Bananas for Scale
Falcon Heavy

Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash

Falcon Heavy

SpaceX's heavy-lift launcher and the most powerful operational rocket/Spacecraft

The Falcon Heavy is essentially three Falcon 9 rockets bolted together, producing over 22 meganewtons of thrust at liftoff. Its inaugural flight in 2018 famously launched Elon Musk's personal Tesla Roadster into a heliocentric orbit with a mannequin named Starman at the wheel. With the ability to land all three boosters for reuse, it delivers heavy payloads to orbit at a fraction of the cost of its competitors.

Measurements

Height70 m
35Cattail heights
6.36London double-decker buses
14.3Canoes
Launch mass1.4 million kg
1,015Honda Civics
1.8 thousandthsGolden Gate Bridge masses
625,898Bags of flour
Liftoff thrust22.8 million N
1,521Seatbelt catches
45.6 billionRaindrop weights
12.8 millionApple weights

27 Merlin 1D engines total

Payload to LEO63,800 kg
42,533Textbooks
869 sextillionthsMoons
638,000Newborn pandas
Fairing diameter5.2 m
4.87Baseball bats
13.5 billionthsEarth-to-Moon distances
57.8French fry lengths
Payload to Mars16,800 kg
1.5 millionAAA batteries
168 quadrillionPlatelet weights
Core booster width3.66 m
1.83Cattail heights
6 tenthsBoxing ring sides
18.3Plier lengths
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