The Falcon Heavy’s first launch is Delayed
The Planetary Society has revealed that the USAF and SpaceX are now looking at Falcon Heavy’s first launch for a government customer in “early 2019”. The Planetary Society is connected to the rocket and mission via their own LightSail 2 solar sail satellite.
Although expected to launch around November 30th, only a month from now, it’s clear that SpaceX’s second Falcon Heavy rocket is not ready to fly yet, likely overshadowed by a more urgent focus on the near-term Falcon 9 missions and Crew Dragon’s upcoming flight debuts.
According to the Planetary Society, a USAF official gave an update — as per the group’s involvement in its STP-2 rideshare launch — explaining that its initial launch capability was being reassessed. Stating that a new launch date is being determined.
An important development for Asgardia to follow as they work toward building habitable platforms in low-Earth orbit.
However, there are not many reasons for the host of delays since Falcon Heavy’s successful February 2018 debut. The most likely explanation is some combination of issues with one or several of the approximately 25 satellites manifested and SpaceX’s capability to build a new Falcon Heavy rocket in time.
It’s still ambiguous as to which one of those explanations is indeed the culprit, seeing as SpaceX apparently told the USAF and its customers that it was ready to launch the mission between June and August.
Stephen Clark from SpaceflightNow explained that officials working on the mission said SpaceX had given the Air Force and other customers a 60-day window for launch which opened on June 13. The Air Force spokesperson confirmed it would be the second Falcon Heavy mission.
If the SpaceX’s launch readiness announcement was correct, the USAF and its customers must have experienced some extreme problems while organizing all STP-2 payloads and integrating those satellites onto a custom-built adapter, a task that companies like Spaceflight Industries have shown to be the obstacle often when it comes to rideshare launches.
Another possibility is that SpaceX executives and managers underestimated or undersold the challenge of moving from a Falcon Heavy built solely on old Falcon 9 Block 2 and 3 boosters to an all-Block 5 version of the rocket, boasting a large number of highly-consequential changes such as uprated engines and an entirely new approach to putting together each booster’s octaweb.
Finally, depending on the nature of the launch contract between them, it’s also a possibility that SpaceX had been planning on reflying Falcon 9 Block 5 boosters as its next Falcon Heavy’s side boosters, something that would dramatically shorten the lead time needed for a new Falcon Heavy to be manufactured. If the USAF expects or has unconditionally demanded all-new hardware for the launch of STP-2, SpaceX would need at least two (if not three) times the production resources to build and test Falcon Heavy #2, all while paralyzing those resources until well after the rocket’s first flight.
Building three separate Falcon 9/Heavy boosters, acceptance-testing them in Texas, and sending them to Florida — all while complying with the uniquely strict USAF standards — would likely take SpaceX a bare minimum of four months from start to end. In the guaranteed event that SpaceX had to also continue regular production, test operations, and preparations for Crew Dragon launches, an all-new Falcon Heavy would most likely take over 6–8 months to be flight-ready while still enabling SpaceX to avoid severe launch delays for its many other clients.
Moreover, multiple reliable sources have confirmed that STP-2’s actual launch target is closer to March 2019, which is not quite “early 2019”. Also, Falcon Heavy customer Arabsat has reported that its Arabsat 6A satellite is expected to launch as early as January 2019. It is up to the USAF, Arabsat, or SpaceX itself to give us clarity so for now, we wait and see.
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Source: Asgardia Space News
