Critical Analysis of the Falcon Heavy Launcher and its Maiden Flight

Abstract

The first launch of the Falcon Heavy in February 2018 marked an important milestone in the development roadmap of SpaceX with the successful, simultaneous landing of two boosters and the injection of payload into a transfer orbit to Mars. Following this launch, the ascent trajectory as well as the return trajectories of the boosters and first stage were reconstructed and compared to SpaceX’ flight data. The comparison of given telemetry data and the calculated trajectories serves as validation of the vehicle model created at DLR. Furthermore, the Falcon Heavy payload performance as partial RLV and as ELV into different operational Earth orbits or for interplanetary trajectories is calculated using the model created previously. The thus obtained data is compared to available payload performance data from SpaceX.