Musk's SpaceX Falcon rocket fails again

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 05 August 2008 02:57

Science - Space

The third launch of the Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Falcon 1 rocket failed to reach orbit after the first stage failed to separate. "It was obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit," said company founder Elon Musk.

Prior to establishing SpaceX in 2002, Musk co-founded software developer Zip2 (acquired by Compaq in 1999) and PayPal (acquired by eBay in 2002). He is also the chairman of electric car developer Tesla Motors, and is a physicist by training.

SpaceX has the goal of delivering payloads into orbit at relatively low cost. Last weekend's flight was carrying three small test satellites: two for NASA and one for the US Department of Defense.

It also carried portions of the ashes of more than 200 people, including Mercury and Gemini astronaut Gordon Cooper and actor James Doohan ('Scotty' in the original Star Trek series).

"The most important message I’d like to send right now is that SpaceX will not skip a beat in execution going forward," said Musk. "We have flight four of Falcon 1 almost ready for flight and flight five right behind that. I have also given the go ahead to begin fabrication of flight six.

Musk also stated that development of the Falcon 9 launcher will continue unabated. A full thrust test firing of the Falcon 9's nine Merlin 1C engines was successfully completed on July 30.

Can the company afford the Falcon 1 failures? Please read on.