SpaceX Shoots for the Stars and Trips Over the Mesosphere

In a classic example of unintended consequences, the Space X guys pioneers  scattered Scotty's ashes -as in, "beam me up, Scotty" actor James Doohan of the Star Trek the Original Series - over the Pacific Ocean.  Doohan was one of the 208 people whose ashes were placed on board the Falcon 1 rocket by Celestis, Inc., a company that arranges for loved ones' ashes to be shot into space. Astronaut Gordon Cooper was also aboard the doomed launch, which Celestis had named the "Explorer's Flight"  -irony not intended, which as the New York Times observed this morning, the Celestis web page reported that "the Explorer's Flight mission appears not to have reached orbit tonight."

And, lest you be overly concerned about such things, we can confirm that the Wikipedia pages of Cooper and Doohan had already been edited by Sunday morning to reflect the explosion and subsequent scattering of human remains.

As a further update to this story, Elon Musk, eBay billionaire and head honcho of Space X, fired off a statement to his employees to lift their spirits after this, their third failed attempt to reach low Earth orbit:

"SpaceX will not skip a beat in execution going forward," Elon Musk, eBayPayPal billionaire and head honcho of Space X,, and added that the fourth flight, currently scheduled to take place in the fourth quarter of the year, and fifth flights are being prepared.

According to a message sent to employees of SpaceX by Musk, “a problem occurred with stage separation, causing the stages to be held together.” In his message, Musk noted that “It was obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit on this flight” but that “the flight of our first stage, with the new Merlin 1C engine that will be used in Falcon 9, was picture perfect.”

He was referring to the Falcon 9, a larger version with 9 engines, and being built with the intention of providing cargo delivery to the International Space Station. The Falcon 9 is under a contract from NASA, as a result of their mothballing the shuttle program.

In fact, only a week ago, SpaceX performed a successful test firing of the Falcon 9 enginges, out at the SpaceX facilities in McGregor, Texas.

Musk continued. “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.  Falcon 9 development will also continue unabated, taking into account the lessons learned with Falcon 1.”

SpaceX also recently took a significant investment, that Musk believes will ensure “we will have more than sufficient funding on hand to continue launching Falcon 1 and develop Falcon 9 and Dragon.”

This was the third failure for SpaceX, which has forced some observers to speculate about the success of commercial and entrepreneurial space flight. The first flight was launched back in 2006, and ended due to a fuel line leak and subsequent fire. The second launch, which took place back in 2007, made it in to space, but was lost 5 minutes reaching vacuum.

The third flight, was launched on Saturday night from Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific at 11:34 p.m. Eastern time, but only after several hours of delay and one aborted launch attempt.

SpaceX might be modeling themselves after Microsoft's famous "three tries before we get it right" pattern.

Posted by Casey Kazan with Josh Hill.

Links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/science/space/03launchweb.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin
http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

SpaceX might be modeling themselves after Microsoft's infamous "three tries before we get it right" pattern.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Link

http://gizmodo.com/5032516/update-exploding-falcon-1-rocket-scattered-scottys-ashes-all-over-the-pacific

Comments

[Hamy]

I'm sure that the upbeat promises of success 'next time' will be of no consolation to those who had wished to look up to the stars and think of their loved ones as having now become a small part of the heavens that they so held so dear in life. And it seems somewhat inappropriate and insensitive to display optimism without considering the personal feelings of the bereaved that accompanied every step of this recent mission. Paddling over the Pacific and whispering quietly 'beam me up Scottie' hardly resonates in the same way as murmuring those same words with eyes uplifted in love and awe towards the stars.

[Raymond Tam]

Dear Sir,
Do you have any update or information on the coming of Planet X which will affect our Earth n few years time?
Thanks.
Raymond TAM

[MICHAEL J. SCHMITZ]

THOSE STARS YOU REFER TO ARE ACTUALLY PLANETS AND BECAUSE OF THEIR DISTANCE WE'D LOOK THE SAME TO THEM AND THEY ARE ALL POPULATED WITH THEIR OWN SPECIES, BUT WHATS INVADING US IS'NT FROM OUR GALAXY AND UNIVERSAL THATS CALLED GLOBAL AND UNIVERSAL WARMING. HAVE A NICE DAY. MIKE

[Tihamer Toth-Fejel]

Since this article was written, Space X has achieved orbit on their fourth attempt. Congratulations to Elon Musk and Space X, who accomplished their incredible feat with only 550 employees.

As to Michael Schmitz's comments:
1. The planets are close enough to visit and settle (in a few decades, at current rates or technological progress).
2. As far as the stars having their own species, please look up Fermi's Paradox. If there were any aliens out there, their high-tech equivalents of contrails (Cherenkov radiation) would be all over the sky, and they'd be here already.
3. Universal warming? I presume that you're talking about the evidence for global warming on Mars, Neptune's moons, Pluto, and Jupiter. But it's not clear what you're saying.
4. You mean global climate change, right? That's what it does. With the exponential rate of progress in technology, global climate change is the least of our problems--we'll fix any climate changes easily -it's the other stuff we have to watch out for.