SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, the world's most powerful rocket, thundered to life and shot away from Florida Tuesday on the power of 27 engines and nearly 5 million pounds of thrust, kicking off a spectacular maiden flight to send founder Elon Musk's cherry red Tesla Roadster on a "just for fun" journey beyond the orbit of Mars.

In a long-awaited presentation Tuesday, SpaceX founder Elon Musk unveiled a grandiose, long-range plan for building reusable super boosters and huge spaceships to eventually carry tens of thousands of people to Mars and elsewhere in the solar system with the eventual goal of building self-sustaining colonies.