The Falcon Heavy Story

Why did Falcon Heavy take so long?
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[@Diddibobbo]

The most underrated space channel!

[@donlindell1994]

This is so true. I am astounded by the nonsense coming from other space channels when you can get a master’s degree watching this one. Almost every episode requires a pause/rewind cycle for more analysis of formulas and data tables. This is the channel I would take to a deserted island in hopes of launching myself back to civilization! (Ya, I know… my space suit would be labeled, “Captain Chum” based on the likelihood of success)

[@KaiWipfler]

Indeed.

[@keithrange4457]

Agreed

[@203null]

Eager Space is the GOAT ❤❤❤

[@goldenshatter]

​@@donlindell1994The youtube algorithm isn't very norminal of good non clickbait channels.

[@regolith1350]

I'm a simple man. I see Eager Space, I click play.

[@debott4538]

With an ever improving F9, FH was indeed a hard sell back in the day. I once heard that Elon Musk was about to cancel FH entirely, because development was hard to get funded. Apparently it was Gwynne Shotwell who kept the program going, because they already had customers for FH, i.e. heavy GSO playloads. Thanks for the summary. I think Artemis/CLPS will be FH's time to shine.

[@EagerSpace]

Yes, that is the story.

[@807800]

It's mentioned that customer was the Air Force.

[@lazarorocha8893]

What a hidden gem of a channel mate, thx

[@EagerSpace]

Thanks.

[@steveo6034]

The Merlin engine will go on to be the most reliable rocket engine ever made🚀🛰️

[@EagerSpace]

Liquids tend to be pretty reliable once a good startup/shutdown sequence is figured out, but to fly at the power levels it does and be pretty darn close to perfect is really impressive.

[@sebastianleroux9765]

Raptor will quickly out do it. 39 engines per flight and soon 44

[@judet2992]

Eeeh, hard to beat the RS25. Still, fantastic engine.

[@lordgarion514]

@judet2992 RS25 is a great engine, but because it was used on the Trash Shuttle, no single engine actually got used very many times. And now, the stupid expensive SLS is using them as expendable. 🤦 I heard they are/might start production of the RS25 again. But a slightly cheaper version since they won't be made to be reusable.

[@judet2992]

@@lordgarion514 yeah, block 1B will use the last remaining shuttle RS25’s, the E model. Then there will be a soft upgrade as they start production on a disposable and more powerful version, the D. Won’t be marked by a block change tho.

[@ryanrising2237]

The bit about “extra work” reminds me, SpaceX has referred to a vertical integration facility to explain a couple >$300M launches of FH before but it’s yet to materialise. I wonder how progress on that is moving along.

[@EagerSpace]

I looked for info a while back and didn't find anything and I'm too lazy to go off and find which mission it was for. I don't think anybody has seen any work done - presumably they'd do it on 39A and just hang it near the crew access arm.

[@GoToSpace_GTS]

Been keeping an eye on your channel for some time, great content. Keep on grinding, success in the form of subs will come.

[@EagerSpace]

Thanks.

[@RogerWilco1]

Wonder if you are interested in doing a video on Dream Chaser? Seems right up your alley. I'm happy to watch, comment and like your videos. They are fantastic!

[@donlindell1994]

We determined that Starship could carry up to 2 x Dreamchasers in the cargo bay, fully assembled, and perhaps 10 of them after going through a Blendtech blender “will it blend?”

[@floatingspaceman993]

Always enjoy the videos. Great production and summaries. Hidden gem on youtube

[@EagerSpace]

Much appreciated!

[@WilliamDye-willdye]

Commenting to help UN-hide this channel. C'mon, algo, show some love for the genuine quality here!

[@mskiptr]

As usual, an awesome video! But I have to admit - I just love the "if you enjoyed this video" parts…

[@EagerSpace]

Thanks. So my Gyrfalcon will be showing up in the next week????

[@mskiptr]

@@EagerSpace If it can deliver itself like a homing pigeon! I'm not paying for shipping halfway across the globe!

[@PetesGuide]

@@mskiptrJust do a ride share.

[@kzdyk]

Another amazing video! You really need more attention from the work you put in. I love these!

[@NomenNescio99]

Get yourself a po box so we can send some stuff your way!

[@EagerSpace]

The "send me" part is supposed to be a joke. If I set up a PO box, what am I going to do if I get 30 birds in the mail? Though the "buran" heat shield tile might be cool to have.

[@203null]

@@EagerSpaceAt least one

[@refindoazhar1507]

​@@EagerSpacesleeping in a pool of dolls sound nice

[@scottstewart5784]

We must remember Elon's prime directive when thinking about SpaceX decisions. Falcon 9 and the whole family exists for two reasons: 1) get SpaceX smart on rockets and engines so they can build Starship for MARS, and 2) a side hustle to fund MARS. Elon dislikes Falcon Heavy and would have preferred not to develop Heavy at all. And DoD insisting both suppliers cover all weights just makes sense - you're buying redundancy with 2 suppliers - why accept less than full redundancy?

[@judet2992]

So the joke about it being Delta IV Heavy on a diet is actually accurate. Huh.

[@keithrange4457]

Great vid and info! Ive gotten to look forward to getting a notification that you put a new one out. Keep it up!

[@citizenblue]

Love your work!!

[@EagerSpace]

Thank you!

[@citizenblue]

@@EagerSpace No sir, thank you.

[@brianboye8025]

I loved the Titan V rocket. The Titan was a reliable launch vehicle. Titan V could have launched the Dynasaur lifting body.

[@michaeldunne338]

Great review of the history of this intriguing (to me) launch system. Really love the gems of interesting points and insights. For instance, going over the Falcon 9 Payload Adapter and its center of gravity limitations was worth hearing (able to support the launch of an 18,00 kg payload), as a factor for why Falcon Heavy isn't used for Starlink, and on why payload figures for the Falcon Heavy may be more theoretical at the moment (or require quite a bit of work).

[@jgottula]

Yeah, same. I knew the vast majority of the things in this video already, but I was definitely not aware of the payload adapter limitation. Quite an interesting detail.

[@EagerSpace]

Thanks.

[@JoshuaR.Collins]

they actually had plans for a heavy version of falcon 1, thought the idea was quickly dropped once they started work on multi-engine versions of falcon. Scott manley covers it in his video on Abandoned SpaceX Rocket Designs (kzbin.info/www/bejne/apiaammhnqx3r7c)

[@jgottula]

Yeah, there are a lot of interesting SpaceX paper rockets from the past. Like those various F9-1.0-era designs using "Merlin 2" engines and such. I always used to think those were neat.

[@JoshuaR.Collins]

@@jgottula and who can forget gray dragon and red dragon.

[@jgottula]

@@JoshuaR.Collins Ah yeah... I remember my brother talking about Red Dragon back in the day.

[@EagerSpace]

Yes. The drawing that I saw were very cute.

[@TurinTurambar72]

The way you said a WEIRD eliptical orbit

[@atptourfan]

Yes a new Eager Space! 🎉😊

[@w0ttheh3ll]

Great video!

[@TheKdcool]

This channel is great but the only thing holding it back is the logo, as is, it looks like a serial killer mask with a neutral face 😐

[@mskiptr]

XD Yeah, I too initially did not like it. But it grew on me for some reason.

[@EagerSpace]

Thinking about the feedback. You're not the only one to make that comment. But I can assure you that there are a whole bunch of other things holding it back.

[@rottensoul440]

Lack of droneships could be solved with RTLS on the outer boosters

[@SpaceAdvocate]

That drops the payload to LEO substantially. If it can only do like 30 tons to LEO with all three cores recovered, the cost relative to a standard Falcon 9 becomes problematic. Falcon Heavy makes most sense with the two outer cores landing on drone ships and the center core expended, or fully expended.

[@EagerSpace]

Exactly. And I probably should have talked about different reuse modes but it's so hard to get real information.

[@TheBackyardChemist]

That would probably need the cancelled prop crossfeed to the center, to be economical

[@jgottula]

@@TheBackyardChemist​​⁠I was hoping crossfeed would come up in the video, but alas. (To be fair, I don't think crossfeed ever got past... like... being a notional "we'll figure that out later" kind of thing before being scrapped; and so its relevance to the video overall is a bit limited.)

[@EagerSpace]

That was another performance boost that just isn't needed.

[@thedausthed]

Falcon Heavy's center core is not the same as the Falcon 9 first stage, so would it not likely of been designed to launch heavier payloads alreadly.

[@andrewmatos9652]

I thought the falcon heavy lands the side boosters on land and only the core on the drone ship

[@jgottula]

That's the mode they've done the most in practice; but it's not the only way things can be done. There are actually quite a few ways FH can potentially work. A. Boosters RTLS, core drone ship B. Boosters RTLS, core expended C. Boosters drone ship, core drone ship D. Boosters drone ship, core expended E. Boosters expended, core expended F. Boosters RTLS, core RTLS I believe that these are all of the potential reuse modes for FH. (The letter designations are arbitrary things I came up with just to make them easier to refer to.) So far they have done: A: 3 times B: 5 times E: 1 time C needs a third drone ship. D is possible with the two drone ships they have now (since the core's not gonna land). But they haven't had a situation yet where they felt the need to do it, I guess. F is an odd one. It needs a third landing pad. And because the core is generally going quite fast and quite far downrange at MECO, the penalty for the boostback burn, to head all the way back to land, is pretty big. But it's apparently not so bad that it couldn't technically be done, if for some reason you really wanted to do that. (I doubt this is something we'd ever see happen.) (You could additionally do weird backward things, such as boosters to drone ship and core RTLS; but those don't make any actual sense.)

[@bergonius]

This channel is a black pearl

[@PlaneCrazyStarshipProgram]

Great video

[@PetesGuide]

What’s the first use of the block scheme that was before Apollo? And same question for the mark, mod combination? And when do you decide which of those schemes to use?

[@EagerSpace]

No idea. This might help space.stackexchange.com/questions/10468/origin-of-term-block-i-block-ii-etc

[@PetesGuide]

@@EagerSpace Oh boy does that link have some great answers in it! Thanks!

[@Jake1702]

I will send this video to people when they say something silly like "Starship won't have many customers because Falcon Heavy didn't" without understanding *why* FH has a smaller number of customers.

[@TheEvilmooseofdoom]

And tell them Starship was never about being a commercial success. They built it for their own purposes.

[@EagerSpace]

You might want to watch my "what do we do with starship?" video... The first answer is that Starship is a Starlink lifter, and that will probably be a very good customer. The second answer is that Starship will have plenty of customers if it's roughly the price of a Falcon 9 launch, which - of course - requires them to actually get second stage reuse working. But if they do, the economics take another huge shift.

[@J7Handle]

⁠@@EagerSpace given IFT-4’s results, it seems it could be difficult to make Starship rapidly reusable, with lots of TPS damage seeming likely in the future, independent of the flaps issue. And with such an extended r&d process, the amortized cost of Starship is definitely mounting. Probably won’t be nearly as cheap as F9, at least for a 100 launches after going fully operational. Could still achieve a marginal cost of under 10 million per launch, but pricing will need to be 100 million+ to make a profit after all the r&d costs are accounted for.

[@gorgonbert]

Instaclick!

[@Howtopaintstuff]

:)

[@whenlizardsfly]

I’m 99% sure I have watched a few of your videos before but for some reason never subbed

[@EagerSpace]

Did this one convince you, or do I need to try harder?

[@whenlizardsfly]

@@EagerSpace I subbed after watching this so yea