Falcon Heavy

Seventy metres tall and 12.2 metres across the three cores, each of which is an ordinary 3.7 metre Falcon 9 first stage. Twenty-seven Merlins produce 22,819 kilonewtons, and the published 63,800 kilograms to low orbit is the expendable figure. The recovered figure that circulates, 57,000 kilograms, is not a number SpaceX publishes anywhere.

The compromise here is that SpaceX gives up its own core competence to buy energy. Across thirteen flights the vehicle has flown thirty-nine cores and recorded twenty-two landings, because the centre core is routinely thrown away on the high-energy missions that are the only reason to buy a Falcon Heavy in the first place.

It flies rarely, and that is a verdict rather than a scheduling problem. Thirteen missions in eight and a half years, including a nineteen month silence after Europa Clipper in October 2024, broken by Viasat-3 F3 in April 2026 and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on 30 August 2026. Falcon 9 kept growing until it could take almost everything Falcon Heavy was designed for.

What is left is the top of the range: the largest planetary and national security payloads, the work that used to belong to the Delta IV Heavy. Psyche, Europa Clipper and Roman are exactly that category, and there are only a few such missions in any given year.