcast ends without confirming what happened to it. The second stage continues on its trajectory toward a heliocentric orbit crossing that of Mars, with a maximum distance from Earth of over 400 million kilometers. The hosts call the test flight a success.