The Falcon Heavy Takes Flight

I’m taking over Bethany’s blog to talk about my recent trip to see my dad, the experience of seeing Falcon Heavy Launch, and reflect on why space has been exciting me so much lately:

Long story short, I saw something with the thrust of 18 747’s launch an electric car to Mars. I saw the largest rocket in operation make its first flight. I saw two 16 story buildings do a backflip at 1,400 MPH and drop from 100 miles high to make precision landing less than 2 feet from the target. I felt the building behind me shake so much they evacuated it before the launch. I felt six sonic booms kick me in the chest. I heard the roar of 5,500,000 pounds of thrust. I met Bill Nye. Last, but not least, I got to hang out with my dad.

Notice the people standing at the bottom of the rocket for scale. See them? No? Zoom in:

The best advice I was given about attending a launch is put the phone away and enjoy the day. Professional photographers will be there and capture way better images than you can. Just go and be – so I did.

We started our trip by playing golf at the preserve. I’ve only played golf in Florida a few times in my life. The easiest way to summarize golf in Florida is there is water left, water right, and an island green. Don’t go left, or the gator will eat your ball. Don’t go right, or it’ll go into the woods and the snakes will eat your ball.  Make sure not to hit it long, or it’ll roll down the hill into the water.

After that humbling experience, I got an hour lesson with my dad’s instructor. This guy was a miracle worker and I’ve got a path to play good golf pretty soon. He showed me how to fix issues I’ve had for years. I’m kicking myself for not getting lessons sooner.

After that, we packed up our car and drove the few hours across Florida to the Kennedy Space Center.

Back in the 50’s NASA needed a place as far south as possible (to get maximum advantage from the rotation of the Earth), with access to an ocean to the east (so you don’t drop your experimental rockets onto people’s houses), and somewhere isolated so it’s easier to notice some Russian guys buming around (because spying). That basically leaves you the Island bought by the Air Force that became Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Port Canaveral (where cruise ships leave from), and Kennedy Space Center (NASA property).

It’s a huge ballpark that has millions of square acres.

I knew where I wanted to see the launch from and dropped some bucks on the premier launch viewing package that allowed us to be the closets civilians to the launch. They didn’t allow any humans within 3 miles of the launch site. We were 3.9 miles away.

The morning of the launch, we had to get to the site 6 hours ahead of time because they were expecting 100,000 people to make their way out onto this island. Once we were onsite, they bused us onto the Air Force base to view from the “Saturn V Visitor Center.”

This building was nerd heaven. They had a Saturn V hanging from the ceiling. The Saturn V took men to the moon. It had the largest lifting capacity of any rocket, ever. It could put 260,000 pounds into orbit (the shuttle could do around 20,000 and the Falcon Heavy can do around 140,000 pounds). This thing is stupid big.

My dad enjoyed seeing all the design choices that the engineers made like where to add stiffeners, how to attached to the tanking, how to maximize storage space, and how crazy the astronauts were to ride that thing.

Oh, I got to touch a moon rock. So that happened:

The time of the launch came, and they had to delay due to upper level winds. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t launch on the first try. No one has ever launched a new rocket on the first attempt. It just doesn’t happen.

So, they launched on the first attempt.

Here's the official webcast (just in case I haven't made you watch it already). Watch it all, it's better than whatever else you had to do for the next 34 minutes:

The Kennedy Space Center had the SpaceX webcast playing over the load speakers. At T-2 minutes the call of LOX loading complete was given. The crowd went wild. At T-1 minute, the launch director gave permission to enter terminal count, the crowd went nuts. At T-30 seconds, AFTS was set to launch, people lost their minds.

Being 4 miles away, the sound arrives at you 12 seconds after the sound. All 5 Million pounds rise in silence. Watching through binoculars, it’s like looking at the sun. It’s so bright it hurts your eyes, but you can’t look away.

The Heavy rises and begins its gravity kick. Space isn’t up, it’s downrange – fast. After 8 seconds, its cleared the tower and pointing all 27 engines at you. Right about that time, you start to feel a low rumble coming across the water. It’s a stampede of elephants. It’s your stomach resting on a kick-drum. It’s so loud you’re talking in ALL CAPS.

Humanity has never heard 27 engines firing in unison before. The sound interacts with itself in weird ways. The exhaust left the nozzles faster than the speed of sound and created thousands of tiny sonic booms crackling the air. The Air Force was worried the Heavy would break windows over 4 miles away, so they cleared the Vistor Center out before the launch. You could feel the building shaking, rattling, and whining like someone struck it with a tuning fork.

As the roar subsides, you track the 3 cores down-range. I knew the major milestones to look for. When I see a change in the exhaust plumes, I call “side core MECO.” Once they’ve burned the majority of their fuel, the two side cores release and fly in formation away from the center core. I see the side cores shut off their 9 engines, each, then glide away as the center core throttles up and heads further down-range.

Right after the side cores split off, they start a back-flip immediately. It must have been less than 2 seconds before they had flipped these 16 story buildings around (it was unbelievably aggressive how hard they turned).  At this point they’re about 25 miles down range, 40 miles high, and going about 1,500 MPH.

They re-light 3 engines to cancel the forward velocity of the side cores and gain altitude. They fly higher to let the Earth spin under them and bring Florida to them. Remember, Florida is heading east 100 miles every 10 minutes.

Once the side cores cut their engines, you lose them.

My dad and I had our binoculars out scanning the sky for the return of the cores as they had to re-enter the atmosphere soon.

I had a general idea where they’d appear in the sky, but I was wrong. We watched the sky as 2 new suns appeared. It seemed like they were straight overhead. The side cores have to re-enter the atmosphere.

The Space Shuttle had the famous heat absorbing tiles for this effort. SpaceX can’t carry the extra weight, so they light their engines and punch the atmosphere in the face on their way in. The math works out that you can blast the air away from you faster than it can heat you up.

You tend to get your rocket “A little toasty” and will melt anything not able to withstand a few thousand degrees, but it’s a completely novel solution to the passive methods in the past. Who would have thought to solve the heating problem by lighting your engines and falling through your own rocket exhaust, but I digress.

Once the cores re-enter, you can see them with the binoculars. Imagine looking straight up then scan down to the horizon in about 30 seconds. That’s how fast these things fell. WAY faster than I had thought.

Once they are 5 miles high, they light an engine and begin the landing burn. They slow from terminal velocity to 0 at the exact second they run out of altitude. It’s called a suicide burn as the Falcon 9 has too much thrust to hover, so they have to get it right the first time. They nailed both landings.

Remember how light travels faster than sound? The boosters land to the sound of the crowd going wild. Then, you hear 6 sonic booms in rapid succession. It’s like the sound man from A.C./D.C bought a speaker than kicks people.

Then, about 20 seconds later, the sound of the landing burn reaches you. That caught me completely by surprise as I wasn’t expecting that last, final touch from physics.

To get an idea what this is like, put on a pair of headphones and watch this. They put bi-directional microphones on-top of the VAB (vertical assembly building) and caught the launch and landing. 

While all this was going on, the center core, and the second stage, were continually accelerating a throttle limit of 4Gs (the rocket could accelerate faster than 4Gs stretched out of 8 minutes, but they throttle down to avoid over-stressing the payload or people as 4Gs for 8 minutes isn't exactly easy). 

After a few minutes, they dump the payload fairings (the white noise cone that keeps the payload from being smashed against the atmosphere at a few thousand MPH). Once the rocket is high enough, there isn't enough air up their to harm the payload, even at those speeds, so they dump the fairings as no reason to haul dead weight any further than absolutely necessary. 

There, back-lite perfectly by the sun, is Elon Musk's cherry red Tesla roadster sporting a dumby in a space-suit (Starman). 

Why launch an electric car to Mars with a rocket that cost $500,000,000 of your money to design. Well, why not? 

Test launches are tests. The FAA doesn't allow you to take a paying customer because they're pretty sure your rocket won't make it. The failure rate of a rocket's first flight is crazy high. Elon even woke up with nightmares about the rocket exploding, a tire bouncing down the launch pad, and the Tesla logo landing with the thud somewhere. 

But, it didn't blow up, and now there is a red car headed to the red planet. 

Here's why any of this matters:

You have two choices for the future. You can either let humanity get worse, or work to make it better - those are your two choices. 

I have never seen a more hopeful, determined group of people than those involved in space exploration and scientific studies. There is nothing this group of people can't do to make the world a better place for the next generation. 

When you see 5,500,000 pound rocket throw an electric car at 40,000 MPH, you start to think we can solve whatever problem we have down here.