The SpaceX Falcon Heavy is a rocked system designed along the same lines as the Falcon 9 booster – in effect, 3 Falcon 9 1st stages strapped together. Of course in practice it’s much more complex than that, but that helps you visualize the idea of the booster – 3 times the initial power to lift higher weight payloads into orbit, or smaller payloads deeper into space. It won’t be the most powerful rocket ever flown, but it will become the most powerful booster currently available (depending on mission requirements, of course.)
The powerful booster, which is a key reason why pad 39A was leased to SpaceX, as the launch vehicle would require a pad capable of managing the force of launching, has yet to fly, and at the same event where Elon Musk said that Crew Dragon was no longer going to use propulsive landing He also stated that he doesn’t think the Falcon Heavy will actually have a successful first flight!
https://www.space.com/37550-elon-musk-spacex-falcon-heavy-maiden-launch.html
Wait, wait, wait, you’re telling me that the man who, according to fans, can do no wrong, has doubts as to whether his new high end booster, which actually, to me, looks perfectly fine, might fail?
Oh, that’s hilarious! I say this not out of spite to SpaceX, but to the people in the fanbase who thinks SpaceX is perfect – the people who think the “Interplanetary Transport System” won’t suffer a single failure ever and that such is impossible (and yes, some of them literally think that). The very fact that Elon thinks that a much more sane rocket, Falcon Heavy (which has the same basic design idea as the Delta IV Heavy and a planned, although never flown Atlas V Heavy) might not survive its first launch, with all the research and development put into it, actually does amaze me!
Falcon Heavy is based off the rather successful Falcon 9 Booster design.
By comparison, to think a rocket with a completely new design, using something like 40 engines, bigger than anything ever flown, to think that won’t have an issue when even the very man behind the company creating a much lesser booster built upon an already tested rocket idea is absolute madness.
I, for one, think the Falcon Heavy will fly fine. The ITS though? That I feel will never see the light of day, and if it does get built, I don’t expect it to make it very far.
Keep this in mind – I have higher hopes for the Falcon Heavy than Elon Musk does. Just let that sink in.