Unless you’ve been under that good old hypothetical internet-proof rock for the last couple of days, you’ve surely seen at least a snippet of news about SpaceX’s announcement of their Falcon Heavy rocket. With all the standard caveats (it’s still on the drawing board, things can go wrong, rocketry ain’t easy), “gamechanger” seems like a reasonable term to use; more than twice the payload of the Space Shuttle at a much lower price-per-launch. Personally I’d still like to see us moving away from rocketry as prime launch technology, but hey, anything that makes further developments at the top of the gravity well is OK by me. Plus it has a name that could just as easily adorn the bottle of some obscure craft-brewery ale… 🙂

I know we have some hardcore spacegeeks in the audience, so let me know what you think about this one – are bigger cheaper fireworks the answer, or are SpaceX aiming in the wrong direction here?