this is a live look at cape canaveral in florida. spacex is about to launch a new rocket and it s a very big deal. this is a falcon heavy rocket. it is right now the most powerful rocket on the planet times two. this is set to be the biggest and brightest and most impressive rocket launch since the space shuttles retired and spacex reports it to be the future of human space travel. this rocket has 28 merlin engines, five million pounds of thrust. the equivalent of strapping 18 747s together and igniting them. the fuel on board, equivalent to four middle pounds of tnt. one pay load on board. a brand any cherry red tesla roadster that will go to orbit
for billions of years unless it blows up on as sent. phil keating. it s a big day. humongous day, shep, for spacex and beyond spacex, for all human space travel in the future. if this rocket does successfully launch, heads off to space, deploys the tesla electric sports car, sending it out to the earth-mars orbit and all three rocket stages come back down to earth, two of them on the landing zone and the center score burning an additional minute and that would come down into the floating drone ship in the atlantic ocean. if spacex can accomplish all this, this opens the doors. number 1, putting a crew capsule on top of the falcon heavy, taking humans back to the moon. you can even take humans out to mars as long as you have an
there s the launch pad. those were live pictures coming from space, not from nasa, not from the government. from a private company that is planning to transform space travel and phil, again, transform the space coast, i suppose. absolutely. more companies are coming, more jobs are happening here. they re all high-paying, high tech engineering-type jobs. the local economy has soon that boost over the past two years. this really opens the door, this launch proves to be a successful as it appears it has gone. it opens the door for bigger pay loads. satellites that are launched up by satellite companies to orbit at 2,300 miles above us. they re a certain size based on how strong and powerful the rocket can be to deliver them into space. so if you have one of these falcon heavies that can take up the equivalent of a 737 airplane, you can possibly build larger satellites to accomplish
years. a lot can happen in 11 years that may change their minds. i want to turn the page to something else. people are talking about china s first lunar rover is expected to land on the moon today. we were talking about that. how will that impact nasa s work? well, it s interest. in the 1960s. and in the cases of space, it s really national prestige. china is sending you know, i don t know how much new information they re going to get from the rover. but they re demonstrating the fact that they can do it. that may send a signal to nasa that they have to do a demonstration that they can do something. because human space travel. let me make this quite clear. it doesn t do much for science.
not only from here at the space coast, but on the international space station. the previous program had the international space station going into the pacific ocean in fife year, and we have extended the international space station for ten years, and we are reducing the gap in human space travel from human soil, and not only expanding, but accelerating what will follow, american spaceships with united states flags on them launching right here on the east coast. and what is next? there is always a plan, and something on the table, a destination, a vehicle, something that we could wrap our minds around. and we have that. the international space station has been our plan, and that is the toe-hold to the future. we have been trying to relive apollo since the 60s and announcing dates and destinations and not meeting them. we need to develop those capabilities so that this nation can afford the fly. we are going to go beyond lower orbit with the space launch system, and the mcvb, the