Falcon Heavy Success!

Three days after the successful launch of Falcon Heavy and I believe I am finally recovering after the massive adrenaline high and low that hit me from the experience of history being made.

I was awake at 4:00 AM the day of the launch. My alarm wasn’t going to go off for another two hours, but there was no way I was going to fall back asleep. we ended up getting to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) visitor complex just after 9, after dropping off Ruger at a family member’s house and stopping to get some coffee and donuts.

The place was packed, but the lines for security and the buses to our viewing area were moving steadily. We were at the Saturn V center, which was 3.9 miles away from the launch pad (39A, where the Saturn V and Space Shuttle launched from) and about 11 miles from the landing pads.

Most of the day was fairly uneventful. We arrived at the Saturn V center right about noon, got some food that was provided with our tickets (meh), and then went and found a couple of seats on the bleachers. From our location we had a clear view of the launch pad, but the FSS (Fixed Service Structure) left over from the shuttle program was blocking our view of of the rocket itself.

The launch was scheduled for 1:30 PM but there was an issue with high level winds so they kept pushing the clock back fifteen minutes then thirty minutes, holding around t-minus two hours for what felt like an eternity. Finally the winds started trending in the right direction, so they started fueling the rocket with little time to spare. Due to the nature of the chilled liquid oxygen they use for the first stage fuel they have to decide if they think they will be able to launch about an hour and a half before the launch because of the time it takes to fuel the rocket and decreased performance from the fuel sitting in the rocket for too long before launch.

When we received the announcement that they had begun fueling the first shout of many went up through the entire crowd. The launch time had been set for 3:45, just fifteen minutes before the launch window would close for the day. If the winds shifted again or there was some hiccup, the 15,000 or so people would have to return the next day to watch.

Because that was such a high profile launch people had flown and driven in from just about every corner of the world. Tay and I had met up for dinner with an offshoot group from reddit. In just the 20 or so people we met there were people from Canada, the UK, Denmark, Germany, France, Slovakia, Lebanon, Australia and of course all over the U.S. There were a lot of people who booked their international tickets two days before Heavy was supposed to fly and, in some cases, had to leave the very next day, even if the launch was scrubbed (postponed).

Thankfully, to everyone tuning on, the weather was nominal and Heavy flew! I wanted to take picture of Heavy as it lifted off and cleared the tower as well as the first few seconds after it had cleared the tower. Taylor had the binoculars for the liftoff and initial flight and then when I was done with photos I wanted to watch the rest of the flight. I was able to follow the initial ascent through the binoculars until it went through clouds and I lost it.

They were playing the audio from the SpaceX livestream and we were able to hear when everything was happening. I believe it reached “MaxQ” (maximum pressure on the craft) right as it came back into view on the other side of the clouds. I wouldn’t have been able to pick it up, but it had a huge contrail behind it. At that point the rocket was high enough in the atmosphere that the plume of flames coming out of the engines were spread out and it wasn’t as if I was staring into the sun. I was able to pick up up in my binoculars and followed it while the two side boosters separated, flipped and did the boost back burn to return to the landing zones. We lost sight of the side boosters in the clouds but it would have been impossible to miss them when they lit up for the three engine reentry burn coming back into the atmosphere.

The strangest thing I have ever seen was the two side boosters falling (with style) back to earth. There are no words I can think of to describe a twelve foot by two-hundred and thirty foot tower hurdling towards the ground a a few hundred (not sure) miles per hour. The landing burn started just before they went behind the tress and somehow the shouting and cheering that had been ongoing since liftoff got even louder when we received confirmation that the side boosters had landed safely.

The payload fairing separated as it should have and Starman had finally embarked on his “billion year journey”. We waited intently and watched the monitors of the live stream as the core of the rocket had not landed yet. Usually when the rocket gets near the drone ship the feed from the ship cuts out for a bit, but this time they didn’t go back to it. The commentators on the stream acted nervous, especially after it sounded like they got a confirmation of some sort, but they concluded the feed soon after.

At a press conference later that day, Elon Musk said that the center core failed to ignite two of the three engines for the entry burn and the center core landed in the ocean near the barge going 300 M.P.H. The center core was unflown before Heavy, but was an older design that they are phasing out, so they were not planning on flying it again anyway.

As a whole, the mission was a success! The rocket that was originally supposed to fly in 2013 made it maiden flight and delivered the payload to an orbit even farther than they had thought they would be able to. In the months leading up to the launch Elon had undersold the rocket saying that if it got far enough off the pad to not damage it in an explosion he would consider it a success.

After the launch we sat around for a bit so that the crowds could die down before we got in line to head back to the visitor complex and parking lot. After giving a ride to a few people out of the KSC we went and picked up Ruger. After we left there I was SO drained, we decided not to go out with the group we had met and just ate in Titusville before going to sleep.

I am so excited for the future of space flight, seeing ANOTHER falcon heavy launch as well as the rocket SpaceX is designing for interplanetary “hops” and for the trips to mars, the BFR. For anyone not sure, that’s supposed to be “Big FALCON Rocket”.

See below for some of my photos of the launch
You can watch the the SpaceX stream of launch here:

I also highly recommend watching this video by Destin at SmarterEveryDay. The audio is superb and brought me right back to when we saw it live. It gave me goosebumps all over again!