Why SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Has Had So Few Launches

Why SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Has Had So Few Launches

The Falcon Heavy is one of SpaceX’s most impressive achievements to date. The first Falcon Heavy launch stunned viewers around the world. With its unique design and reusable boosters, it is a very effective and entertaining launch vehicle. It is also currently the most powerful operational rocket in the world. So why exactly has it only launched a few times?

The Falcon Heavy has had so few launches due to multiple different reasons. Some of the biggest factors include Starship development, lack of satellites, and the power of the Falcon 9. Each has contributed to Falcon Heavy’s launch schedule and kept it from consistently launching.

With a payload to low Earth orbit of over 140,000 pounds, the Falcon Heavy is extremely powerful. It also is very affordable thanks to being partially reusable. Even with these benefits, the rocket has only had 3 launches throughout the last few years.

Falcon Heavy Background

The Falcon Heavy is a partially reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle. It stands at 70m tall and 3.66m wide. It has a lot of similarities to the Falcon 9 but with even more power. The rocket accomplishes this by using three falcon boosters at the bottom. These three boosters are powered by 9 of SpaceX’s Merlin engines bringing the total to 27 engines on the first stage. Falcon Heavy’s large number of engines creates over 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. This makes it the most powerful operational rocket in the world. The partially reusable aspect of the booster is the first stage. After separation, two of the boosters come back close to the initial launch site and land. The third booster separates later and lands on a drone ship out at sea.

This has helped bring the cost down of Falcon Heavy significantly. At $90 million per launch, the Falcon Heavy is surprisingly affordable. This especially is the case when you compare it to other heavy-lift launch vehicles. However, even with the rocket’s impressive stats, it has only flown three times. The first launch was in early 2018. The second was just over a year later in 2019, and the third was in April of 2019. Since then there has not been a Falcon Heavy launch. It’s important to point out that all of these missions were successful as well. The only problem was the occasional loss of a booster during the landing process. In terms of getting the payload into the correct orbit, the rocket has been perfect.

Reasons For Lack Of Launches

Starship Development – One big factor in Falcon Heavy’s lack of launches and development has been SpaceX’s work on Starship. During the development phase of Falcon Heavy, SpaceX was in a difficult position. The company was not exactly sure what the future would look like. They had ambitious plans for Starship but knew they wanted a more powerful rocket than the Falcon 9. SpaceX began developing the Falcon Heavy with Starship in the back of their mind. By the time Falcon Heavy was practically finished and ready to start launching, Starship became the main focus of SpaceX.

Starship was also predicted to be much bigger, a lot more powerful, and significantly cheaper than Falcon Heavy. This meant that the majority of work was on Starship development rather than Falcon Heavy. The Falcon Heavy was ready but updates were needed to be made to improve it. However, these updates were either delayed or not done with the focus shifted to Starship. The Falcon Heavy development also took a lot longer than expected. This added to the complications and put SpaceX in a tough position with the different launch vehicles they were working on. This eventually had an effect on the Falcon Heavy’s capabilities and the number of launches it has had so far.

Lack Of Satellites – Another issue that prevented more Falcon Heavy launches is the lack of large satellites. While Falcon Heavy is very affordable when compared to other heavy-lift launch vehicles, it is still expensive. This means there is no point to purchase a spot on top of the rocket unless you plan to fill the majority of the space and weight requirements. If you are a smaller satellite then you will end up choosing a different rocket or launch provider to save money. Additionally, one of the benefits of Falcon Heavy’s power is the increased distance for satellites. While this is another beneficial and unique feature to Falcon Heavy, in the current market there is not a lot of demand for it.

Falcon 9 Success – The last aspect I wanted to mention was the success of Falcon 9. When developing a rocket companies do their best to estimate the power and launch capabilities. They also try to figure out how much they can improve the rocket as time goes on. This exact scenario ended up happening with the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. After developing the Falcon 9 SpaceX worked to improve and increase the launch vehicle’s performance. SpaceX was so successful that the Falcon 9 became a lot more powerful than expected. So powerful that a lot of planned missions for the Falcon Heavy ended up getting moved to the Falcon 9. When SpaceX was developing the Falcon Heavy they were not exactly sure how powerful and effective the Falcon 9 would be. This ended up taking away a lot of launches that were initially planned for the Falcon Heavy as the companies were able to save money using the Falcon 9.

Falcon Heavy Achievements

With only a few launches the Falcon Heavy has already had a lot of achievements. One of the most important and impressive launches was actually Falcon Heavy’s first launch. This launch carried a payload of a car rather than the typical satellites. The car was a Tesla Roadster with a human dummy in a spacesuit as the driver. One of the things that made this launch so special was SpaceX’s achievement. SpaceX had managed to construct the most powerful operational rocket in the world and launch it successfully. The private company did what many entire country space agencies could not. The other big achievement of the launch was landing two of the boosters. While SpaceX was not able to land the third middle booster the others landed safely. They also landed almost at the exact same time providing an incredible visual. The Falcon Heavy went on to launch two more times bringing satellites into orbit rather than cars. Both were successful and even saw a launch with all three boosters recovered.

Future Of Falcon Heavy

There are a lot of factors that determine the future of Falcon Heavy. With Starship development going extremely well it could be towards the end of its road in a few years. However prior to that possibility Falcon Heavy still has some plans for the future. Specifically, SpaceX has a planned Falcon Heavy launch in the second quarter of 2022. It is very possible we see even more launches after the 2022 launch date. Looking in the far future Starship is likely to replace the launch vehicle. With a bigger size, power, payload capacity, and lower cost, it would not make sense for SpaceX to continue using the Falcon Heavy.

Conclusion

Falcon Heavy is one of the most innovative and impressive rockets developed to date. Thanks to being partially reusable and using 27 Merlin engines on the first stage alone it is extremely powerful and cost-effective. Unfortunately, the rocket has only had three launches in the last few years. This is because of Starship development, lack of satellites, and the Falcon 9’s success. Each reason has limited the number of launches for the heavy-lift launch vehicle. We will have to wait and see how Starship development continues and what the future of Falcon Heavy looks like.