I wish Elon would give us a definitive launch date for the Falcon 9 heavy maiden...
So far it's just "November". I'm going to travel to KSC to watch it and it would be nice to plan. Most powerful vehicle since Apollo V.
It's been "6 months away" for over 3 years now.
Even the theoretical November date depends massively on LC-40, which was severely damaged in the pad explosion last September, FINALLY being repaired. So then Space can go back to launch Falcon-9's there, and leave 39A available for at least two months of work to finally upgrade it for Falcon Heavy (which they supposedly were to have completed about.... oh, 3+ years ago).
LC-40 was supposed be ready by end of August. Well, here we are. No announcement yet on LC-40 status. I don't expect pad 39A to be truly ready until early December at best.
I said around February or so of this year, that based one everything, including the over-optimistic plans, yet the actual FH cores being completed, that I think that FH will fly "first Quarter" of 2018 (January-March). I still think that's a good guesstimate. Launch plans for ANYTHING at the Cape in Mid-November, too easily slide to December and then "poof" into January, as the Thanksgiving-New Years timeframe really has seen a lot of launches jump into the next year.
In any case, even when SpaceX says they are a month away and say the NET launch date is .... whatever.... FH involves many new things to it, and in many ways is like preparing three Falcon-9's for flight, it's inevitable there are going to be delays.
This also ignores the random factors of available launch slots, since the Eastern Test Range (KSC area) is not exclusive for SpaceX, they ave to share available launch dates with other rockets. And with the ETR rules, they do not have infinite number of personnel available for launch 7 days a week. Even the CRS launches for NASA have extra constraints, a Russian Soyuz was delayed leaving the ISS for a few days, but NASA did not want CRS to arrive until AFTER it was gone, so the CRS launch was delayed for that reason.
So, if I was planning to go see a Falcon launch, I'd plan to go see a Falcon-9 launch, but not get a plane ticket till maybe a week away. And I'd avoid dates where there would be a lot of unavailable dates after the original dates, in case of a delay that might end up with a back-up launch date many days later, even a week or more later.
The only time I ever tried to see a launch at KSC, was March 1983, to see a Challenger shuttle launch. I flew to Orlando to both compete in a contest, and to see Challenger launch a few days later (doing the contest and seeing a shuttle launch made the trip worth doing. Arranged to fly back 10 days later, staying with a friend. Before I left... Challenger had an engine problem requiring rolling it back to the VAB and 6 weeks before it was ready to fly. I went to the contest anyway and killed a lot of time (the airline had a 2 for 1 deal so I got to fly for free the next trip), but that was the only time I tried to go to see a shuttle launch on purpose.
But in 1992, the FAI World Spacemodeling Championships was held in Melbourne, Florida, near KSC. Endeavour's 2nd launch was set for early July, 6 weeks before the WSMC. Then as time went by, it slipped a week here, 2 weeks there.....and the launch day HAPPENED to be the day after we drove down to attend the WSMC. So I DID get to see a shuttle launch after all. In a way, Karma owed me seeing one (Challenger's 6 week delay when I did go down).
If I really, really really wanted to see a Falcon Heavy launch.... I'd wait for one once the FH's have been flying for awhile, never the first one. MAYBE the lunar joyride (let's not be silly enough to say when that will actually happen). What would be interesting to see, would be a FH launch after SpaceX has finally gotten their act together to build a THIRD landing pad (the 2nd one is still not complete), and do a FH launch with a light enough payload to allow for landing the center core back at the Cape too, for a triple RTLS landing.
3 months out.
