^^^^
great to see Launch Pad 39A once again in action...
it was a thing of beauty and inspiration indeed. Love seeing a Tesla in space w/Starman, way cool...and
the dash display:
"Don't Panic"...

enjoyed just as much the (synchronized) landing of both OB Boosters, a feather in Elon's cap, landing rockets when no one else has or could. Less the Core ctr, which didn't fire proper (2 of 3 rockets failed to fire, actually there are 9 recovery rockets of which 3 need to fire, and only 1 fired) for its landing on t/barge. Elon stated its loss was no big deal since SpaceX didn't plan on re-using it.
Most important thing to Elon & his SpaceX team, is- this successful Heavy launch opened the doors for his
"BFR" in years to come....
B for big,
F for F**king,
R for Rocket, (no shit). How can one not love Elon? Upon his arrival to the Rocket world, I gotta' admit I was very skeptical, as were many.... Hats off to Elon and SpaceX -
However we're liable to see NASA's SLS (VBFR) launch yrs prior to SpaceX's BFR...
Overall, I'd bet SpaceX surpasses NASA's program(s) in delivery times, flights, costs easily, et al...
Falcon 9 Heavy w/5 Mil lbs of thrust, Kerosene and Liquid Oxygen, (good ol' fashioned) kerosene...
STS or the Shuttle Program used Solid Rocket fuel (APBP), while the Shuttles 3 main engines used Liquid Hydrogen mixed w/Oxygen. STS had 7.8 Mil lbs of thrust, tho' this article below shows its delivery capacity as: 65K lbs in LEO, a Shuttle weighs: 165,000 lbs, go figure this articles (1st link below) math isn't very accurate.... We were blasting Shuttle's into Orbit with a max of 65K lbs Payloads, (on top of t/OV's weight)...
Saturn V Apollo had 11 Mil lbs of thrust with a 260K payload to LEO...
http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/06/technology/future/biggest-rockets-falcon-heavy-comparison/index.html
the future of Space X to come:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/7/16983040/spacex-falcon-heavy-rocket-launch-schedule-spaceflight