It has literally been built and tested. The hardware is ready and just waiting for the launch pads.
The major reason why Falcon Heavy was delayed for so long is that they were able to make major improvements on the F9. It would not have made much sense to work on a more complicated rocket when there was so much potential in F9.
Falcon Heavy was developed for a pittance compared to the SLS. Even if its delayed another 3 years the SLS would not make a lick of sense.
I think people are missing an important point when talking about Falcon Heavy. Yes it was delayed, but the Falcon Heavy that was eventually launched, was WAY, WAY better then the one announced in 2011.
The payload of the 2011 version was almost reached by the Falcon 9 itself. That was one of the major reasons for the delay, not design and production issues. The Falcon Heavy profited from all the advancments on Falcon 9 and it made no sense to actually build a Falcon Heavy before Block 4.
In fact the first costumers for Falcon Heavy flew on Falcon 9 instead.
Not a big surprise -- Falcon Heavy's development has been delayed several times now by Falcon 9 launch problems. Arianespace doesn't have very much room on their manifest after this.
One of the things that slowed it down a lot was the continual development of the Falcon 9.
With the Block 3/4/5 series of the Falcon 9 (5 is the final design and mostly focused on reusability upgrades, 4 is interim) they have a relatively stable base rocket to develop the Heavy variant against.
Falcon Heavy is late, but making Falcon Heavy economical means making all of the 3 F9 first stages it uses reusable. They haven't cracked that yet, they've got 2 good landings and a lot of data, but it's far from certain whether e.g. the landing attempt next week will be successful.
Most of their customers do not need the extra payload / push of Falcon Heavy and so they're concentrating on making F9 itself work first. This is reasonable I think.
While that it is true it hides what is going on. Falcon Heavy was delayed because they managed to massively improve F9 and many of the Falcon Heavy contracts are actually now flown on the F9. The last couple flights that did not land were all FH contracts.
So the Falcon Heavy we are gone get now is way, way more powerful and all 3 boosters will land and be reusable. The side boosters are actually reused F9 boosters.
This is super interesting - is there any information if they're doing this for other Falcon 9s? Or are all of the new 9s built like this now? Was this a contingency plan if the heavy wasn't launched on time or a scramble to get it done?
SLS was already made redundant when the Falcon Heavy flew.
'Let’s be very honest, We don’t have a commercially available heavy-lift vehicle. The Falcon 9 Heavy may some day come about. It’s on the drawing board right now. SLS is real.' - Charles Bolden
Note the reason given here isn't that the Falcon Heavy didn't have as large a payload capacity - that excuse came after it started flying years before SLS, because apparently we're supposed to pretend things can't be assembled in space over multiple trips rather than sending up a multi-billion-dollar rocket.
I'm just wondering what the excuse for keeping SLS around will be after a cheaper vehicle that can beat its payload is here. Jobs, for sure. What else?
This is easily blamed on the shutdown, but it isn't that simple: Falcon Heavy static fire has been postponed numerous times. On Tuesday (Jan 16th), it was cancelled once again, but with no new target test date. That indicates that SpaceX is still working on the rocket/pad.
I didn't find information on when they'd be ready again, but blaming a delay on Falcon Heavy's static fire test on the Government Shutdown is only half the truth.
Exactly. Falcon 9 took years and a couple dozen launches to optimize the countdown and flight profile to the current best in class general purpose medium weight launcher with the flight hardware remaining relatively constant (if for nothing else than certification reasons.)
And BFR is well past the blueprint stage anyway. They're doing actual fabrication and testing of many parts of that rocket already. It's the main engineering focus of the company -- Falcon 9 is effectively done and Falcon Heavy is a side project (also mostly done).
I read that last time falcon heavy flied was in june 2019, 3 years since. Why has it not flied to space since then? No mission or problems needed to be resolved?
We don't have 'the SLS' as a viable rocket. We have a single SLS, when this one launches. SLS will not exist anymore for many years to come, hopefully launching again in 2024 more likely 2025.
So SLS really doesn't exist practically. That is the problem with incredibly low launch rates.
> But it's sitting on the pad today and nothing else is.
Falcon Heavy has been ready to use for 3 years and you could easily design a moon mission around Falcon Heavy. Hell you could even use Atlas or Falcon 9.
Also notable is that unlike most heavy lift rockets in history they have a functional assembly line that can rapidly churn these things out. We should only have to wait a couple months for the next test flight.
The major reason why Falcon Heavy was delayed for so long is that they were able to make major improvements on the F9. It would not have made much sense to work on a more complicated rocket when there was so much potential in F9.
Falcon Heavy was developed for a pittance compared to the SLS. Even if its delayed another 3 years the SLS would not make a lick of sense.
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