Heavy Lift Hemi of Aerospace

[George Jets]

The Falcon 9 Heavy
The Heavy Lift "Hemi" of Aerospace
SpaceX successfully launched the world's most powerful rocket April 11th 2019,
and retrieved all 3 First Stages . . First Time Ever.

Falcon 9 Heavy
27 Merlin Engines
Power Equal to 18 Boeing 747s at Full Throttle
Fuel: Liquid Oxygen and RP1 Kerosene

Little Rocket, Big Flame
The Falcon 9 Heavy Rocket is 230 feet tall, and the Flame is over 1,000 feet long.

The rocket just passed through the heavy stress area of the Sound Barrier where they throttle it back to keep it from breaking apart. Now safely on the other side of the sound barrier they are powering it up to Full Throttle to make the most of the booster rockets before they drop off and return back to earth for a flawless landing.

This photo was taken at a distance of 45 miles away from the launch site in Palm Bay Florida with a Cannon T3i camera with a telephoto lens, then expanded up on the computer to bring you this real image.

Booster Rockets dropping off the main Falcon 9, turning around and heading back to Kennedy Space Center for their landings.

Once again same distance and same camera, only this time the rocket and boosters are so high they are outside of our atmosphere and need to go through Re-Entry of the atmosphere to get back to earth. You will be able to see the White Charred Paint on the rocket tubes that discolored from the heat of re-entry.

Boosters landing back at Kennedy Space Center

Main Falcon 9 Heavy Center Core landing back on the Drone Ship Barge 500 miles off the East Coast of Florida in the Atlantic Ocean, will be towed back to Cape Canaveral to get ready to be used again. Only 10 minutes 22 seconds for the round trip.

This center section main core really shows the heat effects of re-entry as it went much higher and came in much faster than the 2 booster rockets.

They save millions of dollars being able to recycle these 2 boosters and the main center core.

Hope you enjoy the heavy lift "Hemi" of aerospace.

 

[Bad Sport]

Cool stuff!!

 

[RustyRatRod]

That is cool! Should be on front pages everywhere......instead of Trump hate. Oh sorry.......did I say that?

 

[TrailBeast]

VERY impressive isn't it?
I keep up on SpaceX pretty closely.

Recently the Dragon crew capsule was tested to dock with the International space station, unmanned but with a dummy with all kinds of sensors on it to collect data, and it passed with flying colors.
They named the dummy Ripley, which I thought was classic.

Also don't forget we have a Tesla roadster orbiting the earth now as well.

 

[dukeboy440]

The Falcon 9 Heavy
The Heavy Lift "Hemi" of Aerospace
SpaceX successfully launched the world's most powerful rocket April 11th 2019,
and retrieved all 3 First Stages . . First Time Ever.

Not to be argumentative, but the Falcon 9 heavy, per Space X themselves, even with the Full Thrust Version is reported to have just over 5,000,000 lbf of thrust. This places it second behind the Saturn V in terms of "most powerful, which had at peak thrust, using the last version of the F1Js engines, equaled a little bit over 7.5 million lbf, or 7,500,000 lb of thrust. The thrust level to get to the moon, the Saturn V hit 6.53 million lbf of thrust. the F series Saturn engines were built by..... none other than Chrysler Corp. Also, it had twice the payload, 140,000 lbs Falcon vs 280,000 of the Saturn V

that said, what Space X has done, especially with the landing of all three reusable stages is VERY impressive.

 

[George Jets]

VERY impressive isn't it?
I keep up on SpaceX pretty closely.

Recently the Dragon crew capsule was tested to dock with the International space station, unmanned but with a dummy with all kinds of sensors on it to collect data, and it passed with flying colors.
They named the dummy Ripley, which I thought was classic.

Also don't forget we have a Tesla roadster orbiting the earth now as well.

Yes TrailBeast it is very impressive For Sure !

Most certainly keep up on the Space Program myself, one of the main draws in Florida. Used to subscribe to the Smithsonian Air & Space magazine before I had the time or the means to come and watch the actual launches. That pretty much set the stage for future activities on Florida's Space Coast, besides working on the Mopars in Minnesota during the nice times of year. Figured out a way to make things happen, where there is a will there is a way.

Starman in the Tesla Roadster orbiting the earth, that's pretty cool too. Inspiration for all to think about things beyond.

Thanks

 

[TrailBeast]

Yes TrailBeast it is very impressive For Sure !

Most certainly keep up on the Space Program myself, one of the main draws in Florida. Used to subscribe to the Smithsonian Air & Space magazine before I had the time or the means to come and watch the actual launches. That pretty much set the stage for future activities on Florida's Space Coast, besides working on the Mopars in Minnesota during the nice times of year. Figured out a way to make things happen, where there is a will there is a way.

Starman in the Tesla Roadster orbiting the earth, that's pretty cool too. Inspiration for all to think about things beyond.

Thanks

I lived by Vandenberg Air Force Base in CA for years and know how it is being close to one.
One of my best friends was a painting contractor for the launch towers and such.
Talk about job security.
He would sandblast, Xray and paint all the individual parts after they disassembled it all, and then they would blow it off with a launch and he would start all over again.

 

[George Jets]

Had just a great day today, went out to Melbourne Beach here on the Space Coast to go for a walk being it was a quieter day after yesterday's rocket launch. (Too much fresh snow in MN, so no hurry there).

Met a man and his daughter from the country of Chile on the boardwalk of Melbourne Beach at the steps heading down to the beach. I stepped back and nodded as to say hello, he stopped to talk but he only knew about 5 words of English and I did not understand his native tongue.

He was attempting to make some conversation and I thought, I bet you they will understand the Rocket Pictures on my phone from yesterday's launch. So I brought up the pictures on the phone of the Rockets and their eyes immediately lit up and his daughter started jumping up and down.

Then he waved his wife and the other 2 daughters over to look over the rocket photos, so then I showed them the short video of the 2 Falcon 9 Heavy Boosters coming back in and landing at the launch site of Kennedy Space Center. Needless to say they were all over that and wanted to know more. All I could say was: Recycle, Recycle . . Reuse Rocket, Reuse Rocket.

Thought they asked about a form of social media to send them the pictures, as much as I could understand but said I did not do that. So as an alternative for them I wrote down the SpaceX Webcast internet address for the replay of yesterday's Falcon 9 Heavy Launch.

SpaceX.com/WebCast

Wrote this down on one of my business cards and gave it to them, they were all happy and smiling knowing that now they would be able to see the whole detailed rocket launch by way of the internet, and the re-landing of the 2 Boosters and the main rocket Center Section landing out to sea on the Drone Ship Barge. They were just visiting the area and knew they missed yesterday's launch, and from what I gathered they were flying out tonight to head back to Chile.

This Rocket Launch, photos, and video, bridged our language barrier and we were communicating through the pictures, our body language, and our hand gestures.

Was just so Cool !

Family of 5 from Chile, think I made some new friends . . .

Melbourne Beach on the Space Coast of Florida . . .

 

[George Jets]

I am still in awe of the advancements made in just the last 50 years.

Cool Mopars Built in the 60s and 70s . . great engineering, the moon shot/landing in 1969 with toggle switches in the Space Capsule to turn things on and off.

Then the introduction of Computers, build out and getting the Internet setup and functioning well, our GPS constellations floating around just on the fringes of space from earth for pinpoint accuracy from Farming Operations, Mapping/Navigating, to landing Rocket Parts back to earth for recycling so they can be used again.

What a great time to be alive. Would like to be around 200 years from now . . going to be phenomenal.

Hopefully future generations can get a handle on the stresses on our planet.

Should be a lot of Cool Mopars around 200 years from now, I am sure people will be taking good care of them.

200 year old Mopars . . . Wow !

 

[halifaxhops]

Nice! I used to go down and was part of the rescue crew for the STS (shuttle) launches they were cool as hell from the air. That thing must have been insane to watch!

 

[George Jets]

Must have been cool to work with the Shuttle Rescue Crew, I never had the chance to see the Shuttle go up . . Dang . . .

Yes it was just awesome.

The rocket was so powerful and so fast it was hard to take it all in before it was out of sight. Have seen a lot of other launches down here, after the Space Shuttle Days that are over now. Other single rockets kind of lumber for a while getting up off the launch pad and then work to build enough speed to get them up into orbit around earth. You have enough time to watch them and the cool rocket trails they leave behind.

This Falcon 9 Heavy was up and gone, especially when they went to Full Power after getting on the other side of the pressures of the sound barrier.

Glad I was able to take pictures with the telephoto lens and save them to look back on later. Also the SpaceX Webcast is a perfect replay of the whole event:

SpaceX.com/Webcast

230 foot tall rocket, more than 1000 foot flame at full throttle.

That's Raw Power . . .

 

[1973Barracuda]

I am in Melbourne for some training before heading across the pond late this month. I missed the launch, it kept being rescheduled. Was hoping to see it.

 

[George Jets]

Yes that's the tough part about it, got scrubbed a couple of times before it went up on Thursday. People were waiting on Wednesday at their viewing spots for the better part of the day so they would have a good spot, then it got scrubbed from too high of upper level winds.

One couple was driving 6 hours each way to come see it, that's a tough one.
I was up to a night launch at Kennedy Space Center in their parking lot quite a few years ago, it clouded over. The rocket took off and went into the clouds, 10 seconds and that was it, crowd was pretty disappointed but what can you do.

I am pretty accustomed to these events and what can happen to postpone or hamper them. Fortunately I am in a pretty good spot where I can still see things with my bare eyes at a distance of 45 miles. Have a good reach with the telephoto lens on my camera and have the good internet live feed right here to stay on top of the exact second to when things are going to lift off. Then watch the replay of the live feed again after it is all over to see all the details of everything, as it happens so fast.

So yeah, I am a happy camper to be able to witness these events.

 

[Unconventional]

15 minutes to my vantage point for SLC3 and SLC4 . SLC6 is over the hill from there. 3 years invested in that one and couldn't even begin to estimate how many thousand yards of concrete I either made or placed there. I should have kept a personal log . I saw one of the Falcon launches last fall, first 1 I've seen that actually made a sonic boom. The landing of the booster was a real treat . They used to chase us off the SLC6 worksite when they launched from another site. An Atlas like the one above made it about 2K feet outa the hole and turned itself into a huge orange cloud. Partner and I looked at each other "That can't be good" simultaneously .

 

[George Jets]

View attachment 1715319086

15 minutes to my vantage point for SLC3 and SLC4 . SLC6 is over the hill from there. 3 years invested in that one and couldn't even begin to estimate how many thousand yards of concrete I either made or placed there. I should have kept a personal log . I saw one of the Falcon launches last fall, first 1 I've seen that actually made a sonic boom. The landing of the booster was a real treat . They used to chase us off the SLC6 worksite when they launched from another site. An Atlas like the one above made it about 2K feet outa the hole and turned itself into a huge orange cloud. Partner and I looked at each other "That can't be good" simultaneously .

That's just so interesting. Thanks for the update on what is going on in California. Don't know much at all about what is going on out there except what I hear on the news.

Thumbs Up !

Thanks

 

[Unconventional]

May 16th Space X Falcon at VAFB. Have to write that on the calendar.