SpaceX Falcon 9 succeeds in historic launch

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket today lifted off from Cape Canaveral in an historic launch test. CNN:

Paid for by the money and dreams of a millionaire, the rocket serves as a symbol of the future and could carry astronauts and cargo to the international space station. This commercial venture by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, carries a mockup of its space capsule, called Dragon. PayPal co-founder Elon Musk is the CEO of the company. NASA hopes companies such as SpaceX can take over transportation to the international space station.

The company was founded by PayPal co-founder and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk. More coverage: Wired News, CNET, Reuters, New York Times.

(Thanks, Charles)

• [holtt]

  Very very awesome rocket sauce. There was some credibility to the whole, “Take space private” thing riding on this one.

  Tweet I saw…

  @RochellaSpace: Best comment from Space Politics.com: “SpaceX delivers a big fat STFU to all the haters. Damn that feels good.”

• [Anonymous]

  I think this is one of the few times imo when privatization is a really good idea. Whether we think it’s necessary or not, we need to continue to develop new forms of space travel and technology to facilitate it. What the ppl whose only argument is “we have too many problems down here to be worrying about this,” they fail to understand the two most important implications of aeronautical research. The first is for national defense… it’s bad enough that nasa has to rely on Russia to ferry them to the ISS. If we keep going at this rate, our disadvantage will only grow as they continue to develop new technologies in their space program while we pump the brakes on ours. Is air and space superiority something you really want the Russians to have? It doesn’t seem like a good idea for any one country to have, let alone one whom we have a sketchy history with. The second is that with aeronautical research comes a flood of new technologies, most of which are very applicable to us down on earth. For example, if it wasn’t for nasa, we wouldn’t have the chips that we use for non-invasive biopsies, solar energy, and a whole litany of other things (http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html#Top has a good number of inventions that most of us don’t know came from our space program). And if you’re one of those ppl that are so skeptical (or cynical imo) that you still don’t think that any of the things on this list warrant a larger investment in a privatized space industry, just remember that while you sleep at night, you most likely have nasa to thank for that, too. If you use any type of home security system, chances are they use infrared and laser technology that came out of nasa’s research (just look at the adt home security infrared camera page. They even admit that the technology came from nasa!)

• [wgmleslie]

  Great, so now my tenuous grasp on reality has just been completely shattered.

• [wgmleslie]

  “Confinity launched its milestone product, PayPal in late 1999.[4] Confinity merged with X.com, founded by Elon Musk, in March 2000.”

  So what’s this religion thingy you’ve been working on, Xenu?

• [Wormgirl]

  Go SpaceX!!! Though it really just makes me wonder when the price will start to drop to a reasonable standard for all commercial space travel… A funny video on the future of space tourism: http://bit.ly/cMS29r

• [Xenu]

  Elon Musk most certainly did NOT co-found PayPal!

• [Phlip]

  If we put big solar cells in space and beam the collected energy back to Earth in a beam, such as a maser…

  …won’t the scatter from the energy fry anyone near the collector? And spread health problems over a much wider area? Like our own mundane high tension wires do?

  (BTW am aware “maser” implies “laser”, with perfect coherence. Nothing’s “perfect”!)

  • [Beelzebuddy]

    But that’s… why would you think… none of that post is even remotely sensical. There’s so much derp compressed into those few sentences that I literally don’t know where to begin ridiculing you for it.

    • [Phlip]

      How are we supposed to monetize space? Or is all this fun just to burn off national & private excess budget?

      • [AirPillo]

        Are you aware how much money the Russian government charges civilians for trips into space?

        Can you imagine how much money would be had selling tickets to orbit?

        There is also a huge commercial potential for satellite delivery. NASA charges something along the lines of $2000 per payload pound to deliver objects into orbit. A business who can offer even a 10% discount on that will have customers lining up to have their satellites deployed and potentially make fortunes.

        There is also the less glorious but certainly profitable job of running cargo for government space ventures: delivering supplies to space stations, ferrying astronauts to maintain crews or perform service visits on satellites.

        If you think there’s no money in space, you don’t think at all.

      • [ultranaut]

        Same way we monetize America and the internet, send the outcasts of society to colonize it.

      • [IWood]

        We are going into space to HARVEST THE MONEY THAT FLOATS THERE.

        I mean, duh. Think before you post.

      • [Cochituate]

        There are things we want to do in space. Some of those things will be done, supplied from Earth, and once we’re out there (The Moon, an asteroid, the moons of Mars) we will then start to use the resources around us to keep ourselves going. This will be the we begin to monetize what is out there. Once we’re on the moon (exploring, setting up the ultimate radio telescope), we could then use the water there, and in a few years, start growing food, then mining. This is going to be the next big thing, without having a bank setting up a pyramid scheme to make money.

  • [Chris Tucker]

    No, the energy density of the microwaves is about that of sunlight.

    You wouldn’t want to sunbathe in the direct beam, though, for the same reason you wouldn’t want to sunbathe in Death Vally in August at high noon. Too much of a good thing.

    And there are no health problems from living near high tension lines.

    Don’t believe the woo about them.

    • [Anonymous]

      And there are no health problems from living near high tension lines.

      Clearly you don’t like to clutter your opinions with data gathering. Of course, I already knew that because you used the cult-word “woo”.

      One major health problem associated with living near high tension lines is herbicide poisoning from the (now banned) herbicides that the power companies saturated the surrounding ground with for decades.

      Of course, nowadays they use “perfectly safe” glyophosphates which have not yet been banned, since they haven’t been used long enough for their effects to be fully known. So recently built towers are currently “safe”… for relatively low values of the word safe.

      High tension lines have other hazards, among them one called “electrocution” and another called “heavy falling objects”. Don’t be such a science worshipper that you lose your sense of proportion.

• [LostCatSoda]

  Gave me goosebumps to watch the liftoff. Really proud of these guys. And with their next launch to carry a working Dragon capsule it’s an exciting time – especially since NASA tripped over it’s feet and is trying to reorganize their mission.

  Was this how people felt in the 60′s when we 1st started sending people into space?

  • [Cochituate]

    In the early sixties, you had stuff like every damned Atlas Centaur blowing up for months. By the time they got around to launching the Gemini project, every single launch went without a hitch. The Apollo program was the same thing- we had run the problems out through the years of errors and mistakes, and we were running on all cylinders.

    I was hoping, with all the crap that Spacex was getting from Congressmen, astronauts and NASA apologists, I was praying that they’d launch to orbit this afternoon, and was really happy when this one went off without a hitch. I really love that now the word is SpaceX wants to launch a real supply mission with their third shot, in 2011.

    With a few more launches under their belt, I hope they can then get someone signed up for a Falcon 9 Heavy launch, with three and a half times the payload to orbit of the standard Falcon 9. Space is about to become wide open.

• [Duffong]

  I watched this live, including the first launch abort 2 seconds before liftoff. They practically made it sound like it got hit with a blue screen of death and Windows was restarting on the rocket.

  9 minutes after it launched, it was 1/2 way across the ocean and I realized just how flippin cool it really was.

  • [LostCatSoda]

    Spinning beach ball… They were using Macs and iTunes needed to sync to someone’s iPad.

    /jk

• [wgmleslie]

  According to the repository of all human knowledge (Wikipedia) PayPal was formed by the merger of Confinity and X.com. X.com was founded by ELon Musk.

  • [Xenu]

    Confinity had launched their PayPal service before they were bought by X.com.

    You can’t believe everything you read on Wikipedia.