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Following (some) successful launches and prior rumours of deals, NASA has given SpaceX and Orbital massive contracts to send supplies to the ISS.
Now that SpaceX has finally sent a rocket into orbit successfully, the Elon Musk-headed company is now focusing on its next goal--hauling cargo for NASA on the Falcon 9, sending people to the International Space Station with its Dragon capsule, and possibly a moon landing as well! Quite a list for a company that only recently scattered Scotty from Star Trek's ashes all over the ocean by accident.
This is the on-rocket video of SpaceX's successful Falcon 1 launch. The Earth gets smaller, the sky gets darker, the engines burn cleanly, all systems remain nominal, and 10 minutes later the little rocket that finally could is in orbit...as simply as that. Check out the jubilant cheers from the SpaceX team at about 2:40 onwards when the main engine cut-off is reached, and the first stage is jettisoned. The only moment of drama is just before secondary engine cut-off, when the rocket's video feed glitches—and then comes back. Historic stuff, and hopefully all the future Falcon launches will be this smooth. [Pointniner]
After three failed attempts, one scattering of Scotty's ashes over the Pacific Ocean, and a few mid-air explosions, the SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket has finally reached orbit. The achievement marks a major milestone for Elon Musk, whose visions of a privately-funded rocket program appeared just out of reach until today's success.
After three fiery failed test launches of its Falcon 1 rocket (the last one carrying NASA's first solar sail craft and Scotty from Star Trek's ashes), Elon Musk's SpaceX is setting up shop at a new launch site--Cape Canaveral's Space Launch Complex 40, which is just south of SLC-39A/B, from which the Space Shuttle and Apollo moon missions have headed skyward for decades. There they hope to prepare the first test of their Falcon 9 vehicle, the bigger and badder version of the Falcon 1 rocket that just can't stop going BOOM.
As you know by now, SpaceX's most recent rocket launch attempt failed early in its flight, destroying the vehicle and sending its satellite payload and the ashes of James Doohan—Star Trek's original Scotty— into the ocean. It's just what happens sometimes with space technology: there's so much complexity, so much technology/aerodynamics/engine chemistry and engineering that just has to work perfectly, in sync and under high stress. And that's a point that is elegantly detailed by one of James' sons in a letter to BoingBoing about the SpaceX launch. It makes for poignant reading.
Holy shit, the Space X guys just scattered Scotty's ashes all over the Pacific Ocean. As in, "beam me up, Scotty" actor James Doohan. From Star Trek the Original Series! Turns out Scotty--er, Doohan--was one of the 208 people whose ashes were placed on board the Falcon 1 rocket by Celestis, Inc., a company that arranges for loved ones' ashes to be shot into space. Astronaut Gordon Cooper was also aboard the doomed launch, which Celestis had dubbed the "Explorer's Flight." I'm no rocket scientist (hell, I'm barely a blogger), but I think they might want to rename the flight something else, considering what happened to the Falcon 1 late last night.
Bad news for private space flight aficionados--SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket lifted off live via webcast last night, and then proceded to blow up spectacularly in the sky over the Pacific Ocean. If you were following along on the official SpaceX website, you probably saw this: "20:38 PDT — We have heard from launch control that there has been an anomaly. More details will be posted to the website as available." The site remains the same this morning, but Space.com has learned that two rocket stages "failed to separate about two minutes and 20 seconds into launch" and the rocket blew itself to smithereens around 11:36 p.m. EDT. The pubs are calling this "strike three" for SpaceX, but it should be known billionaire backer Elon Musk has two more rockets left to prove his private firm is a reliable way to transport satellites to low Earth orbit.
