Falcon Heavy Post-Launch Press Conference

[Music] everyone in the room we're going to be starting momentarily I'd asked that if you have a mobile phone I'm going to get let's eat let's he seated the chef Ginsburg little short I'm gonna try to prove some three [Music] and we've got 30 minutes [Music] spirit [Music] joining us a little surreal to me I had this image [Music] to read the full 300 minutes right enough people to travel to travel for one that sees to like engines so it I think that's a center one that lead the outer to did not and that was to hit the water month now and took out to the end zone foreigner if you've got the footage some pretty fun footage if the cameras didn't get blown up as well for real but that's best baby what we're going to reuse the set but that's our craving look

at you psychic system side pieces will forget something enough it since they're not blocked by the butcher client the power stations that works piece of computerized aggressive and they will see if the upper stage engine is alive quite larger spoke through that house but only there were a stage will prosper quickly two belts here it's essentially well of course first o'clock and then it's gonna do a restart simply just repellent and go to that's awesome the Raghava we'll look at the second round of the upper stage we were 20 26 which is basically right later it has like two propellant to the transpose direction that's everything that fuel doesn't freeze the else that's with my things own took a look at the side boosters they looking a really good condition

um so they're they're both reliable although as I said their combination of version 3 in version 4 so we will we're only gonna be reef lying really version 5 at this point that that launches shortly and that that will be on me and stable will stick to version fight for the Falcon architecture we don't expect to have a version 6 all right any questions that I haven't answered I'll do my best to answer them but not sure if I have the information yet but I'll try start in the room and the first question goes to David Kerley from ABC News he launched spectacular what did you learn what did Falcon Heavy teach you I guess taught me like crazy things can come true like because I said like I didn't really think this would work um like when I see the rocket liftoff

I see like a thousand things that that could not work and it's amazing when they do and I was really that seeing the to Bruce's land synchronize really just like the simulation I mean it makes you think like you there really that could be quite a scalable approach you know if you could have imagined large numbers of those just coming in and landing taking off landing doing many flights per day um so it I think gives me a lot of faith for our next architecture the sort of be an interplanetary spaceship you have different names for it but BFRs the county code name and it gives me confidence that bfr um is really quite workable um as i should look at the side boosters and like they're pretty big you know sixteen stories tall 60-foot legs man but you really

we need to be way bigger than that so so i think it's giving me a lot of confidence that we can make the VFR design work yeah it's a traumatic event so I'm SpaceX team so I think I think we can really do this a lot you know and keep advancing that the cube advancing the technology to achieve full and rapid reusability whichever whatever profound effect on the future and when there's some things about say Falcon Heavy vs Falcon 9 is that Falcon Heavy has the same level of expandability as Falcon line so if you look at say the price of oak line is sixty million dollars Felton he's 90 even though it's got three times as much capability because in both cases the only thing that's expanded is the upper stage we're gonna start recovering with the the fairings

the big nose cone we're gonna recover that we recover the Boosters and so there's really the cost of us really between a Falcon 9 I felt the henries minor well the next question from marcia done at Associated Press March 10 EP what were yours what was going through your mind how how amazed were you to see your roadster up there what should our man just cruising along with the blue planet and how long will we be getting life views do you think from the car well I think it looks so ridiculous and impossible and you can tell it's real because it looks so fake honestly we'd have way better CGI infamous fake and you know the colors all look like kind of weird in space there's no atmospheric occlusion you know you know it's like everything looks too crisp and

but we know we didn't really test any of those materials for you know is its space hardened or whatever you know so it just has the same seats that like normal car has it's a slickly a normal car in space which I kind of like the absurdity of that and if you look closely there's on the dashboard there's a tiny roadster with a tiny spaceman the hot wheels made a Hot Wheels roadster and a friend a friend of mine and I suggested hey why you put that wheels roadster with a tiny space man on the you know in the car - like that'd be cool sure mysteries that I mean it's kind of silly and fun but I think I think that's you know silly fun things are important and normally for a new rocket you know they'd launch like a block of concrete or something like that I

mean that's so boring and I think that's just the imagery of it is something that's gonna get people excited around the world and I still tripping me out I mean out tripping balls here yeah congratulations Ilan great launch today where do you see the Falcon Heavy fitting into this launch industry is this something that is going to be for more national security you see this for interplanetary missions what's the future of Falcon Heavy yeah the great thing is like so Falcon Heavy opens up a new class of payload so it can launch more than twice as much payloads any other rocket in the world so it's kind of up to customers what they might want to launch but it can launch things direct to Pluto and beyond you know no stop needed they don't even need like a

gravity assist or anything and won't join satellites it can do anything you want you go back to you could send people back to the moon with a bunch of you know if you did a bunch of motions the Falcon Heavy and did an orbital reef refilling the two or three Falcon heavies you know woody called the payload of a Saturn 5 but I wouldn't recommend doing that cuz I think the new architects should be a for architecture is the way to go but I think it's it's gonna open officers possibility I think it's gonna encourage other companies and countries to say hey if SpaceX which is a commercial company can do this and nobody paid for Falcon Heavy is paid forward and put in total funds then then they thank you Jeff - so things can encourage other countries and companies

to raise their sights and say hey we can do bigger and better which is great we want a new space race face races were exciting kind of talked us through your your thought process as you were watching the launch e you said you were incredibly concerned about it just you know you just wanted to through the pad because it kind of I said expectations low so talk me through as you were watching it yeah I think this is true of anyone who's involved and didn't close in the design or something just you know all the ways they can fail and and that's like the sort of mental checklist that's scrolling through your mind it's all the things that can can can break I mean there's thousands of things that can go wrong and everything has to go right once look once the

rocket lifts off there's nothing there's an opportunity to do a recall or upload a software fix or anything like that it's like you see the passenger grades on Harper sent at least really a sad face and I've seen Rockets Bluff so many different ways so you know it's a big relief when it it actually works at the first you know when they first whoever it is like it was like you know when they're like first launched like a 747 or or dc-3 or like that I bet the chief engineer was like I can't believe that thing flying how about Irene Klotz from Aviation Week hurry we need to have you on Mike first for the folks on the phone to hear ok thanks Irene Klotz with Aviation Week congratulations the can you talk to us a little bit about what needs to happen to certify

Falcon Heavy for the national security missions how far along you are in that process and how many flights you might need to do and also if you're able to say anything about how much your SpaceX is investment to get to the rocket to this point thanks I think we only need I think there's there's a chance on which NASA's national security mission that we'd need to yeah you know how many flights depends on which mission but we have a number of commercial customers for Falcon Heavy and so I think I really don't think it's gonna be in any way an impediment to acceptance of national security missions we'll be doing several Falcon Heavy missions flights per year so let's say if there's a big national security satellite that's due for launch in three or four

years or we probably have like a dozen or four more launches done by then so what it won't really I think there'll be a launch number that's that's an inhibitor or national security stuff and yeah so and then we've got the STP mission that that's coming up which is another test mission that'll go on full-on a where everything's on black 5 version 5 of the rocket and then we'll be launching version 5.

5 single stick in a couple couple months so I think it's hopefully smooth sailing or qualification for national security missions our investment to date probably a lot more than I'd like to admit you know that we try to cancel the Falcon Heavy program three times at SpaceX because it's like man this is way harder than we thought is there shal idea was just like ah you know you stick on to give to first stages of side boosters how I canopy it's like way hard we had to redesign the center core completely we have to redesign the the grid fins because like what it's a lot long story but if you've got a nose cone on the end of it at the end of the booster instead of a cylinder you lose control Authority because if you if you got a cylinder you can kind of

bounce the air off of the rocket and you get like a 50% or more increased control authority if you've got a cylindrical section instead of a an ogive section at the end of the booster so we have to redesign the grid fins reason to control the control system mass would redesign the thrust structure at the base to take way more load that Center boosters got a deal with over a million pounds of load coming in combined from the side boosters so it's as of being heavier so that the center course basically completely redesigned and and even the side boosters there's a pretty large number of parts that change and then the the launch site itself needs to change a lot I'm guessing our total investment is over half a billion probably more yeah I'd like to take

some questions from the phone I think the first one up is Dan Fergana from BuzzFeed news is that right that's right dan McGann with BuzzFeed nude news could you talk a little bit about the decision to have the two side cores come down at the same time is it just the way it falls out from the physics or was that actual decision you made we did offset them slightly but but really they're pretty much just come down that that there's no we're off set slightly just to the radars didn't interfere and we actually wanted no communication between the two stages they've both going to point absolute space and we're just worried that the radar reflection of one would be seen by the radar receiver of the other but no it just that's just kind of how it happened it's

actually meant to happen just like that the next question on the phone comes from Keith cowling and that's a watch congratulations you've watched a rather unconventional payload into space one that's generated a lot of buzz and there's a lot of people some of them citizen scientists some of them they're just newbies when it comes to tracking things and space are going to try and track the the test flow and understand what's happening to it you know like that movie dude where's my car and other than the live webcam today what does SpaceX going to do to interact with this community of Tesla trackers once the car leaves orbit you have a plan are you just going to kind of wait and see what bubbles up on the internet and react to it we don't have a plan no

plan the battery's gonna last about 12 hours from launch roughly and after that it's just gonna be out there in deep space for maybe millions or billions of years who knows and yeah maybe discovered by some future alien race thinking what the heck what what were these guys doing did they worship with this car why do they have a little car in the car don't really confuse them I'm not sure what's gonna happen but I think you know it's kind of a fun thing and I sure hope that next burn works by the way yeah well known a few hours that's okay so phase how about Chris Davenport from the Washington Post you could wait until we get you might Thanks so now that you're focusing more on the bfr I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the timeline I know you

said it's coming along faster and then what that means for your plans for Mars and the moon well I'm gonna get to off-topic but okay I think we might if we get like you will be able to do short hop our flights with the spaceship part of VFR maybe next year all right one more in the room let's see who's how about bill Harwood from CBS thanks Laura CB I saw when I took on residual Sigma which is like the key it's it's a decent decently long bone there may be a minute or so and yeah that'll be in a few hours hopefully I actually don't have the latest climate reform because I was just added actually that out of the landing zone and have been back to launch control since going to landing zone so I don't have the latest information on the status of the upper

stage Tom Costello from NBC News please well congratulations again I wanted to follow up on Chris's question because Chris asked you what's your timeline potentially to go to the Moon or Mars and you said did you say as soon as next year can you quantify that by the night my real question I'm just doing Chris's water sure yeah [Laughter] well the hopper tests I mean kind of like we have to get grasshopper program for falcon 9 where we just add the rocket take take off and land in Texas I know Texas test site so that would be will either do that at our South Texas floor site near near Brownsville or or do ship-to-ship we're not sure yet whether ship-to-ship or brownsville but most likely it's gonna happen at our brownsville location because we've got a

lot of land with nobody around and so if it was up it's cool but by hover test I mean it'll you know go up you know several miles and then come down the ship will the ship is capable of the single-stage-to-orbit if you fully load the tanks so that will do flights of increasing complexity we want to test the heat shield material something like you know fly out turn around accelerate back real hard and come in hot to test the heat shield because we want to have highly reusable heat shield that's capable of absorbing the heat from interplanetary entry velocities so it's really tricky potential the potential to go to the Moon or Mars what's your timeline daya so a lot of uncertainties on this program but it is gonna be our focus after now that we're almost

done with with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy we're gonna level off as I said at block 5 of version 5 best there won't be any more major versions of Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy Dragon is also going to level off with dragon version 2 there might be like point releases you know point five point one over dragon tube or something like that but most of our engineering resources will be dedicated to VFR and and so I think that that will make things go quite quickly the ship part is by far the hardest because that's going to come in from super order books it's super super orbital velocities like interplanet yeah Mars transfer velocities both moon transfer velocities these these are way harder than coming in from low-earth orbit some others they're some of the heating

things that scale to the 8th power which which doesn't think relies there's anything that scales to 8th power if it turns out reentry certain elements of reentry heating scale to the at the 8th to the 8th so or just yet testing that ship out is the real tricky part the booster I think I don't want to get you know complacent but I think we understand reasonable boosters reusable spaceships that can land propulsively that's that's harder so we're starting with the hard part first and I think it's conceivable that we do our first test flight in 3 or 4 years of a you know full up overall test flight including the booster oh no a little bit first but it would be capable of going to the moon shortly thereafter it's designed to do that you know we want to be

sensitive to your time how many more questions you want a couple questions ok sure there is a gentleman I came from a retic community that I wanted to definitely call on and I don't know your riddle I don't want to say your name so you can introduce yourself with your name or your handle hi my name is Martin Avenue and I'm with reddit's our SpaceX community I'd like to congratulate it you as well as so many people have done just now I'd like to know about Starman spacesuit is it a production model is it instrumented and/or pressurized and what's holding is what's holding them up well there's a mannequin inside so it's just basically stuffed but yeah that is the actual production design so the real one looks like just like that that in fact that's one

of the qualification articles so that's that's real that's the real deal yeah I figure if you're gonna go you know to I mean it's dangerous this dangerous trip you want to look good man took us three years to design that spit that's basically it was real hard and it's easier to make a spacesuit that looks good see that but doesn't work or that works but doesn't look good it's really difficult to make a spacesuit that looks good and works and you have to make it a multi-part process and it was surprisingly difficult very difficult how about that Dave musher from business insider right I take most sure from Business Insider um thank you so much for doing this by the way and I want to go back to VFR for a second since you were talking about that in also

Starman which is such an inspirational thing that's happening have you thought given any thought to what you might do with bfr and and that way what is the what is the payload and any thoughts of that no a no idea it's gestures are welcome I mean it's a beast so you know the VFR 9 meter diameter 30 feet roughly diameter which is yeah if you put a lot in 30 feet diameter get 110 hundred 20 meters long yeah big although you know I bet it doesn't look that big after a while how about 10 holes from ports hi eman thanks again for doing this two questions for you one just about faring recovery just curious how SpaceX is coming with that and to Jeff Bezos just responded to your tweet congratulating you on your launch today you just mentioned a minute ago that

we need a new space race I'm just curious if you see yourself in a race with Blue Origin what was the first part of the question yeah so the fairing you're covering is proven surprisingly difficult I think I think I'm pretty sure we're also very recovery in the next six months it turns out like you pop the parachute on the fairing you've got this giant awkward thing it tends to interfere with the air flow on the on the parachute and and miss and gets all twisty and and it obviously was a low priority to also we have varying version two which is the really that's the important one that we want to recover so even if we were faring version one that that wouldn't be we would be flying it in the future suffering too and recovery that's very important and my

guess is next six months we figure out for recovery we've got a special boat to catch the bearing just like a catcher's mitt it's like a giant catcher's mitt in book form run around I can't catch the ferry yeah she's kind of fun you might be able to do the same thing with dragon so unless if NASA wants us to we could try try to catch a dragon meant for the fairing but it would work on dragon two in the room how about that James Dean from Florida today thanks so much Ilan James Dean floor today speaking of those dragons could you give us a status on Commercial Crew and and you know when we might realistically see an astronaut just getting to low-earth orbit much less the Moon or Mars yeah yeah we're making great progress on crew dragon or dragon version

two that's yeah if it actually tells the company priorities the obviously mission assurance is always number one as a priority but then the number that the the priority used to be a falcon iron block five and then a month ago I said absolute priority is crew dragon so we're pretty much done with Falcon and block five over five pretty much almost done with Falcon Heavy a few tweaks that would occur with falcon heavy block five but they're minor and so it's all hands on deck for crew dragon and our goal is to we're aspiring to fly crew two over two at the end of this year that's our goal I think that's I think the harder will be ready we have time for one more question in the room and it's just looking at Falcon eyes like yeah kind of swole have to wrap

it and I'd like for Chris Gephardt pleased to have the last question question from in terms of the next falcon heavy which is that arab sad are the one for the Air Force do you have any idea of how pate held up from today's launch and how quickly can it be changed and so yes and I guess my questions are how quickly can the pad be reconfigured between heavy and Falcon 9 since you need that pad for both it's it's it's so problem going back and forth this is it's designed that way and for the block five version of the Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy are the this is the Falcon Heavy need a dedicated core built for it or the block it does ok if this was the center court needs to be dedicated yeah so that's the center core is a special build the side boosters we can

reuse existing falcon eyes but we need to just replace the interstage with a with a nose cone and a nice use the the upgraded titanium grid fins which are sweet those worked out real well I'm really happy about those in fact I'm glad we got the side boosters back because they have the titanium grid fins in the center core didn't so I first to pick any one I would have picked the side boosters I picked the center court of explode if so that would be like the least yeah those friggin grid fins alright they're super expensive and and awesome but they the production air and they were slow we didn't we didn't back though that like that was those the most important thing to recover were those Griffin's series inside the spacesuit testing like its ability to

vote function no it's just up there yeah no it definitely work so you can just like jump in a in a vacuum chamber with it it's fine [Laughter] [Applause] as well for real but that best day they have we're gonna reduce the set but that's everything over the to Cyprus will subside residual very handsome is one of it says they're not the conversations works - incorrect they'll see if the upper stage engine I survived quite or just use that help us only potential prospects quickly to Van Allen belts here it's essentially well before suppressor left and then it's going to do a restart completed balance and go to class boss took a look at these high boosters they looking a really good condition um so they're they're both reliable although as I said they're

combination of version three in version 4 so we will we're only gonna be reef lying really version 5 at this point that that launches shortly and that that will be our main stable will stick to version 5 for the Falcon architecture we don't expect to have a version 6 alright any questions that I haven't answered I'll do my best to answer them but not sure if I have the information yet but I'll try start in the room and the first question goes to David Kerley from ABC News he donned spectacular what did you learn what did Falcon Heavy teach you I guess taught me like crazy things can come true like because I said like I didn't really think this would work and like when I see the rocket liftoff I see like a thousand things that that could not work and it's

amazing when they do and I was really but seeing the two boosters land synchronize really just like the simulation I mean makes me think like you they're really that could be quite a scalable approach you could imagine fudge names of those just coming in and landing taking you off landing doing many flights per day um so I think gives me a lot of faith for our next architecture the Soviet if planetary spaceship cap different names for it but BFRs County code name and I it gives me confidence that bfr um is really quite workable come as I should look at the side boosters and like they're pretty big you know 16 stories tall 60-foot leg span but you really we need to be way bigger than that so so I think it's giving me a lot of confidence that we can make

the VFR design work yeah it's I ever have press conference at SpaceX team I think I think we can really do this a lot you know and and keep advancing that the keep advancing the technology to achieve full and rapid reusability whichever whatever profound effect on the future and when there's things about a Falcon Heavy versus Falcon 9 is that Falcon Heavy has the same level of expandability as Falcon light so if you look at say the price of oak line is sixty million dollars Felton heavies ninety even though it's got three times as much capability because in both cases the only thing that's expanded is the upper stage we're gonna start recovering the the fairings the big nose cone we're gonna recover the fat recover the Boosters and so there's really the

cost difference really between a falcon 9 falcon heavy is minor of the next question from Marcia done at Associated Press March 10 EP what were yours but what was going through your mind how how amazed were you to see your roadster up there what should our man just cruising along with the blue planet and how long will we be getting life use do you think from the car well I think it looks so ridiculous than impossible and you can tell it's real because it looks so fake honestly better CGI infamous fake and you know the colors all look like kind of weird in space there's no atmospheric occlusion you know you know like everything looks too crisp and could we know we didn't really test any of those materials for you know as its space hardened or whatever

you know so it just has the same seats that like normal car has its ass literally a normal car in space which I kind of like the absurdity of that any feel closely there's on the dashboard there's a tiny roadster with a tiny spaceman Hot Wheels made a Hot Wheels roadster and a friend a friend of mine suggested hey why you put that wheels roadster with a tiny spaceman on it you know in the car too like that'd be cool sure let's agree to that I mean it's kind of silly and fun but I think I think that's you know silly fun things are important and normally for a new rocket you know they've launched like a block of concrete or something like that I mean that's so boring and I think that's the imagery of it is something that's gonna get people excited around

the world and still tripping me out I mean out tripping balls here congratulations on great launch today where do you see the Falcon Heavy fitting into this launch industry is this something that is going to be for more national security you see this for interplanetary missions what's the future of Falcon Heavy yeah the great thing is like so Falcon Heavy offers up a new class of payload so it can launch more than twice as much payloads any other rocket in the world so it's kind of up to customers what they might want to launch but it can launch things direct to Pluto and beyond you know no stop needed didn't even need like a gravity assist or anything and won't strain satellites but I wouldn't wreck and say hey we can do bigger and better which is great

we want a new space race races were exciting how about Darrell nail from the Fox affiliate Orlando but some others kind of talk us through your your thought process as you were watching the launch e you said you were incredibly concerned about it just you know you just wanted to through the pad because it kind of I said expectations low so talk me through as you were watching it yeah I think this was true of anyone who's involved you