After recording a $600 million third-quarter loss with Tesla, entrepreneur extraordinaire Elon Musk was definitely looking for some good news from another of his companies. It seems like his commercial space delivery, exploration, and tourism company SpaceX is positioned to deliver it.
The company has made tremendous progress in successfully launching and landing its reusable Falcon 9 rocket. The next step will be advancing what the company refers to as the Falcon Heavy. The use of three boosters and nine engines give this rocket twice as much thrust as the next largest rocket and equal to eighteen 747 aircraft. Musk has dubbed it the most powerful operational rocket in the world.
Then again, this is also the guy who promised to have 10,000 cars/week rolling off assembly lines and has yet to top 300 total. So the timeline on the Falcon Heavy is still up in the air. November was the original target, but launchpad availability could be an issue due to the company’s current launch schedule. This fact is actually another positive indicator of SpaceX’s progress and success.
The latest news, attributed to NASA Spaceflight, claims SpaceX is planning to launch the Falcon Heavy for the first time on December 29. The SpaceX rocket system has been in development since 2002, with an overarching goal of reducing the cost of access to space.