Nearly a decade after SpaceX launched its first Falcon 9 rocket, the California-based company is poised to launch a three-stage, reusable cargo rocket capable of carrying 70 tons—or around 35 Dodge Demons, for those of you who think in Demon.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been teasing us space fans with hints of the existence the Falcon Heavy since the first launch o the single-rocket Falcon 9. Then it was going to go up in 2014, then 2015. Now, after a static fire at a rocket testing center in Texas, it looks like the Falcon Heavy is inching closer to exiting the atmosphere.
A test flight is tentatively slated for later this year, and the first flight should be a spectacle. Its triad of boosters will fire three times the amount of rocket engines firing at lift-off compared than the SpaceX Falcon 9. The moment it fires its engines, Falcon Heavy will immediately be the most powerful in operation in the world.
The three rocket boosters are reusable, and are expected to return to landing pads at the SpaceX facility at Cape Canaveral, in the same way the Falcon 9 does. Except in this case, each of the fourteen-story boosters will have to land safely—tripling the feat, as well as the risk of catastrophe.