The Falcon 1 rocket launched successfully from the Marshall Islands. SpaceX, funded by Elon Musk, has the goal to improve the cost and reliability of access to space “ultimately by a factor of ten”. Their mission, to get the Falcon 1 into orbit yesterday, wasn’t a complete success. The second stage went into a roll during its first orbit and reentered the atmosphere. Given that this is only their second test flight, they feel that it’s anything but a failure. They have a contract to deliver a Naval Research Laboratory payload into space and plan to do that later this year.
I have to say that this pumps me up more than a little bit. I’ve often said that the real exploration of space will kick into high gear when private industry gets ahold of it. As we’ve seen with FedEx and UPS vs. the USPS, privatization can lead to better delivery of services heretofore under the auspices of the government. I have no doubt that this will prove to be the case when it comes to rockets. SpaceX has plans for a manned space program using a blunt-cone ballistic capsule that it calls Dragon. It will have the ability to dock with the International Space Station and they want to take over supplying the ISS by 2010.