↑ Elon Musk (19 tháng 7 năm 2017). Elon Musk, ISS R&D Conference (video). ISS R&D Conference, Washington DC, USA. Sự kiện xảy ra vào lúc 36:00–39:50. Truy cập ngày 5 tháng 2 năm 2018. There is a lot of risk associated with the Falcon Heavy. There is a real good chance that the vehicle does not make it to orbit... I hope it makes far enough away from the pad that it does not cause pad damage. I would consider even that a win, to be honest.... I think Falcon Heavy is going to be a great vehicle. There is just so much that is really impossible to test on the ground. We'll do our best.... It actually ended up being way harder to do Falcon Heavy than we thought. At first it sounds real easy; you just stick two first stages on as strap-on boosters. How hard can that be? But then everything changes. [the loads change, aerodynamics totally change, tripled vibration and acoustics, you break the qualification levels on all the hardware, redesign the center core airframe, separation systems]... Really way, way more difficult than we originally thought. We were pretty naive about that.... but optimized, it's 2 1/2 times the payload capability of Falcon 9.
↑ Musk, Elon. “June 2005 through September 2005 Update”. SpaceX. Truy cập ngày 24 tháng 6 năm 2017. About eighteen months ago, a customer approached SpaceX with launch mass and fairing volume needs that exceeded the Falcon 5. We iterated on several different solutions, including upgrading the Merlin engine thrust and adding liquid or solid strap on boosters.
