AGENDA 21 RADIO

BY CHRISS STREET NEWPORT BEACH, CA

SpaceX’s mammoth 27 engine Falcon Heavy rocket flawlessly lifted-off from the Kennedy Space Center in its maiden flight to Mars as the U.S. prepares for inter-planetary travel.

After upper atmosphere winds subsided with just 15 minutes left before the mission would have had to be scrubbed for the day, all three booster engines sets produced 5-mllion pounds of thrust to power the 230-foot high Falcon Heavy into space.

Chairman Elon Musk’s refers to Falcon Heavy as ‘Big F***ing Rocket’, because it has the capability of lifting 140,700 pounds of payload into space. That gives Falcon Heavy twice the capability of the current big satellite lift leader, United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy Booster.

About eight minutes after blast-off, both side-mounted boosters on Falcon Heavy made picture perfect side-by-side upright intact landing recoveries Kennedy Air Force Station LZ-1 and LZ-2 at seven miles south of the launch site.

The main core booster rocket perfectly approached its recovery platform in the mid-Atlantic. But after the rocket flipped correctly, its recovery engine failed to ignite and the rocket hit the ocean at 300-miles per hour and sank near its recovery platform.

Prior to lift-off, Musk was sheepishly claiming that there was only a 50-50 chance for a successful Falcon Heavy first-time launch. His humility regarding the technical challenges of the mission was probably related to SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell telling reporters last May that the company had a success rate of 94 percent. SpaceX subsequently suffered a couple wildly expensive satellite-launch failures.

SpaceX planning to charge only $90 million per launch for its Falcon Heavy’s private sector booster, represents a death knell for NASA’s $35 billion Space Launch System. Passed by the Obama Administration at the height of its Democrat-majority control of Congress in 2010, the federal government owned and operated “SLS” had planned to charge $1 billion per launch.

Musk said that just for fun, he loaded a Tesla midnight-cherry-red Roadster convertible in the rocket’s nosecone. After reaching space, the nosecone’s protective fairings separated to reveal a “Starman” dummy in the driver’s seat and the Roadster’s radio playing a continuous loop of David Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’ song. He hopes expects that Starman will continue to broadcasting from his Tesla Roadster as it orbits around the “Red Planet.”