SpaceX decided to coast the Falcon Heavy’s single-engine second stage in orbit for six hours to demonstrate missions typically flown by the US Air Force, which has already purchased an upcoming launch on the Falcon Heavy. Musk thinks SpaceX could launch another Falcon Heavy soon following the successful demo launch. “The first-stage engines are all the same, the side boosters are the same as a regular Falcon 9, but with a nose cap on,” Musk said in a press call the day before launch. “It's really the production rate of the center core.”

As the Falcon Heavy lifted slowly off historic Pad 39A, now leased by SpaceX from NASA, the anxiety of the site being left in ruins from a launch failure began to subside. In the lead up to the launch, Musk said not destroying what he considers the Times Square of pads would be a win for SpaceX. “It would be a really huge downer if it blows up. But hopefully, if something goes wrong, it goes wrong far into the mission so we at least learn as much as possible along the way,” said Musk at Kennedy Space Center on the eve of the flight. “This is a test mission. We don't want to set expectations of perfection by any means. If it just clears the pad and doesn't blow it to smithereens.”

The billionaire claimed that an unexpected explosion of the Falcon Heavy at liftoff would be the equivalent of 4 million pounds of TNT—which would nearly demolish the pad that also hosted missions of NASA’s celebrated Space Shuttle program. This was part of the reason that getting Falcon Heavy safely off the pad was so critical, and even considered a win at that point into Tuesday’s launch. Much was at stake.

SpaceX leased the pad from NASA and spent nearly $20 million renovating it to launch Falcon Heavy and missions for the upcoming Commercial Crew Program in which NASA crew will be taxied to the space station. “It's going to take us at least 9 to 12 months to get the pad back in action,” Musk responded when asked what a fallout from a pad explosion would look like. Musk explained before the Falcon Heavy demo launch that an in-flight failure, rather than an explosion at 39A, wouldn’t affect SpaceX’s day-to-day and SpaceX “could launch another in three to four months.”

While the Falcon Heavy has missions on the books, SpaceX’s crewed lunar mission is no longer one of them. As Musk announced last summer, SpaceX is moving forward with building a massive multi-purpose spacecraft it calls BFR that will essentially make its current fleet redundant, including the Falcon Heavy. Musk says if the company can’t get its BFR off the ground soon, they could potentially return to the idea of launching Falcon Heavy toward the moon with crew, which Musk claims it is “absolutely” capable of. But for now, SpaceX is planning for all crewed deep space missions, moon included, to be launched on BFR.