What SpaceX just did with Falcon Heavy totally shocked Blue Origin!

The space community is on the brink of a thrilling shift as a new heavyweight contender emerges to challenge SpaceX's long-held dominance in rocketry. It's Blue Origin's New Glenn. No kidding. Despite facing some development hurdles, New Glenn is truly a formidable rival, boasting a significant advantage. Its larger payload fairing, which positions it perfectly for national big-size payload missions, a capability that many rockets, including SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, currently lack. In response to this rising competition, SpaceX isn't sitting idle. They've swiftly rolled out an upgraded payload fairing for the Falcon Heavy, aiming to reclaim their edge and take on Blue Origin's pride head-on. So, what makes SpaceX's new feature so special? Join us as we explore the exciting details in today's episode. Anyway, our next goal is 100,000, and we need your support to get there. If you haven't subscribed yet, please do. We appreciate your help. Thank you. When Blue Origin's big New Glenn rockets soared up to the skies and reached orbit on January 16, 2025, cheers erupted from the crowd and echoed through social media. Enthusiasts and industry experts alike felt a surge of hope for a future where competition would reignite innovation in space travel. For years, Elon Musk's SpaceX had dominated the rocket industry with its Falcon line, an impressive feat that had made space more accessible, but also raised concerns about monopolistic practices. Many feared that without competition, prices would soar, innovation would stagnate, and options for customers would dwindle. The stakes were high. SpaceX had worked tirelessly to reduce launch costs through its ambitious Starship program, yet the public craved more than just lower prices. They yearned for a vibrant marketplace where multiple players could thrive. The successful launch of New Glenn signaled that Blue Origin was ready to challenge SpaceX's supremacy and usher in an era of healthy competition. That confidence stems from the impressive design of New Glenn, with the larger fairing size, up to 7 meters in diameter. Compared to the traditional 5.2-meter fairings found on SpaceX's Falcon rocket, bear in mind, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy share the same second-stage and payload fairing. The New Glenn's larger fairing size provides a significant advantage for launching bigger and more complex payloads, while the Falcon's fairing is optimized for its established launch capabilities. The fairing's increased volume provides nearly 40% more usable spacecraft diameter over traditional ones, resulting in more than 90% greater effective aperture area for fixed instrumentation, which is beneficial for various space missions. In fact, SpaceX also started to come up with the idea of an extended payload fairing on Falcon Heavy a few years ago, which was unveiled through the fan-made graphic released in 2020. In early January 2025, the media captured the image of this upgraded fairing, showing its readiness for use. The role of this version is to allow Falcon Heavy to support missions with physically larger payloads, like NASA's Lunar Gateway. This upgrade maintains the same diameter as the standard fairing but adds a remarkable 17 feet in height, meaning its total height will be 60 feet, 18.3 meters, nearly matching New Glenn's 72-foot, 22-meter height. This allows for larger payloads to be accommodated. The enhancement is not merely a matter of size, it represents a strategic evolution in Falcon Heavy's capabilities, enabling it to tackle ambitious missions. Nevertheless, why doesn't SpaceX make this expanded version more popular to increase competitiveness? The reason is very simple. It's designed for one-time use, meaning not reusable, which is against SpaceX's long-term strategy. Why doesn't SpaceX make it reusable? If you want to reuse the fairings, you have to develop a parachute recovery system, adding more weight to the inherently heavy payload fairings. Secondly, the extended fairing's usage is expected to be limited, with only a few payloads necessitating the extended fairing. Most payloads will comfortably fit within standard sizes. SpaceX has created a standardized system where the fairing halves can be mixed and matched. This means that for most missions, there's no need to use the extended fairing, making operations more efficient and cost-effective. For payloads that require a significantly different size, a custom fairing will be necessary. In these cases, reusability isn't a priority since these custom designs are tailored for specific missions. This approach allows SpaceX to focus on performance without worrying about recovering the fairing after launch. Thirdly, by not making the upgraded fairing reusable, SpaceX can apply a detonation-based deployment mechanism, which is simpler and more efficient. It fits into the strategy of using simpler, less maintenance-intensive solutions for the less frequently used, larger fairings. Its two halves are joined by a bolted frangible seam joint, which is different from the mechanical latches used in standard fairings. When deployment is initiated, redundant detonators activate a detonation cord within an expanding tube assembly. The controlled detonation causes the tube to expand, breaking the structural seam between the fairing halves. This contrasts with the more complex pneumatic system that needs to support multiple deployments if recovery and reuse are planned. The simplicity reduces the number of parts that could potentially fail, thus allowing for very precise control over the separation process. The charges can be designed to sever the fairing along specific lines, ensuring clean and complete separation, which is crucial for deploying satellites into the correct orbit without any interference from residual fairing parts. Additionally, mechanical separation systems used on the standard version can be heavy, involving multiple actuators, springs, or motors. Explosive bolts or cords are generally lighter, which is a significant consideration in space launches, where every gram counts toward payload capacity or fuel efficiency. Last but certainly not least, SpaceX doesn't want to focus much on the upgrades on Falcon Heavy because the Starship development is now central to their long-term strategy. The extended fairing, while useful for certain missions, might not be a priority in terms of development resources when compared to broader goals like Starship. As we can see in this graphic, Starship's fairing is significantly larger than Falcon Heavy's extended fairing and that of Blue Origin's New Glenn. Elon Musk replied to it by saying, Starship fairing will actually have more height than shown here. Dome will be flatter and more of tip is accessible. Usable volume roughly 1,000 cubic meters. In reality, currently, the payload fairing on SpaceX's Starship has an outer diameter of 9 meters, 30 feet, and a height of 18 meters, 59 feet. This gives it a usable volume of about 1,000 cubic meters, which is described as the largest usable payload volume of any current or in development launcher, big enough to fit the entire Eiffel Tower disassembled. That also should result in pressurized cabin space of comparable size to an Airbus A380. Musk has explained before his plans to offer cabins for two to three people, using each side of the room more effectively due to the nature of zero gravity. This aligns with the goal of transporting over 150 tons or 100 people into space at a time. Starship's impressive payload volume got scientists excited. Starship would totally change the way that we can do solar system exploration, says Ali Bramson, a planetary scientist from Purdue University. Planetary science will just explode. If it meets expectations, scientists are already discussing plans to launch missions to Neptune and its largest moon, Triton, allowing scientists to explore regions of the solar system that have been largely overlooked since NASA's Voyager 2 mission in 1989. The rocket's capacity to carry large amounts of scientific equipment could enable unprecedented research, including returning substantial samples from the Moon and Mars. At that point, Starship will carry a Weighing approximately 21 metric tons, the proposed Arcanum spacecraft would be four times heavier than the largest deep space probe to date, NASA and ESA's Cassini-Huygens mission, which studied Saturn from 2004 to 2017. Currently, no existing rocket can launch such a heavy craft, but Starship would enable this capability. Arcanum will consist of several components, including an orbiter to investigate Neptune, a lander for Triton, and a penetrator designed to impact Triton's surface and conduct seismic experiments to analyze its geology and structure. Additionally, the mission could feature a telescope for studying the outer solar system and assisting in the search for exoplanets. Scientists are also considering returning significant amounts of lunar and Martian rock to Earth, as well as creating new methods to shield our planet from incoming asteroids. Philip Lubin, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has calculated that a sufficiently large rocket like Starship could be utilized to avert an asteroid collision with Earth. This mission could carry enough explosives to break apart an asteroid as large as the 10-kilometer-wide rock that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. The fragments would then safely disintegrate in the atmosphere before reaching our planet. Not to mention, Starship could also be a better way to launch giant space telescopes that can observe the universe such as the James Webb Space Telescope. In addition, Elon Musk suggests turning a Starship into the structure for a new giant telescope with 10 times the resolution of NASA's Hubble. Elon Musk revealed that the concept of transforming a Starship spacecraft into a large space telescope was initially proposed to him by astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. This announcement follows an incident where NASA's aging Hubble Space Telescope had to suspend its scientific operations due to a software issue, prompting NASA scientists to urgently seek a solution to restore its functionality. In a previous tweet, Musk expanded on his vision for the Mars-bound rocket, suggesting it could serve as a dedicated deep space variant that can be refueled in orbit, enabling SpaceX to launch heavier payloads to distant locations like the Moon and Mars. Starship is, like, wow, says James Head, a planetary scientist from Brown University. In mid-November 2021, speaking in a publicly accessible virtual meeting about Starship, hosted by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, Musk discussed the project's scientific potential. It's extremely important that we try to become a multi-planet species as quickly as possible, he said. Along the way, we will learn a great deal about the nature of the universe. Starship could carry a lot of scientific instrumentation on flights, said Musk. Far more than is currently possible. We'd learn a tremendous amount compared to having to send fairly small vehicles with limited scientific instrumentation, which is what we currently do, he said. You could get a 100-ton object to the surface of Europa, Musk added. Apparently, the large payload volume is not the only attractive feature of Starship. It's also about the low cost. SpaceX's Starship is poised to significantly lower launch costs, potentially reaching as low as $2 million per flight. This affordability could democratize access to space research, enabling private missions and collaborations that were previously not feasible due to the high expenses associated with traditional launch vehicles. By reducing costs, Starship may open new opportunities for various industries to engage in space exploration and research.