SpaceX
Whoomph. Standing nearly five kilometres from SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket as it took off for the first time, I felt like my lungs were exposed to the open air, the rushing sound and steam from the rocket’s engines squeezing my heart and making it beat off-kilter. People describe rocket engines as thunderous; despite the warm day and nearly cloudless sky, it was more like being inside the thundercloud.
I was at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and we’d been waiting through delay after delay all afternoon. There were powerful winds high in the atmosphere that could ruin the launch, and it seemed like they’d never die down. High winds are dangerous for rockets, even one as burly as Falcon Heavy.
It is 70 metres tall. Its first stage, the boosters that power it into space, is basically three Falcon 9 rockets strapped together. In all, they have 27 engines – more than any other working rocket – and they can create up to 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.
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It’s capable of putting 63,800 kilograms into low-Earth orbit – that’s more than a seventh the mass of the entire International Space Station – or bringing 16,800 kilograms to Mars. Put simply, it’s the biggest and most powerful rocket on the market. The only other launch vehicle that could lift as much as Falcon Heavy was the Saturn V, which delivered astronauts to the moon but hasn’t been in use since 1973.
Final countdown
I had travelled to Florida to see my first rocket launch in person. But as the afternoon dragged on, I wondered if the flight would be scrubbed. I took a walk to ease the tension and returned to the press area to find that the fueling had begun. It seemed like the Falcon was going to fly.
I walked across a grassy ridge to stake out a spot near the Turning Basin to watch the launch. Across the water sat Falcon Heavy, looking like a toy model from so far away.
I kept an eye on the massive countdown clock in front of me. When the exhaust from the engines began to pour from the launch pad, the crowd hushed in anticipation. Falcon Heavy took to the air, flame shooting from its boosters, not looking like a toy anymore.
My eyes stung as the rocket lumbered off the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and headed toward space. The thunder subsided and the birds slowly reclaimed the air. Once it was clear the rocket was not going to blow up, the crowd began to cheer it on. I realised I’d been crying – not because of the rocket’s importance or even because it was my first time seeing a rocket launch up close. It was because of the enormity of it all.
A new era
With this rocket, SpaceX is changing the game. The firm is breaking into a market that has traditionally been dominated by governments, proving its power to carry heavy payloads far from home. It’s a step toward Elon Musk’s dream of colonizing Mars.
This first launch of the Falcon Heavy carried SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster as its test cargo, with a dummy nicknamed Starman in the seat. As I watched it blast off, it was hard not to envy Starman and his position atop the explosion.
Starman’s next step, a 5-hour cruise through the intense zones of radiation that surround Earth, is less enviable – the Van Allen belt will be dangerous for the rocket’s second stage and the car inside. If all goes well, Starman and the Tesla will go into orbit around the sun as the day winds down at Cape Canaveral.
But before the rest of the journalists and I could head back to our hotels, there was one more step. All three of those first-stage boosters were coming back down. Two of them floated down from the sky like bright pennies thrown in a pond. I stopped sputtering and started to laugh. As the boosters landed beyond the horizon, two consecutive sonic booms shook me to my core again.
Read more: Elon Musks’s new plans for a moon base and a Mars mission by 2022
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