SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched successfully today and achieved orbit after an abort earlier in the day. Following the cancellation of further development on NASA’s Constellation manned space vehicles, SpaceX received a sizeable investment from NASA to further develop their line of privately owned launchers.
The Falcon 9 is a two stage, liquid oxygen and rocket grade kerosene (RP-1) powered launch vehicle. It uses the same engines, structural architecture (with a wider diameter), avionics and launch system as the smaller Falcon 1.
SpaceX was established in 2002 by Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal and Zip2. There’s more about the company and its ambitions in this Popular Mechanics article.
NASA current thinking on manned spaceflight is laid out on their Commercial Crew & Cargo page.
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Filed under: Space Missions
It’s telling that of the many new clean-sheet designs for manned space vehicles the particular characteristics of the Shuttle are absent.
It is ridiculous that NASA is somehow now unable to go to space basically with their billions of dollars of budget after killing the shuttle, but private firms are doing that more and more.I suppose that is a good thing, competition spurs innovation. The more companies that launch manned space vehicles the faster this will come into place.
I too worked for a “prime contractor” on the Shuttle, and aeromechanic is a pinhead. The shuttle is a fantastic design that, with the proper support of NASA and contractors (i.e. upgrades and replacement components) could continue to fly safely for years to come. Too many corners were cut to save costs on the government and contractor side and the result is Challenger and Columbia. I am helping to design one of the next generation manned space vehicles, but I still have nothing but respect for the designers whose shoulders I can stand on! Go Discovery!