20 Facts About Falcon Heavy

Falcon Heavy is a partially reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle that is produced by SpaceX, an American aerospace manufacturer.

Falcon Heavy has the highest payload capacity of any currently operational launch vehicle and the third-highest capacity of any rocket ever to reach orbit, trailing the Saturn V and Energia.

The second Falcon Heavy launch occurred on 11 April 2019, and all three booster rockets successfully returned to Earth.

Since then, Falcon Heavy has been certified for the National Security Space Launch program.

Falcon Heavy was designed to be able to carry humans into space beyond low Earth orbit, although as of February 2018, SpaceX does not intend to transport people on Falcon Heavy, nor pursue the human-rating certification process to transport NASA astronauts.

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Various solutions using the planned Falcon Heavy 5 had been explored, but the only cost-effective, reliable iteration was one that used a 9-engine first stage — the Falcon Heavy 9.

The Falcon Heavy was developed with private capital with Musk stating that the cost was more than US$500 million.

In 2015, SpaceX announced a number of changes to the Falcon Heavy rocket, worked in parallel to the upgrade of the Falcon 9 v1.

In July 2017, Musk discussed publicly the challenges of testing a complex launch vehicle like the three-core Falcon Heavy, indicating that a large extent of the new design "is really impossible to test on the ground" and could not be effectively tested independent of actual flight tests.

In June 2022, the US Space Force certified Falcon Heavy for launching its top secret satellites, with the first such launch expected to be in the latter part of 2022.

NASA director Jim Bridenstine announced that Falcon Heavy is powerful enough to launch the Orion capsule, but cannot launch it on top of the European Service Module in the same flight, and thus Falcon Heavy cannot be used as a replacement for SLS.

Falcon Heavy was designed from the outset to carry humans into space and it would restore the possibility of flying crewed missions to the Moon or Mars.

The interstage, which connects the upper and lower stage for Falcon Heavy 9, is a carbon fiber aluminum core composite structure.

The second stage tank of Falcon Heavy 9 is simply a shorter version of the first stage tank and uses most of the same tooling, material, and manufacturing techniques.

All three cores of the Falcon Heavy arrange the engines in a structural form SpaceX calls Octaweb, aimed at streamlining the manufacturing process, and each core includes four extensible landing legs.

Falcon Heavy includes first-stage recovery systems, to allow SpaceX to return the first stage boosters to the launch site as well as recover the first stage core following landing at an Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship barge after completion of primary mission requirements.

Falcon Heavy was originally designed with a unique "propellant crossfeed" capability, whereby the center core engines would be supplied with fuel and oxidizer from the two side cores until their separation.

The process includes three successful flights of the Falcon Heavy including two consecutive successful flights, and the letter stated that Falcon Heavy can be ready to fly national security payloads by 2017.

Falcon Heavy is the launch vehicle for the initial modules of the Lunar Gateway: Power and Propulsion Element and Habitation and Logistics Outpost .

In March 2020, Falcon Heavy won the first award to a resupply mission to the Gateway, placing a new Dragon XL spacecraft on a translunar injection orbit.