[hugh3]

There's only one thing I don't like about this, and that's the name. Falcon Heavy? Doesn't sound cool.

SpaceX has done an excellent job of coming up with cool-sounding names for everything they do, second only to US muscle car manufacturers of the 1960s. Falcon! Merlin! Draco! They even skipped straight from Falcon 1 to Falcon 9 because the numbers in between just don't sound nearly as cool.

But "heavy"? Sure, it's descriptive, but it's boring. Falcon X would be much better. Or Super-Falcon. Or ThunderCougarFalconBird...

[sbierwagen]

"Rocket name"-heavy is standard aerospace nomenclature for uprated rockets, derived from such launch systems being described as "heavy lift" rockets. Since there is no such thing as a casual buyer of a 80 million dollar rocket, how cool the name is doesn't matter at all.

It also puzzles me why they're "announcing" this, since a heavy lift version of the Falcon 9 has been planned since day one.

[hugh3]

Since there is no such thing as a casual buyer of a 80 million dollar rocket, how cool the name is doesn't matter at all.

You'd think so, and yet SpaceX has always done such a good job of making things sound cool.

As Doc Brown says, if you're going to build a time machine out of a car you might as well give it some style. And if you're going to build a huge fricking rocket that goes to space you might as well give it a cool name.

[JshWright]

Skipped the boring numbers? Count the number of engines on first stage of the Falcon 1... now count the number of engines on the first stage of the Falcon 9...

[Unseelie]

Is it our fault that their engineers decided 8 engines just wasn't a cool enough number of engines?

[hugh3]

Aww, you spoiled my illusions.

[kragen]

After OS X, the Xbox, ActiveX, DirectX, X Windows, the owl on Mr. Rogers, Ecstasy, Xanax, and now SpaceX, aren't you getting a little tired of X yet?