Falcon Heavy was Always a Publicity Stunt, not a Paradigm Shift

Long-time readers of my previous blog might know that I am not a fan of Elon Musk’s frequent attempts to grab money and attention by making outlandish promises. A few years ago and another blog, I wrote a critical piece about SpaceX, detailing how the central 'big promise' of SpaceX- that it will "disrupt" and monopolize the international launch business was always a quintessentially American scam. In that post, I also said that SpaceX (as it exists) could make a decent profit, if it was run like another normal space launch business- in other words, their basic business model was OK.

Implicit in the last statement was my educated guess that Elon Musk's need for fame, money and ego would kickstart a series of decisions leading to the eventual ruin of the current boring but modestly profitable business of launching things and people into earth orbit. Till 2018, my guess about SpaceX demonstrating the ability to become a conventional and successful company was on track. Then, Elon Musk's megalomaniac ambitions initiated a series of bad decisions, starting with Falcon Heavy.

Some of you might think I am just hating on that guy. But that is not the case since in private twitter conversations, I gave Falcon Heavy a better than 80% chance of success on its first try in 2018- which is higher than what SpaceX was willing to publicly admit. And why not? Falcon Heavy was an evolutionary development of a pretty well-tested launcher design, and while putting three multi-core stages next to each other can produce some peculiar mechanical issues, they have been successfully solved by other countries in the past.

And this brings me to my real criticism of Falcon Heavy and other recent attempts at building Super heavy-lift launchers. As you can see in the graphic (below), launchers which can put over 50 tons into Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) have been around since the 1960s. A number of such launch systems-- from Saturn V, Space Shuttle Launch System and Energia-- have flown on more than one occasion and were successful at fulfilling the mission they were designed. Yet, they all went out of production after the specific mission they were designed for was terminated. In other words, Super heavy-lift launch vehicles have (to date) been one-trick horses. But why?

Why did smaller space launcher families such as Soyuz, Proton, Titan, Delta 2, Long March 2 etc remain in service for decades, while larger ones like Saturn V and Energia go out of production within a few years of their first flight? Some of you might think that it has something to do with technological complexity of larger systems, but larger launchers are not much more demanding to operate that heavy to medium launchers such as those mentioned in the previous sentence. A better explanation for longevity of heavy to medium launcher families comes down to the weight of payloads most frequently launched by them-which range from artificial satellites, spacecraft carrying humans in LEO orbit and unmanned space-probes.

To make a long story short, the absolute majority of space launches do not need to put payloads above 30 tons in LEO, 10-12 tons in GTO and even less in a Heliocentric or Hohmman transfer orbits. More relevantly, this apparent restriction on their payload capacity has little to do with cost or ability to launch them. Instead, this is largely a consequence of progressive miniaturization of electronics used in satellites and space probes combined with highly onerous weight requirements for manned exploration of anything beyond the moon using chemically powered rocket engines. Physical and chemical reality, you see, cannot be bargained with or ignored.

But it gets worse.. the bulk of commercial launch market that SpaceX wants to "disrupt" could care less about launchers more powerful than their current default- Falcon 9 Full Thrust. Launchers of comparable capacity with a significantly longer service life, such as Ariane 5, have been routinely launching two satellites per launcher for many years. In other words, customers interested in putting large and heavy communication satellites seem to be in no hurry to develop ones that weigh over 6 tons. In fact, most operational communication satellites in the GTO orbit are between 2.5-4.5 tons. Even the super-secret LEO surveillance and classified GTO communication satellites currently in orbit struggle to push past 10 tons.

Then there is the issue of lower than expected future demands for communication satellites because of the spread of global trans-oceanic fibre optic networks combined with relatively poor maximum data transfer rates at radio wave (lower) frequencies. Data intensive internet use by billions of people is better handled by massive terrestrial fiber-optic backbones than space-based radio frequency links. To be clear, I am not suggesting that the need for communication satellites is going to disappear anytime soon. I am just saying that the initial explosive growth of communication satellites occurred due to proliferation of Cable TV channels and long-distance telephony in the 1980s to early 2000s period.

Let us now tackle the issue of manned exploration of celestial bodies beyond the moon. Ever wonder why NASA never men to Mars after the Apollo lunar missions?

The simplest answer is that even the most optimistic designs for such a mission were (all modules combined) over 300 tons. The most minimalist manned return mission to Mars would require the ability to put at least 300 tons in LEO. Then is the issue of the mission being about two years long with all its attendant physical and psychological risks. Short of developing a nuclear powered spacecraft which could cut the trip time to a few months, or even weeks, human space travel to any large celestial body more distant than the moon is very hard with chemical rockets.

And that brings to the unpleasant question about Falcon Heavy- Is it a 'solution' in search of a problem? Let us face it, there is currently no necessity or desire to develop orbital or space payloads of the size or weight where using Falcon Heavy to launch them would be competitive. Furthermore, decades of spending by governments and corporations has not created the need for payloads which could be only launched by super heavy lift launch vehicles. While its is easy to see a thriving market for the services of Falcon 9 Full Thrust, the same cannot be said for Falcon Heavy. That is why there have only 3 launches of this version to date.

Now ask yourself- if no customer is willing to spend money on regularly utilizing its services, what is the incentive to keep on building and improving them. In summary, I saw the Falcon Heavy launcher as a publicity stunt in 2018 and the subsequent course of events have only validated my prediction.

What do you think? Comments?