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Live SpaceX Webcast of Falcon Heavy launch. Launch targeted for Feb 6, 2017 at 2:20 p.m. EST. (launch delayed from 1:30pm due to upper level winds) Live coverage should begin 20 minutes prior. Once webcast is active, TalkWeather Live Mode will be enabled for members. You can access the stream via another window by right clicking this link and choosing open in new window or tab.
So as much as I love weather, space is my other passion. Today is a big day as Elon Musk's SpaceX attempts the first launch of the Falcon Heavy. Heavy is the perfect word for this mission because the rocket was designed to launch heavier payloads out of Earth's orbit. Like Mars. If successful it will be the most powerful rocket in use since the Saturn V carried astronauts to the moon and launched America's first space station, Skylab. To be clear the Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two! The effort is massive and there are a lot of events that will be occurring during and after the launch. Here are few of the highlights.
The Falcon Heavy will be using 27 Engines to launch today. That is the most ever used at one time. A static test fire was completed January 24th with no major issues detected.
The Falcon Heavy will make use of three first stage boosters. All three will attempt to auto land. The center core will head towards SpaceX Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (ASDS) "Of Course I Still Love You" while the other two boosters will (hopefully) land at SpaceX's Landing Zone (LZ) 1 and 2 on the Air Force side of Cape Canaveral.
The launch will occur on the NASA side of Cape Canaveral (Kennedy Space Center) from historic launch pad 39A. SpaceX has a 20 year lease on the launch structure which has been completely overhauled by SpaceX from the shuttle program configuration to their Falcon launch configuration. This pad has an awesome history as it was the launch site for Apollo 11, Skylab launch, last shuttle mission (Atlantis) and now SpaceX Falcon Heavy (hopefully) In all 39A has had 94 launches from 1967 to 2011 which included 12 Saturn V rockets and 82 Space Shuttle missions.
Now for my favorite part, the cargo. To start let me explain that I once met Elon Musk back when we was with PayPal. He and several other Silicon Valley leaders decided to book a week at Space Camp. I was working at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center at the time and ran into the group several times through the week. Elon was the one that was always laughing and making jokes and seemed to truly enjoy the experience. Little did we all know what he would be doing a few years later. The takeaway from that story is that Elon has next level sense of humor. So when he stated that he would be putting his series 1 cherry red Tesla Roadster up as a mass simulator for Falcon Heavy, a lot of people thought it was a joke. It wasn't. On board the Falcon Heavy is his cherry red Tesla Roadster complete with an dummy astronaut in the SpaceX spacesuit prototype (loving named Starman), with the top down of course. Elon also mentioned that it would be playing David Bowie's Space Oddity (you know Ground Control to Major Tom) but unless he is playing it in Starman's helmet, it won't really be able to be heard in the vacuum of space. Either way it is pretty cool and the roadster is equipped three cameras to help document the journey to Mars. Now not a lot is known about the Mars part of the trip but it is assumed that Starman and the Tesla Roadster won't be landing on Mars but are expected to take a trip around Mars in October of this year.
So there ya go? Excited yet? Hope you watch the launch or explosion, we just don't know what to expect. Either way it will be a show. The live SpaceX webcast will be here and I plan on updating this thread as well. Hope you guys join in as well as I don't like to talk to myself that much.
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