SpaceX Falcon heavy rocket blasts off from Florida in debut test flight

Falcon Heavy is designed to place up to 70 tons into standard low-Earth orbit at a cost of $90 million per launch. That is twice the lift capacity of the biggest existing rocket in America's space fleet - the Delta 4 Heavy of rival United Launch Alliance (ULA), a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co - for about a fourth the cost.

The demonstration flight put the Falcon Heavy into the annals of spaceflight as the world's most powerful rocket in operation, with more lift capacity than any space vehicle to fly since NASA's Saturn 5, which was retired in 1973, or the Soviet-era Energia, which flew its last mission in 1988.

Propelled by 27 rocket engines, the Falcon Heavy packs more than 5 million pounds of thrust at launch, roughly three times the force of the Falcon 9 booster rocket that until now has been the workhorse of the SpaceX fleet. The new heavy-lift rocket is essentially constructed from three Falcon 9s harnessed together side by side.

Going along for the ride in a bit of playful cross-promotional space theater was the sleek red, electric-powered sports car from the assembly line of Musk's other transportation enterprise, Tesla Inc.