It looks like there’s a good chance today’s SpaceX launch will be successful - Founder Elon Musk just wrote that they made it into space. The maiden launch attempt one year ago didn’t go so well, and today’s launch was almost aborted.
Congratulations to the SpaceX team. This is an awesome private sector accomplishment. There’s much more about this story on CruchGear.
Update 6:56 PM: They lost contact with the rocket before it reached the intended orbit. “The rolling motion caused the second stage engine to shut down early” and it may have re-entered the atmosphere. Still, they made it into Space.
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Update 6:56 PM
What time zone?
PST
PDT
I just posted several frames from the video feed. “We did have a roll-control anomaly,” Musk says of the second stage. Fate of the rocket remains unknown. Elon says the rocket may have re-entered the atmosphere prior to reaching the intended orbit. The rolling motion caused the second stage engine to shut down early.
The rocket uses dynamic throttle control to stabilize the flight without fins. After the cowlings fell away, it went into a wobble.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/
Flight updates: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/.....tatus.html
I wonder if it will be considered a success from a business standpoint, they really needed this launch to go well
Is this the beginning of ’space 2.0′ .. heh..
Who’s volunteering for the first manned flight?
(@nik, and then wait for the next space stock bust [think dotcom]
)
Whatever.
Nik,
At the press conference Musk said that the feedback they have received from their customers was “extremely positive” and that another test flight before launching their first operational mission in late summer may not be needed.
Congrats regardless of where the rocket ended up, it’s pretty fantastic.
Elon Musk is pretty interesting, I love how everything’s got an X with him, from X.com to SpaceX now.
By the way it’s not terribly flattering but The PayPal Wars is a great book and has some of Elon in it.
Congratulations to the SpaceX team. Regardless of the result of the current lauch, the fact that it reached second stage deployment is a great accomplishment and a step further in the quest for exploring the stars!!
So what… Big deal….
First, I heard SpaceshipOne cost more $20 million dollars to make and won
$20 million dollar prize. Geeze, I think Engineers need accounting skills…
Why do you want to Re-invent rocket NASA?
“…and today’s launch was almost aborted”.
If this was a test drive in my backyard…guess I could live with this but if we are really talking about space here, I would definitely want a little more.
if rocket fails… you rocket career is over. you still lose money too.
Let NASA do the job. They have huge budget and top engineers.
Pretty exciting stuff. Looking forward to what the private sector is going to bring us in this area.
I think this demonstrates how much more effective the private sector can be over the public sector. Don’t get me wrong, NASA have achieved a lot, but at no small expense..
This is also the beginning of the transformation of NASA to a smaller unit that will contract/outsource a lot of the work
NASA has made great achievements in the space program, but the problem is that they are an organization controlled by political forces. They landed a man on the moon first as a result of a race against the Soviets. Now that the Chinese set their sights on the moon, America decides to build a base there.
The private sector will go further and faster than any government organization. A business is motivated by profits and personal gain, and will go to great efforts to achieve these. The profit motive and innovation go hand in hand. SpaceX and other similar businesses will do more in the next 30 years than NASA did in the last 30.
I see nothing wrong with either the public or private sector achieving goals with space. If we leave it to the big boys, we could be passing up great opportunities for advancement and alternate/more efficient ways of doing things. SpaceX may not have broken any records, but we should recognize that they have made a major achievement. After all, have YOU ever been outside the earth’s atmosphere?
this is man kind doing its thing…good job spacex and good luck for the next launch…this is awesome news…
this is the power of the GNU Space program’s (GSP) open source rocket technology
this is why capitalism beat out communism…because people have the money to do cool stuff like launch rockets
congratulations to the SpaceX team…
Congratulations!
EvE
http://elenoireversuselenoire.spaces.live.com/
If you want to understand why launches like this are important, please check out the essay I just published:
http://spaceliberates.us/news/.....aceflight/
Congratulations. While I imagine things were far from ideal, they usually are. Each step is “progress”, which is a good thing.
Cool man have fun in space and keep us posted.
http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com
Congratulations to SpaceX. This seems to me like a great success story. I don’t understand why nytimes.com is using a negative headline for this story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03.....ref=slogin
This is quite an achievement. This is only the second flight of SpaceX. NASA
lost several rockets before they ever put a commercial payload into orbit. Musk
stated that the next launch will carry a commercial payload. Considering that
SpaceX has about 280 employee’s and they have a working rocket platform, compared to NASA which has a 17 billion dollar budget and very little going for it in terms of modern rocketry. Props to Musk and Co. Money can be made in space.
Congratulations to the team at SpaceX! I stayed late at work just so I wouldn’t miss the webcast commuting. The view from the rocket looking back at earth was terrific and made my day. Thanks for pursuing it - the more people who do, the faster advances will happen.
Mike, Thanks for posting.
This is a massive achievement for Elon and SpaceX. History was (quite literally) made today.
Congrats to the entire SpaceX team.
Our world needs more bold entrepreneurs like Elon and his “crew”.