Falcon Heavy launch: all the updates about SpaceX’s game-changing rocket – The Verge

Elon Musk and the creator of Westworld made an inspirational trailer for the Falcon Heavy launch

2018-03-10T19:42:28-05:00

A surprise guest joined the cast and creators of HBO's Westworld at the end of the show's SXSW panel on Saturday. SpaceX founder Elon Musk, a friend of show creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, appeared as a way to end the panel on a note of "optimism", in Nolan's words, while also showing the audience an inspirational trailer that Nolan created promoting the February launch of the SpaceX Heavy Falcon rocket.

"One of the things that I really used to, when I was a kid, spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking about was space, and spaceflight," Nolan said, noting that he had grown up watching Super 8 footage of Saturn rocket launches, but …

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Track Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster in space with this aptly named website

2018-02-17T09:00:01-05:00

The Tesla roadster in space. | Video: SpaceX

Last week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk launched his now-famous red Tesla Roadster into space, atop the first Falcon Heavy rocket. Cameras mounted on the car live-streamed the Starman's journey for a few hours, giving us some unforgettable shots of Earth before going black. But if you want to know where the first car cruising our Solar System is right now, there's a website for that - aptly called Whereisroadster.com.

The website was created by engineer Ben Pearson, who's been passionate about space since he was in third grade. "I read every book in my little library that I could about space and space exploration stuff," he tells The Verge. The day …

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Elon Musk made history launching a car into space. Did he make art too?

2018-02-10T09:00:02-05:00

Starman: a possible instance of installation art | SpaceX

There was no shortage of media from Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launch this week. A computer-rendered animation prepared us all for the spectacle, set to David Bowie's "Life on Mars" as a kind of galactic music video. Everything was live-streamed as it happened. Then afterward, the viral video clip of the two booster rockets landing in tandem after the successful launch was certainly impressive, even if the third booster missed its mark. But the real iconic image from the launch, the one most likely to stand the test of time, is of the cherry-red Tesla Roadster that Musk embedded in the capsule of the payload rocket. A gleaming co …

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Elon Musk’s Tesla overshot Mars’ orbit, but it won’t reach the asteroid belt as claimed

2018-02-08T05:21:56-05:00

Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster, which launched on top of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy on Tuesday, is going farther out into the Solar System than originally planned. The car was supposed to be put on a path around the Sun that would take the vehicle out to the distance of Mars' orbit. But the rocket carrying the car seems to have overshot that trajectory and has put the Tesla in an orbit that extends beyond the Red Planet's path. However, the Tesla won't be making it to the asteroid belt, as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk originally claimed.

After launch, the Tesla cruised through space for a good six hours - a trip that was also live-streamed by SpaceX. This " …

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Sending a Tesla into space wasn’t such a dumb idea

2018-02-07T06:47:44-05:00

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Tesla Roadster | SpaceX / Flickr

Maybe it's my instinctive distrust of bored billionaires treating the world as their playground, but I'm always dubious about Elon Musk's various moonshot projects. He seems to be enjoying it all a little too much. Latest among his outlandish ideas was the concept of sending a Tesla out into space with yesterday's historic Falcon Heavy rocket launch. I thought it was just another indulgence of a febrile mind, but then I saw the Earth fly-by videos and suddenly it all made sense.

I really like this starman.gif sequence I just screengrabbed - the Moon makes a little appearance at lower left and right pic.twitter.com/EEO0ViL9ET
- Emily Lakdawal …

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The middle booster of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket failed to land on its drone ship

2018-02-06T18:39:23-05:00

Though the Falcon Heavy's outer cores successfully landed after launch this afternoon, the middle core of SpaceX's huge rocket missed the drone ship where it was supposed to land, a source tells The Verge. SpaceX later confirmed The Verge's reporting in a press conference.

The center core was only able to relight one of the three engines necessary to land, and so it hit the water at 300 miles per hour about 300 feet from the drone ship. As a result, two engines on the drone ship were taken out when it crashed, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a press call after the rocket launch. "[It] was enough to take out two thrusters and shower the deck wi …

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SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch was YouTube’s second biggest live stream ever

2018-02-06T17:40:16-05:00

SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon Heavy rocket earlier this afternoon from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and the live stream of the event was the second biggest in YouTube's history. The event reached over 2.3 million concurrent views on YouTube, coming in second to the Red Bull Stratos jump, which racked in a ridiculous 8 million concurrent views back in 2012.

The company isn't done with live streams for the day either. You can currently watch the dummy in SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster, which is attached to the Falcon Heavy's upper stage, make its way toward its eventual orbit around Mars.

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Ride along with the dummy driving Elon Musk’s Tesla to Mars

2018-02-06T16:57:38-05:00

Mere minutes after successfully launching the Falcon Heavy rocket on the first try, SpaceX is now live streaming footage from Tesla Roadster it released into space. Now we know what CEO Elon Musk meant yesterday when he teased that there would be "epic views" if the launch went well.

The Roadster is still attached to the Falcon Heavy's upper stage, which is currently an hour or so into what is supposed to be a six-hour "coast" through the Van Allen radiation belts. If the upper stage's systems survive being bombarded with all that radiation, then it will fire one last time, pushing the Tesla out towards its elliptical orbit around Mars.

Th …

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The Falcon Heavy test flight included a copy of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels

2018-02-06T16:31:12-05:00

The “Arch” storage disc being sent with the Roadster on the Falcon Heavy | Image: SpaceX

SpaceX has just successfully launched its new Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time, and just before launch, the company revealed on its live stream that inside the rather unique cargo of a Tesla Roadster, the company had placed an "Arch" storage system containing Isaac Asimov's Foundation book series.

An Arch is a "5D, laser optical quartz storage device" that is meant to be able to survive even in the harsh conditions of space, built by the Arch Mission Foundation. The foundation's goal is to preserve libraries of human knowledge for interstellar travel (and to protect information in the event of calamity to Earth itself). It's a goal th …

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Everything you need to know about today’s Falcon Heavy launch

2018-02-06T08:36:51-05:00

The time has finally come for SpaceX to launch its Falcon Heavy rocket. A launch license has been issued for the giant vehicle to take flight this Tuesday. It's a mission that many have been waiting for since 2011 when SpaceX CEO Elon Musk first announced plans to develop the vehicle. Now, after seven years and numerous delays, the launch of the rocket is imminent - and it could be a game-changer for SpaceX.

Here are all the details you need to know about this launch and why it's such a big deal for both SpaceX and the industry.

What is the Falcon Heavy?

The essence of the rocket is right there in its name: it's the heavy-lift version of Sp …

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