On 04/05/2011 02:36 PM, Jeff Findley wrote:
In pond.com,
says...

On 5/04/2011 5:47 PM, Brian Gaff wrote:
But one has to ask, where is the money coming from for this? In these times,
it has to be said that one is dubious about it being anything other than,
The King is dead, Long live the )new?) King?

Brian


SpaceX site says the Falcon Heavy will launch 2012/2013 from Vandenberg
- US recon sat launcher?

It's going to be a big launcher, capable of launching a 53,000 kg
payload into an orbit of 28.5 degrees inclination at 200 km altitude.

http://www.spacex.com/falcon_heavy.php

The most interesting (new) feature I see is "propellant cross-feed from
the side boosters to the center core". This has never been done on any
launch vehicle to date, so it will be very interesting to see how
easy/hard it will be for SpaceX to get this to work.

Of course, even if they can't get it to work they say, "Should cross-
feed not be required for lower mass missions, it can be easily turned
off". It would be interesting to find out just how much this would
impact Falcon Heavy's payload capacity.

The previously announced payload capacity (32,000 kg) assumed Merlin 1C
and no crossfeed, so I assume a launch with Merlin 1D and crossfeed
disabled would be somewhere in between. Based on the specs of the 1C vs
the 1D, I would say most of the performance increase comes from the
Merlin, not the crossfeed, so probably closer to 53 than 32.

Still big enough for the heaviest DoD/NRO payloads.