delayed till 28/04 due to weather
delayed till 28/04 ~ 3:17pm UK time due to weather today
SpaceX dusts off Falcon Heavy for first flight in 18 months
SpaceX is preparing to launch its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time in more than 18 months, kicking off what could be a busy time for the vehicle. The mission will loft the ViaSat-3 F3 communications satellite into geostationary orbit. Liftoff is scheduled during an 85-minute window opening at 1421 UTC today, with a …
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Monday 27th April 2026 14:25 GMT NetMage
Note that only the first FH flight had a nearly simultaneous landing - it was intended they land separated so they wouldn’t interfere with each other but a miscalculation resulted in them landing together. Presumably these will land further separated in time.
Launch has also been delayed until tomorrow morning.
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Monday 27th April 2026 15:24 GMT EricM
Falcon Heavy = 63,8t max to LEO (fully expended)
> Until Starship matures [...]
That "until" is doing some heavy lifting here.
Starship is said to be planned to launch 200t to LEO, with multiple high risks documented in the pre-IPO documentation.
Demonstrated so far have been ~20t to sub-orbital speed/altitude.
So far Falcon Heavy is the only heavy-duty launch vehicle in SpaceX's arsenal.
The jury is still out if Starship will ever be able to compete even with Falcon Heavy on capability or cost.
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Tuesday 28th April 2026 13:13 GMT John Robson
Re: Falcon Heavy = 63,8t max to LEO (fully expended)
"will ever be able"
"have already been"
Two completely different questions.
SS/SH have already demonstrated (in their smaller, prototype, form factors) the capacity to launch, recover, and re-fly the booster; as well as the capacity to achieve orbital energy, reenter, and arrive at zero speed at a predetermined spot with the ship.
V3 is going to target orbit, and should be able to deploy a significant payload once there.
But you already knew the facts, you just don't want to admit that they are making good progress towards a pretty interesting vehicle.
Let's have a look at the cost of a SS/SH stack. It's all reusable, so the marginal cost per launch is ~$1m for propellant and other compressed consumables, and ~$1m for ground operations.
An F9H is at least throwing away a second stage (and that's assuming it's not sacrificing one, or all three, boosters at the altar of delta V). That's at least $5-10m just for the second stage.
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Monday 27th April 2026 15:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Falcon Heavy = 63,8t max to LEO (fully expended)
Only in the minds of those who don't understand the development approach taken.
It's not a "we've launched this, so with just a few tweaks it'll be operational"
It's more of a "let's try this and gather as much data as we can, then see what needs more attention"
So people see a sub-orbital launch and sneer that it can't even reach orbit yet. But it could easily reach orbit, but they don't want it there until they have other aspects production-ready - once things are in orbit it's harder to bring them down if something goes wrong. Yes there have been a couple of mishaps but really not of the scale that the general public perceive.
As a specific example, when testing the heat shield and control surfaces they had burn-through (shown live on camera, which is incredible in itself) - cue responses of "See, it burned all the way through. They're rubbish" when actually it was a deliberate approach to work out how much damage it could sustain while retaining control, alongside testing the limits of the heatshield material itself. They could've easily chosen a different entry profile to reduce the heat, but got far more data by testing to destruction.
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Monday 27th April 2026 20:47 GMT EricM
Re: Falcon Heavy = 63,8t max to LEO (fully expended)
I fully appreciate the fact SpaceX intentionally launches Starships sub-orbital to make sure it does not pollute LEO during testing.
But one still needs to notice the huge gap between demonstrated capabilities and promises made by SpaceX.
Starship upper stage has vented methane on most flights so far, probably due to equipment/pipes damaged by intense vibrations, on some occasions even overwhelming upper stage attitude control,
The cell steel shows signs of intense heat stress well beyond the heat tiles even on controlled re-entries, and not a single Starship has yet landed without exploding.
Super heavy booster has been coming down several engines unintentionally burning (not firing) for every observable landing.
I think what was achieved so far with Starship was an incredible engineering feat, but there is still a much larger capability gap that needs to be closed until they could start really operating that system.
I do not expect Starship to reach its v3 design targets (being human ratied, 150t LEO fully reusable, 250t expendable and up to 100 re-uses per unit).
Maybe a third of the mass and a max usable lifetime of 3-5 launches per unit due to intense stress from vibrations and heat from re-entry would be a realistic expectation.
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Tuesday 28th April 2026 13:23 GMT John Robson
Re: Falcon Heavy = 63,8t max to LEO (fully expended)
"and not a single Starship has yet landed without exploding."
Erm, yes they have, they've just not landed on a physical tower yet, so they've fallen into the sea after "landing" at a virtual tower.
"Super heavy booster has been coming down several engines unintentionally burning"
Nope - there has been shock heating of the engine bay, and there has been excess propellant burning, but the engines haven't been on fire since one of the high altitude ship tests - SN8 I think.
"max usable lifetime of 3-5 launches"
On the basis that F9 first stages are now well into the 20s for reuses, after an original design intent of 10 - I find your pessimism mildly amusing.
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Wednesday 29th April 2026 22:10 GMT Oneman2Many
Re: Falcon Heavy = 63,8t max to LEO (fully expended)
Are you MachDimond ?
"But one still needs to notice the huge gap between demonstrated capabilities and promises made by SpaceX."
What promises, have they promised to launch any payload on the test missions that they haven't managed on the last two missions ? So how do you know there has been a huge gap ?
"Starship upper stage has vented methane on most flights so far, probably due to equipment/pipes damaged by intense vibrations, on some occasions even overwhelming upper stage attitude control,"
Absolutely there have been issues on test flights though the last 2 seem to have worked just fine. Obviously we have a big change coming with V3, could be worse, could be better. Testing will tell.
"The cell steel shows signs of intense heat stress well beyond the heat tiles even on controlled re-entries, and not a single Starship has yet landed without exploding."
Every booster since IFT-5 has been within the parameters. Last two test flights, the ship has hovered indicating its under total control. And yes its going to explode when it makes contact with water, that how physics works. Actually there was a problem that they didn't explode enough to sink and some experienced observers on NSF say that potentially SpaceX had to use flight termination system to sink the ships.
"Super heavy booster has been coming down several engines unintentionally burning (not firing) for every observable landing."
Sorry, you got me. I've seen all the test flights and haven't seen an unintentional burning, obviously myself and many commentors missing something as its never been mentioned.
"I think what was achieved so far with Starship was an incredible engineering feat, but there is still a much larger capability gap that needs to be closed until they could start really operating that system."
Don't disagree, plenty of work left to be done. Lets see how V3 does, its supposed to be production ready.
"I do not expect Starship to reach its v3 design targets (being human ratied, 150t LEO fully reusable, 250t expendable and up to 100 re-uses per unit)."
Any data to indicate that it won't meet its targets ? They have published engine data, trust ISP, propellant loads, ship and booster mass, flight trajectory. Obviously we don't know how close to max performance they were pushing the system but the physics is pretty well understood and if the published data is correct then nothing to indicate it won't meet payload targets.
"Maybe a third of the mass and a max usable lifetime of 3-5 launches per unit due to intense stress from vibrations and heat from re-entry would be a realistic expectation."
Sorry, but I think SpaceX have a pretty good idea on resuability and refurbishment. F9 booster are past 30 launches and still going and they were planned with 10 reuses.
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Monday 27th April 2026 19:09 GMT Zack Mollusc
Re: Demonstrated capability
You say "Demonstrated so far have been ~20t to sub-orbital speed/altitude", but that isn't the full story.
Demonstrated so far have been ~20t to sub-orbital speed/altitude whilst carrying control surfaces and heat shielding and enough reserve fuel to successfully re-enter and steer to a precision target and relight the engines and do a propulsive landing.
Just like DC-X, except DC-X had no payload and only reached 3.2 km altitude and obviously didn't do a re-entry.
Shuttle carried a few tons more and reached actual gosh-darned orbit, but starship seems to be closing the performance gap.
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Monday 4th May 2026 01:22 GMT MachDiamond
Re: Just a few B.U.G.s to work out
"No Falcon Heavy has 'BUG'"
Not many data points either. They've been able to learn a lot from standard Falcon 9's over the years.
The term "R.U.D.E." was referenced and has been in use for decades. "Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly Event" is the proper/original form. I'm working on getting the newer descriptive into common use.
The Starships that lit up the night sky over the Caribbean were a B.U.R.G., Blowed Up Real Good.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlrT5ekRKnE>
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