LOS ANGELES (AP) — An Internet entrepreneur's latest effort to make space launch more affordable paid off Sunday when his commercial rocket, carrying a dummy payload, was lofted into orbit from the South Pacific.
It was the fourth attempt by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to launch its two-stage Falcon 1 rocket into orbit.
"Fourth time's a charm," said Elon Musk, the multimillionaire who started up SpaceX after making his fortune as the co-founder of PayPal Inc., the electronic payment system.
The rocket carried a 364-pound dummy payload designed and built by SpaceX for the launch.
"This really means a lot," Musk told a crowd of whooping employees. "There's only a handful of countries on Earth that have done this. It's usually a country thing, not a company thing. We did it."
Musk pledged to continue getting rockets into orbit, saying the company has resolved design issues that plagued previous attempts.
Last month, SpaceX lost three government satellites and human ashes including the remains of astronaut Gordon Cooper and "Star Trek" actor James Doohan after its third rocket was lost en route to space. The company blamed a timing error for the failure that caused the rocket's first stage to bump into the second stage after separation.
SpaceX's maiden launch in 2006 failed because of a fuel line leak. Last year, another rocket reached about 180 miles above Earth, but its second stage prematurely shut off.
Falcon 1, a 70-foot-long rocket powered by liquid oxygen and kerosene, is the first in a family of low-cost launch vehicles priced at $7.9 million each.
Besides the Falcon 1, SpaceX is developing for NASA a larger launch vehicle, Falcon 9, capable of flying to the international space station when the current space shuttle fleet retires in 2010.
Interesting, but they may need more than a 2% success rate if they hope for the major telecoms to entrust their satellites to them...
...Also, please move if this is the incorrect forum.
"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
Yes, it's only now they decided to put a dummy load in there after they lost Doohan's ashes and the satellites and...
Congratulations. Bring me to the moon!
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."
Why is everybody so fucking down on SpaceX? They just launched a rocket into orbit! Sure, they've had some failures -- but so does everybody who starts a space program. They've done good work on streamlining the process of launching stuff into space, and now they can start making larger launchers to get some economy of scale.
What they're doing is pretty conventional: two- and three-stage chemical rockets, just like everybody else. The difference is that they're trying from the start to keep the costs to a minimum. It'll be interesting to see how much that'll affect launch costs.
We had a lead guy from SpaceX come talk to my class a couple weeks ago. A lot of interesting stuff, especially how they do almost everything in-house.
Vendetta wrote:Richard Gatling was a pioneer in US national healthcare. On discovering that most soldiers during the American Civil War were dying of disease rather than gunshots, he turned his mind to, rather than providing better sanitary conditions and medical care for troops, creating a machine to make sure they got shot faster.
With every success, they learn. With every failure, they learn but have people dump all over them.
This is very, very good and will surely result in a stronger space based industrial sector.
"Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth." M.A.A.A
Hawkwings wrote:That looks like a 25% success rate to me, not 2%.
Yeah, I know. I fat-fingered it.
"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
Jon wrote:What am I missing here, I thought private rockets have been going into space carrying payloads for an age?
I believe that the principle source of excitement here is that SpaceX's launch vehicle is supposed to be much cheaper per-launch, and cheaply loft smaller payloads than competing vehicles, such as Boeing's Delta-II, thus enabling smaller players to get into the space game.
Jon wrote:What am I missing here, I thought private rockets have been going into space carrying payloads for an age?
Most other launchers are derived from Government contracts, the SpaceX rocket is purely privately designed and "cheap".
"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
"The 4th Earl of Hereford led the fight on the bridge, but he and his men were caught in the arrow fire. Then one of de Harclay's pikemen, concealed beneath the bridge, thrust upwards between the planks and skewered the Earl of Hereford through the anus, twisting the head of the iron pike into his intestines. His dying screams turned the advance into a panic."'
