SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, ready for takeoff, faces a changing market for heavy-lift rockets
LOS ANGELES - Seven years ago, Los Angeles entrepreneur Elon Musk first publicly introduced the Falcon Heavy rocket, promising that the first launch of the 27-engine behemoth would be "pretty epic."
That day comes Tuesday, when SpaceX plans to launch the Falcon Heavy at 1:30 p.m. EST from Florida's Kennedy Space Center in its first demonstration mission. Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful U.S. rocket since the famed Saturn V, which took astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s.
A successful launch would vault SpaceX into the small cadre of heavy-lift rockets available throughout the world, ranging from
