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. The Falcon 1 rockets have all been launched from Kwajalein, in the US Marshall islands in the Pacific. Moving to the Cape will allow SpaceX to work more closely with NASA, which is still planning to rely on private systems like Falcon 9 to carry the Space Shuttle’s burden of ISS service and orbital insertions after it retires by 2010, and until Orion can take up the mantle in 2015 (which many see as an optimistic time frame). Honestly though, we admire SpaceX. They’re pushing private-sector space operations further than most would ever dare-let’s just hope they get a break soon. For Scotty. [Space Ref via /.]
Space & Spaceflight
SpaceX Moves Launches to Cape Canaveral, Closer to Rockets That Don’t Always Explode
By
John Mahoney
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