Elon Musk told reporters before the launch that he would be happy if the Falcon 9 SpaceX heavy rocket cleared the launch tower. Photo / AP
Elon Musk told reporters before the launch that he would be happy if the Falcon 9 SpaceX heavy rocket cleared the launch tower. Photo / AP
SpaceX has hit a rocket straight out of the park on its first test flight.
The Falcon Heavy rocket blasted off at 9.45am NZT from the same Florida launch pad Nasa used nearly 50 years ago to send men to the moon. With liftoff, the Heavy became the most powerful rocket in use today. Its three boosters and 27 engines roared to life at Kennedy Space Centre.
Not only did the rocket lift a cherry-red Tesla Roadster into orbit — with a dummy "Starman" at the wheel — two of the three boosters came back and landed upright at Cape Canaveral. The 15-storey boosters landed at the same time, side by side.
A cherry-red Tesla Roadster has been sent into space on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy.
This December 6, 2017 photo from SpaceX shows a Tesla car next to the fairing of a Falcon Heavy rocket in Cape Canaveral. The car has been taken into space.
High winds had caused a two-hour delay as huge launch crowds packed roads, bridges and beaches.
The launch attracted thousands — a crowd not seen since Nasa's last space shuttle flight seven years ago. The shuttles had more liftoff muscle than the Heavy, but the all-time leaders in size and might were Nasa's Saturn V rockets, which carried astronauts to the moon in 1968.
Scores of journalists packed the space centre to witness not only the launch, but the return to land of two of the Heavy's three first-stage boosters.
Two booster rockets from the Falcon 9 SpaceX heavy, return for a landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Photo / AP
In orbit, the Roadster will spend several hours travelling through the highly charged Van Allen radiation belts encircling Earth. That will be a risky time as well, according to Musk, because the fuel necessary for the ignition of the final thruster to send the car on its proper path toward Mars could freeze, or the oxygen could vaporise.
In addition, the car will be zapped repeatedly by radiation.
Before the launch Musk told reporters his company has done everything possible to maximise success and he's at peace at whatever happens.
Musk has had plenty of experience with rocket accidents, from his original Falcon 1 test flights to his follow-up Falcon 9s, one of which exploded on a nearby pad during a 2016 ignition test.
Elon Musk told reporters before the launch that he would be happy if the Falcon 9 SpaceX heavy rocket cleared the launch tower. Photo / AP
Although it will be "a really huge downer if it blows up", Musk said he hopes any failure comes far enough into the Heavy's flight "so we at least learn as much as possible along the way". The Heavy already has customers eager to launch hefty satellites, including the US Air Force.
Musk is making plans for an even bigger, mightier rocket that will carry astronauts, not just cargo like the Heavy, along with the infrastructure that would be needed to set up camp on the moon and asteroids, and eventually build the city he envisions on Mars.
