
Falcon Heavy prepares for debut flight as Musk urges caution on expectations - deegles
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2017/07/falcon-heavy-prepares-debut-musk-urges-caution-expectations/
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curtis
A lot of this article is quoting Musk about how difficult the Falcon Heavy
was, much more difficult than what they expected.

There's certainly no reason to doubt him when he says it was harder than
expected, but I do find it interesting that the Delta IV Heavy [1] has an
essentially identical configuration and has been operational since 2004. Maybe
that rocket had similar difficulties, or maybe the large number of engines on
Falcon Heavy make a real difference (each Delta IV has one large engine rather
than 9 small ones).

I guess I'm surprised that Spacex was surprised about the difficulty.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV_Heavy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV_Heavy)

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ccdev
The number of engines being used in the FH, being much greater than Delta IV
Heavy. The ignition process is complex for a setup and plumbing involved with
that. And unknown interactions such as vibrations, etc. that they have yet to
see from firing 27 engines at once as opposed to 9.

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valuearb
Interesting that Musk is often accused of hyping his projects, but here he's
basically telling potential customers to be wary.

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boznz
Whatever happens it will be interesting to watch and SpaceX does tend to learn
and move on rapidly from it's mistakes.

