[ad_1]
SpaceX has decided to move the first commercial launch of Falcon Heavy 24 hours right – from April 9 to 10 – to take into account minor processing delays and to avoid an unusually severe weather system currently in effect on the East Coast. .
The giant rocket, which will fly for the first time in its Block 5 configuration, is scheduled to take off at 6:35 pm (EST) (10:35 pm) on Wednesday, April 10. Close observers have been more or less expecting this minor delay since the Falcon Heavy Flight 2 static fire test was pushed from March 31 to April 5 and is therefore not a concern. Instead, these rather routine minor shifts indicate that the rocket is surprisingly fluidly flowing towards its first commercial launch. In fact, the launch on April 10 – five days after a static fire on April 5 – would be a routine for Falcon 9much less a rocket with three Falcon 9 boosters.
In other words, these minor shifts indicate that SpaceX has already managed to more or less transfer its growing experience and confidence with Falcon 9 Block 5 in its all-new Falcon Heavy Block 5 variant. Despite the fact that Falcon Heavy has actually two times more main components (three boosters and a higher stage compared to an amplifier and an upper stage), it uses a central core which is in many ways a rocket totally different from Falcon 9, the Block 5 The first stream Rocket launch takes place as well as the average stream of the SpaceX Falcon 9.
These average flows typically take 24 to 48 hours to run on the platform and static fire, followed by an additional 24 hours before returning to the hangar. With the exception of a few outliers, the Falcon 9 Block 5 typically required four to five days of processing between static fire and the first attempt at launch, the best and worst performing flows ranging from 3 to 10 days. If an observer was unaware that Falcon Heavy was launching, the flow of rocket flight 2 would be hard to distinguish from his much simpler brethren, suggesting that SpaceX learned a lot from Falcon Heavy Flight 1 and was able to communicate with almost all the benefits of Block 5 to the triple rocket.
SpaceX can thus maintain its exceptionally efficient rocket processing system, requiring minimal disruption to the rest of its Falcon 9 launch infrastructure and making only minor modifications to dual-use hardware and installations such as carrier / fitter (T / E) and the Pad 39A shed. In fact, a monochrome reminder of Falcon 9 – the B1051, which debuts the launch of Crew Dragon – can be seen in the background of the Falcon Heavy processing process, simultaneously undergoing a renovation and checks before it is sent. West to Vandenberg Air Base.
This is a small detail – both literally and figuratively – but it shows that the integration of Falcon Heavy is already quite common so that it is not necessary to suspend unrelated activities literally taking place in the same room. While SpaceX continues to launch Falcon Heavy on a fairly regular basis, this routine should improve continually, especially as the company begins to reuse Falcon Heavy boosters. The first Falcon Heavy-specific recall reuse is expected to take place just two months after the launch of Arabsat 6A for a USAF mission called Space Test Program 2 (STP-2).
Check Teslarati newsletters for quick updates, on-the-ground perspectives and a unique insight into SpaceX rocket launch and recovery processes
<! –
->
[ad_2]
Source link