Falcon Heavy will be performing a static fire Wednesday

Falcon Heavy raised vertical at LC-39A for the first time
Photo //  SpaceX

SpaceX's long awaited Falcon Heavy rocket emerged from the hangar at LC-39A once again and trekked to the pad ahead of a static fire. Pending a successful static fire, the launch is currently NET January 25th. The Falcon Heavy, in basic terms, is basically 2 Falcon 9 first stages mounted on the sides of a normal Falcon 9, but it's a lot more than just that.

 From an engineering standpoint, this is the most complex system that SpaceX has worked on to date. Their original plan was to have

Falcon Heavy being rolled out January 8th
Photo // Elliott Skeer - Twitter

fuel crossfeed from the side boosters into the core booster, but has been abandoned as of now because of the complexity. If this static fire is successful, we should see a launch "by the end of the month" as Elon stated in a tweet a few days ago. Inside the payload fairing is Elon Musk's original Tesla Roadster and the plan is to send the roadster to an orbit near Mars, while playing "Space Oddity".

Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster being encapsulated
Photo // SpaceX

Musk described the decision as "a red car for a red planet", as well as saying that for the first launch it would be a more exciting payload. Most rockets carry water ballasts or weights on their maiden flights, Musk described that for a payload as "boring" and nobody likes boring stuff. Many people are anticipating the launch of this amazing piece of engineering and the excitement is growing as the launch date begins to firm up. The first fully-stacked static fire of the rocket has a low chance of being successful the first time, but it's a possibility it goes flawless.