Payload will be my midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity. Destination is Mars orbit. Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on ascent. 

 Elon Musk is in Florida getting ready for the launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, the first-ever flight of the big new space freight beast. He’s making some final inspections of the cargo, it seems, including a new addition to the cherry red Tesla Roadster that’s going to be on board in the cargo area atop the rocket. 
 
 Said new addition is a dummy wearing one of SpaceX’s swanky new astronaut uniforms. Musk’s so-called “Starman” evokes the David Bowie tune that’s going to be playing on the Roadster when it’s launched, hopefully all the way up to space, during Falcon Heavy’s initial test mission on Tuesday at 1:30 PM ET. 
 
 Starman in Red Roadster A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on Feb 4, 2018 at 9:50pm PST 
 
 SpaceX’s cargo for this one is easily among the most fun things ever put into space, and it’s both symbolic of how this helps Musk achieve his larger mission of reducing human ecological footprint on earth, while simultaneously making sure we can spread our wings and become a truly interplanetary species when the time comes, too. 
 
 We’re actually also in Cape Canaveral to witness and report on the historic launch, so stay tuned this week for updates as we near the momentous first journey of this gigantic orbital rocket. 

 Donald Trump will take power any minute now, and we need to take advantage of the change in the White House to change NASA's focus. 
 
 Why? NASA needs to get out of the rocket business and shift its attention to a permanent space transport infrastructure, an Eisenhower-style highway in the sky. An infrastructure with: 
 
 Gas stations (propellant depots), 
 
 Rest stops and permanent housing—roomy human habitats with windows and vegetable gardens, 
 
 Truck stops and freight yards—logistics bases with cargo-handling equipment, 
 
 Trucks, SUVs, and dune buggies—Moon-and-Mars ground vehicles; plus tugs to haul loads around in space, 
 
 Fuel production equipment—units to turn the water of the Moon and Mars into rocket fuel, breathable oxygen, and drinkable water, 
 
 Units to turn the carbon dioxide in Mars' atmosphere into plastics, graphene, and carbon fiber with which 3-d printers can build more habitats, tools, and rovers—more trucks, SUVs and dune buggies. 
 
 Units to turn the rusty rocks lying around on the Martian surface into high strength steel for habitats. 
 
 Why move NASA into space highway construction? Because no one else will do it. And our future in space depends on it. Our future share in a space economy that United Launch Alliance (a joint venture rocket company from Boeing and Lockheed Martin) estimates will be worth $2.7 trillion in thirty years. 
 
 Look, a NASA under a new presidency has a brand new luxury. It can do for space what another government-supported project, the transcontinental railroad, did for trips to California in 1869. NASA can turn journeys to space from an expensive rarity to a possibility available to you and me. 
 
 How? The space industry has changed since the days when NASA was landing men on the moon. In that era, 1969 to 1972, really big rockets were made by governments. In fact, by only two governments, the governments of the Soviet Union and the USA. Big rockets were too expensive for anyone else. Rockets were like computers in the days when Thomas Watson, the head of IBM, supposedly said, “"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." 
 
 That prediction was wrong. There are now over two billion computers in the world. You probably own at least two: one in your phone and another in your laptop. Like computers, really big rockets are being democratized. States like China, Japan, Israel, Iran, India, and Pakistan can afford them. 
 
 More important, two visionary American billionaires and their private companies have entered the rocket business: Elon Musk with SpaceX and Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin. And those two men are achieving a rocket revolution. The big rockets that government once made for nuclear war were disposable. Use them once and toss them away. So the rockets that governments made for space launches were also disposable. And rockets are expensive. Some have cost more than a billion dollars apiece. The result: using rockets for transportation was appallingly pricey. 
 
 Rocket transport was like buying a Rolls Royce, topping off its tank, driving it from LA to San Francisco, then throwing it away in the Pacific Ocean when it ran out of gas and buying another Rolls to drive back from San Francisco to LA. This approach would make the round trip from LA to San Francisco very expensive. The cost would be roughly $700,000. At that price, how many people would make the trip? 
 
 But if you bought a Rolls, drove it from LA to San Francisco, refueled it, filled it with paying passengers, and drove it back and forth filled with new passengers until the car wore out, what would that do to the price of the ride? It would bring it down dramatically. In fact, it would make the trip affordable even for your average middle class family. 
 
 That’s what Musk and Bezos are doing for space transport. Musk has sent rockets into space carrying satellites to orbit, then has landed those rockets in one piece free for reuse six times, either on an earthly launch pad or on one of his two Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship landing barges. Jeff Bezos has not quite gone as high into the sky, yet he has done Elon one better. He has launched a single rocket to the edge of space four times, pinpoint-landed that rocket on its landing pad, refueled it, then has flown that same rocket once again. By the end of 2017, both men will have accomplished what John Strickland, the Chief Analyst for a group Buzz Aldrin convinced me to start ten years ago, The Space Development Steering Committee, calls “the Reusability Revolution.” 
 
 Right now NASA is throwing money away. It is trying to create a new rocket—the Space Launch System—at a cost of $3 billion a year. In fact, the total development cost of that new rocket will be over $30 billion. And it’s a waste. The SLS will be able to launch 143 tons to orbit. Fabulous. Almost 10 percent more than the mighty Saturn V that put humans on the Moon 48 years ago. But Elon Musk is developing a rocket with nearly three times the throwing power—the Interplanetary Transport System. Meanwhile, by the end of 2017, Musk will launch a heavy lift rocket with twice the capacity of any other operational rocket on earth today, the 27-engine Falcon Heavy. 
 
 The NASA rocket, the Space Launch System, won’t be tested until 2018 and won’t be ready for its first manned flight until 2021. Musk’s Falcon Heavy will lift off by the end of this year and should be ready to launch humans in 2018. NASA’s Space Launch System, as you know, will cost over $30 billion to develop. The development of Musk’s Falcon Heavy will cost roughly $2 billion—one fifteenth the NASA cost. 
 
 More important, NASA’s SLS will cost between one and two billion dollars for each launch. Musk’s Falcon Heavy will cost roughly $90 million. In other words, you could buy between eleven and twenty two Falcon Heavy launches for the price of one SLS launch. You could buy an entire space program! 
 
 And there’s more. Musk has another rocket on the drawing boards, the Interplanetary Transport System, formerly known as the BFR (for Big F…ng Rocket). That one will carry almost four times the load of the Space Launch System. And it, too, will cost roughly one tenth of the SLS to develop and less than one-twentieth to launch. 
 
 But Musk is not alone. Jeff Bezos, too, has a really big rocket on the drawing boards. His current rocket is the New Shepard (for Alan Shepard, the first American launched to suborbital space). After that comes a bigger rocket, Bezos’ New Glenn (for John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth). Then an even bigger rocket, the New Armstrong (for Neil Armstrong, the first American to set foot on the Moon). 
 
 But so far, neither Musk or Bezos have announced development of the infrastructure that their rockets will need to make space transport a regular affair. Neither has revealed plans for permanent fuel stations, permanent rest stops, permanent apartments with windows, lawns, and greenery, permanent vehicles to tool around on the Moon and Mars, and the machinery to convert lunar and Martian ice into rocket fuel, oxygen and water. Neither are building the machines to convert Martian “air” into plastics, graphene, and carbon fiber. NASA is at its best when it does what others cannot do. And the new highway in the sky, the new Eisenhowering of space, is what Musk, Bezos, and you and I will need but cannot construct for ourselves. 
 
 ————— 
 
 Howard Bloom, the author of six books, is founder and chair of The Space Development Steering Committee and a member of the board of governors of the National Space Society. He is currently co-conceiving a multi-planetary project 

 CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A scarlet Tesla Roadster from the assembly line of Elon Musk’s pioneering electric automobile business is poised this week to go where no sports car has gone before - outer space. 
 
 The sleek, battery-powered hot rod is serving as a mock payload for the highly anticipated debut test flight of Musk’s new Falcon Heavy jumbo rocket, set for liftoff as early as Tuesday by his other transportation venture, Space Exploration Technologies. 
 
 If the launch succeeds, the Falcon Heavy will rank as the most powerful rocket in operation today, and the mightiest space vehicle to blast off from the United States since NASA’s Saturn 5 rockets last carried astronauts to the moon 45 years ago. 
 
 It would likely give California-based SpaceX a leg up on rivals seeking major contracts with NASA, the U.S. military, satellite companies and even paying space tourists. 
 
 Propelled by 27 engines supplying three times the thrust of SpaceX’s current workhorse Falcon 9 booster, the Falcon Heavy is essentially constructed from three Falcon 9s bolted together side-by-side. The nose cone and payload cap the middle rocket. 
 
 The spacecraft is set for liftoff from the same launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida used by the Saturn 5 that carried Apollo 11’s three-man crew on their historic 1969 mission, which culminated in Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s first human steps on the lunar surface. 
 
 The “passenger” riding atop the Falcon Heavy will be setting a more whimsical record as the first car sent into solar orbit - a deliberately droll bit of high-stakes, high-tech cross-promotion dreamed up by Musk himself. 
 
 An Instagram post by Musk on Monday, captioned “Starman in Red Roadster,” showed a photograph of a mannequin in a white spacesuit at the wheel of the Tesla, and the convertible top down. SpaceX said the life-sized dummy would make the trip as pictured. 
 
 A red Tesla Roadster is seen during preparations to use it as a mock payload for the launch of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. December 6, 2017. Flickr.com/photos/SpaceX via REUTERS. 
 
 “I love the thought of a car driving apparently endlessly through space and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future,” the billionaire entrepreneur and SpaceX founder said in a previous Twitter post. 
 
 GREATER LIFT CAPACITY 
 
 The Falcon Heavy is designed to carry payloads of much greater heft, with SpaceX boasting its ability to place roughly 70 tons into standard low-Earth orbit at a cost of $90 million per launch. 
 
 That is twice the lift capacity of the biggest existing rocket in America’s space fleet - the Delta 4 Heavy of SpaceX rival United Launch Alliance (ULA), a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co - for about a fourth the cost. 
 
 The new rocket also would give SpaceX entry to two key arenas requiring higher lift capacity than a single Falcon 9 provides - geostationary orbital missions to deliver satellites that circle Earth’s equator at the same pace as the planet’s rotation, and for human exploration beyond Earth. 
 
 The Falcon Heavy could be in competition with the next big NASA rocket under development as well, the Space Launch System, or SLS, far more powerful than SpaceX’s new jumbo rocket but also much more expensive to fly. 
 
 The Trump administration recently signaled NASA may contract with a commercial provider to launch the first component of its Deep Space Gateway, a lunar-orbiting research outpost planned as a successor to the International Space Station and a jumping-off point for missions to Mars. 
 
 SpaceX already has lined up its first three paying missions for the Falcon Heavy, including the planned launch of two passengers on a tourist trip around the moon. 
 
 Slideshow (5 Images) 
 
 Like the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy is built to capitalize on SpaceX’s cost-cutting reusable rocket technology, with each of the three main-stage boosters designed to fly back to Earth after launch. 
 
 The two side-boosters are supposed to touch down on landing pads at Cape Canaveral, while the central booster should land itself on a drone ship in the Atlantic. 

 Video screenshot by Eric Mack/CNET 
 
 Update, Feb. 6, 10:47 a.m.: The launch of Falcon Heavy has been postponed to 12:45 p.m. PT due to continued high-level winds. Tuesday's launch window closes at 1 p.m. PT. 
 
 SpaceX finally has an official launch window for the demonstration blastoff of its long-awaited Falcon Heavy rocket, the most powerful since the mighty Saturn V that carried Apollo astronauts to the moon. 
 
 The Federal Aviation Administration gave its official blessing to the launch when it issued a license to SpaceX on Friday for "A flight of the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) transporting the modified Tesla Roadster (mass simulator) to a hyperbolic orbit." 
 
 That's right. The federal government has just granted Elon Musk permission to send his electric sports car into space. 
 
 SpaceX confirmed in a release on Saturday that it's targeting the launch for Tuesday during a two-and-a-half hour window that begins at 10:30 a.m. PT. If all goes perfectly, Falcon Heavy will fire up its 27 Merlin engines at that time, but all launches, especially a demonstration launch like this one, are subject to delays. 
 
 The launch will be steeped in history and symbolism: It will take place from the same launchpad that NASA used for Apollo 11 to send Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon. Musk views Falcon Heavy as a key stepping-stone to returning humans to destinations beyond orbit, including the moon and Mars. 
 
 But Musk on multiple occasions has also attempted to lower expectations for Falcon Heavy's first launch, warning that it may end in spectacular, but explosive failure. 
 
 Payload will be my midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity. Destination is Mars orbit. Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on ascent. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2017 
 
 If Musk's Roadster and Falcon Heavy do survive liftoff and the journey out of Earth's gravity well, we could be treated to another sort of spectacle: SpaceX's first attempt at landing three first-stage rocket boosters nearly simultaneously. 
 
 Falcon Heavy is basically three Falcon 9 rockets strapped together and topped with a second stage rocket and the payload. The two side boosters will attempt to land ashore at SpaceX's Landing Zones 1 and 2 (LZ-1 & LZ-2) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, while the center booster is set to land on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Atlantic. 
 
 As if all that weren't enough excitement, the landing attempts could be accompanied by up to three sonic booms that SpaceX warns may be heard across a six-county area in Florida. 
 
 As of Saturday, weather was looking about 80 percent favorable for the launch on Tuesday and slightly less favorable should it slip to the backup launch window on Wednesday. 
 
 SpaceX typically streams all of its launches live online. Once the feed is up, we'll embed it above, so keep checking back. 
 
 First published Feb. 4, 9:39 a.m. PT. 
 
 Update, Feb. 6, 9:02 a.m. PT: Added embedded live video of the launch attempt. 
 
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– A space superhighway remains only an idea, but Elon Musk will attempt to blast a flashy red convertible skyward regardless. Musk's Tesla Roadster will be aboard SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket on its debut launch from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday. The car is meant to showcase the 70-ton payload capacity of SpaceX's "most powerful operational rocket"—made up of three boosters of the smaller Falcon 9 rocket, a second stage rocket and the payload—whose estimated 2,500 tons of thrust is "equivalent to 18 Boeing 747 aircraft at full throttle," per CNBC. If the launch is successful, Falcon Heavy will make history as the most powerful rocket launched into space since NASA's Saturn V, which carried the Apollo astronauts to the moon, per CNET and Reuters. It would also be the first to carry a car into space, obviously. According to Tech Crunch, a dummy wearing a SpaceX astronaut suit will pilot Musk's Tesla Roadster as David Bowie's "Starman" blasts from its speakers during the launch, approved by the FAA and scheduled for 1:30pm EST. The car, which is to orbit the sun and get close to Mars, "will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn't blow up on ascent," Musk said in a December tweet. That's just one possible complication. Back on Earth, SpaceX will also have the opportunity to showcase its smooth rocket booster landings as it attempts three landings almost simultaneously, per CNET. Two boosters are expected to land at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station while a third is to arrive on a SpaceX drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.