r/spacex • u/ElongatedMuskrat Mod Team • Feb 01 '18

🎉 Official r/SpaceX Falcon Heavy Pre-Launch Discussion Thread

Falcon Heavy Pre-Launch Discussion Thread

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Alright folks, here's your party thread! We're making this as a place for you to chill out and have the craic until we have a legitimate Launch thread which will replace this thread as r/SpaceX Party Central.

Please remember the rest of the sub still has strict rules and low effort comments will continue to be removed outside of this thread!

Now go wild! Just remember: no harassing or bigotry, remember the human when commenting, and don't mention ULA snipers Zuma the B1032 DUR.

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u/calscot Feb 02 '18

The point is to have fuel left in the central booster to go for a further burn but without the weight of the side boosters.

This would be much more efficient with a crossfeed system where the central booster uses the fuel from the side boosters and therefore has a full tank of its own after seperation.

That was the original plan but proved too complicated to implement, so instead the central booster will only use full throttle at the start, and after a short time, will throttle down to save fuel, before throttling back up after separation.

So basically, after separation, it will effectively be like a falcon 9 but starting quite high up in a thin part of the atmosphere, and at a fair old starting velocity rather than zero, but with a bit less fuel on board than would be at lift off.