SpaceX first launch coverage

I'm listening in on a conference call for the first launch of a Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Falcon 1 rocket. Falcon 1 will carry an Air Force Academy satellite into orbit from SpaceX's pad at the Kwajalein Atoll of the Marshall Islands.

The photo above is from the SpaceX website, with the caption: "Falcon 1 Ready for Launch on Omelek Island."

Launch is scheduled for 1 pm Pacific time.

Mostly I'm hearing a loud typist clattering away, and some indistinguishable hubbub in the background, punctuated with occasional loudspeaker announcements about the rocket's status. I don't know whether they're still on schedule or not.

Also don't know whether I'm hearing the press gathering at SpaceX headquarters in El Segundo, CA and their feed of the launch site, or if I'm hearing the launch site directly. Other reporters on the line with me are trying to raise someone from SpaceX to find out what's going on. Stand by....

--Update at 12:43 pm Pacific--
Larry Williams, VP of International and Government Affairs on the line now from SpaceX in El Segundo...says countdown progressing smoothly. Coming together real well, he says, we have a nice turnout in El Segundo, lots of media. Still on schedule for 1 pm launch.

Diane Molina, SpaceX media contact, tells me I'm listening to El Segundo, not the launch site. I asked her to tell Larry to repeat the status reports coming over from Kwajalein or turn up the gain....

Larry signing off until we get closer to the launch.

--Update at 12:58 Pacific--
Williams answering questions now from a Reuters reporter. Interesting to me, since the L.A. Reuters office was my beat for commercial spaceflight last year; I wrote about Bigelow Aerospace for them, and also helped to cover SpaceShipOne's X Prize winning flights. I switched over the Wired News for news reporting because they pay better and also because Wired News stories stay on Wired.com indefinitely, as opposed to Reuters stories, which disappear quickly and often don't even have bylines.

Williams reporting an email from the launch site saying there will be a one-hour delay. Details forthcoming....

--Update at 1:30 Pacific--
Still no word on what has caused the delay.

Earlier this year I witnessed a Merlin test firing, the first full-duration burn, in fact, of the SpaceX-built rocket engine on Falcon's first stage. I'm guessing the scene unfolding now at Kwajalein is similar to what I saw at SpaceX's test facility in McGregor, Texas. Here's the story I wrote for Wired News on that.

Engineers and managers are hunkered down in a bunker at a safe remove from the rocket. Each has a large flat panel computer screen in front of him/her, monitoring the rocket's vitals. Data to and from the rocket is carried on ordinary Ethernet cables like I have here in my home office. If any of the sensors on the rockets records a problem, it will trigger a halt in the countdown, any time between now and in the microseconds before the engine fires. One of the humans also has a big, red abort switch he/she can hit at any time.

During the test I watched, a faulty temperature sensor triggered an abort in the engine's firing. The engineers were able to determine that the fault lay with the sensor, not with the rocket itself, and they manually restarted the engine, after remotely refueling the craft.

If anything on the rocket itself requires intervention, however, they'll have to scrub the flight for quite some time; safety rules require that no one approach the rocket while it's full of liquid oxygen (LOX), so the LOX will have to be pumped out before fixes are made.

--Update at 1:42 Pacific--
Williams: we're at "T" minus 20.

He's working on getting us on the phone a video feed.

Still no word on what caused the delay, but I guess they've resolved it now.

--Update at 1:50 Pacific--
Someone reporting "T" minus 10

--Update at 1:51 Pacific--
Williams confirming, "T" minus 10 minutes, and holding there for weather. Could be very short, he says, perhaps because of passing clouds.

--Update at 2:39 Pacific--
Williams: Another delay. Technicians have to refill the LOX tanks. One to two hour delay probable. They're still going to try for the 1-5 Pacific time window. Standing by now for an annoucement from Elon Musk.

--Update at 2:54 Pacific--
Williams: launch will be attempted in 1.5 to two hours.

25 people total are on the island. Six people in the launch mission control center. Standing by for more updates....

--Update at 3:18 Pacific--
Robin Snelson reporting on the conference line from El Segundo that she saw five guys around the LOX appearing to be trying to fix something on the fill line that goes to the rocket, and then the video went blank.

Williams: One hour and 15 minutes probably the earliest possible time that the rocket would launch.

They were having trouble getting LOX pressure in the upper stage of the rocket, reports Williams.

Next window would be tomorrow at 1 pm Pacific if today's attempt is scrubbed.

Williams: some issues with filling the LOX tanks. Doesn't know beyond that.

--Update at 4:50 Pacific--
Williams: "We are scrubbing for today. So our next launch window is 9 a.m. Pacific time tomorrow morning."

--Update at 4:54 Pacific--
Williams, with a correction. "We have not got confirmation on what the plan is for tomorrow." Keep an eye on the website for actual times:

http://www.spacex.com/

--Update at 5:49 p.m. Pacific--
Elon Musk has just posted an explanation for today's launch scrub at www.spacex.com:

"What happened was that an auxiliary liquid oxygen (LOX) fill tank had a manual vent valve incorrectly set to vent. The time it took to correct the problem resulted in significant LOX boiloff and loss of helium, and it was the latter that caused the launch abort. LOX is used to chill the helium bottles, so we lose helium if there is no LOX to cool the bottles."

Also:

"We are anticipating rescheduling the launch within a week at the earliest but probably longer as we need to bring in LOX and helium from Hawaii."

Make or Break

Tomorrow Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), the maverick spaceship company run by PayPal founder Elon Musk, is to launch its first rocket, a satellite launcher called Falcon 1.

I say "spaceship company" because Musk doesn't intend to stop with just launching satellites; he wants to send people into orbit and beyond--to build true spaceships. He's an idealist and a dreamer. He believes in the essential good of humanity and its ability to rise above the petty squabbles that threaten to destroy us and our planet.

Musk is an inspiration to me, along with Robert Bigelow, Burt Rutan, the folks at XCOR, and all the other idealists and dreamers gambling everything they've got to build us a better future, one in which we expand into space instead of imploding here on Earth like the civilization that built Easter Island.

Me, I'm riding on these guys coattails, just as far and as high as I can get.

It all started a couple of years ago when I knew I had to make a break for the better and become a book author.

I had three projects on my plate: a novel about a theater company on tour to the moon, a series of young adult novels about a railroad that travels through time.... And a book about the rocketeers competing for the X Prize. I decided to work on all three projects at once and the first one that started to take off would win all of my attention until it either crashed or took me somewhere.

What happened next was Burt Rutan went for powered flight with SpaceShipOne on the Wright Bros' 100th anniversary, December 17, 2003. "Hello!" I thought. "These guys might actually make it to space!"

When Rutan announced another powered flight to take place on June 21, 2004, I knew that was make or break--he was going for space, and I'd better get there on the ground at Mojave with some kind of press credential and an editor who'd run my byline. If I could do that, I knew, my X Prize book might just earn a ticket to ride.

My story on that first commercial spaceflight for the New York Post let to assignments for Reuters, New Scientist, Wired.com, and now I'm working on my third cover story for Popular Science.

And at long last my agent has submitted my proposal for a book on commercial spaceflight (naturally no longer just about the X Prize) to nearly a dozen major publishers. I could hear as early as next week whether I'm to have a full-time career interacting with the most inspiring people I've ever met, or if I'll need to dust off that YA series (the sf novel has already gone down in flames).

Meanwhile, Musk has $100 million of his personal fortune riding on tomorrow's launch. He says he'll give it at least three attempts before he'll consider throwing in the towel (and maybe dusting off one of his old schemes).

It's another make or break moment; if Musk is successful, it could change everything, just like SpaceShipOne's flights last year. And once again, I'm on the verge of breaking into the next level of my writing career. It's no coincidence; like I said, I'm riding these guys' coattails.

Watch this space starting at noon Pacific tomorrow (Saturday) for my reports on the countdown and launch as they happen.

SpaceX prelaunch conference

The conference to announce the SpaceX launch date got underway at 2:15 Pacific. Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO talking now...

Launch date is next week...

6 Falcon 1's are on the manefest. So whatever happens next week, the company will launch those. [seems to be prepping us for possible failure--a possibility with any rocket launch]

SpaceX will move on from satellite launches to manned spaceflight.

--Update at 5:21--
Exact launch date and time: 1 pm. California time, next Friday, November 25

Musk qualifies that by saying that's when the "launch attempt" will be.

--Update at 5:23--
We're launching FalconSat on a Falcon rocket. Something fairly reminescent of a Joseph Heller novel, says Musk.

I actually don't feel nervous, says Musk. I feel relief. It's been a difficult devlopment process. Nobody said this would be easy, but it's been more than that...If we have three consecutive failures, he says, we'll probably throw in the towel. Don't know who would want to fly with us if we have three consecutive failures, says Musk.

--Update at 5:30 pm (Eastern time, where I am)
A lot riding on this launch...
"I really feel that one successful launch will establish us as being fairly reliable."

Two Falcon 1s are complete, one more in production.

Going for 3-4 falcon 1 launches a year, 2 or 3 Falcon 5 launches a year. 3 falcon launches are planned for the first 12 months of operation.

Musk: We have over 200 million dollars in business committed, even before our first launch. That should go up significantly after a successful launch.

--Update at 2:35 Pacific--
approx 100 million invested in the company at this point, 98% of that comes from Musk personally. The other 2%? Friends and family says Musk.

Half of all rocket launch failures due to propulsion. 30% due to separation problems, the other 20% to other factors.

Musk: "I'm not sure at this point what to fear most. I feel good about our engines. We delayed launches a few times to put extra care into the engines, particularly the main engine. We put a lot of effort into our separation systems. The guidence system is the only part of the vehicle we've only tested in simulation, as opposed to actual operation. That has more of an unresolved question mark around it."

Musk compares this process to software development, where he made his fortune. In software development, you never run a program for the first time without finding bugs, and that's expected. You don't have that luxury with rockets.

SpaceX's second Gen rocket engine will be the biggest rocket engine in the world, though not the biggest in history. The F1 engine that sent people to the moon is no longer in production, so Musk doesn't count that.

Musk: A very significant chunk of my net worth is in this company. I don't want to give an exact figure. You can probably figure it out from what I earned by selling PayPal.

--Update at 2:43 Pacific--
Falcon 9 will cost another $100 million to develop.

[The rocket are designated by the number of engines they have in their first stage. Falcon 1 has a single Kestril engine, devleoped by SpaceX. Falcon 9 will have nine of these engines.]

Musk: The Falcon 1 is the first all-new hydrocarbon rocket developed in the U.S. in 40 years.

Safe enough for people? Not a lot you would do different to protect a person than a $100 million satellite, says Musk.

Q: What customers will you put on Falcon 9?
A: We haven't thought a lot about it because it's speculative, but big customers would be NASA, Bigelow Aerospace, which is launching its first subscale space station module next year, and potentially people who just want to go to orbit and just spend some time on orbit. Also we could do a loop around the moon, which actually wouldn't require a huge rocket. [Space Adventures recently cut a deal with the Russian Space Agency to do just that, so that may be what inspired Musk to say that.]

Q: When will you go to space?
A: I'm not doing this to go into space myself, per se. I want to help build a space faring civilization. It would have been very easy for me to pay to go to the International Space Station myself. I want to help other people get to space.

--Update at 2:50 Pacific--
Bigelow Aerospace's America's Space Prize is a tall order: you have to launch 2x in 60 days, carry five people to orbit, and demonstrate rendezvous and docking.

SpaceX's lawsuit against Boeing and Lockheed: Musk doesn't want to comment much because its in progress.

SpaceX will vigorously pursue the new commercial contracts to service the ISS that NASA has announced its intention to award by the end of this year. Musk sees Falcon 9 as the ideal vehicle for that.

ITAR: Restrictions in arms trade needs reform because they block friendly nations from collaborating with U.S. companies on rockets.

On Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space program
Musk: "I met with Jeff Bezos a couple of times and had dinner. His motivations in doing Blue origin are identical to mine in forming spacex. There's a good chance we'll work collaboratively at some point."

--Update--
Musk: The expansion of life on earth to other places is arguably the most important thing to happen to life on earth, if it happens. Life has the duty to expand. And we're the representatives of life with the ability to do so.

Q: Do you have multiple launch crews?
No, we have only one crew that must travel from launch pad to launch pad (from Vandenberg in California, for example, to Kwajalein).

First launch of Falcon 9 will take place from Kwajalein, like this first Falcon 1 launch.

Second launch in the March 06 timeframe.

He leaves for Kwajalein on Tuesday. It's a paradise, says Musk. A nice place to be for our customers. A lot nicer than the Russian launch facilities in Kazakhstan.

25 people on the island right now.

If you imagine a small town from middle america transplanted 5,000 out in the Pacific, that's Kwajalein. Tricky for press, though.

--Update at 3:05 Pacific--
Fight sequence
Flight of first Falcon 1 will take 10 minutes, three minute burn for first stage, second stage about 7 minutes. Faring separation at about 3 minute mark. Payload release at about 10 minute mark. Upper stage will do a restart. Not necessary for this mission, but we want to test it. The first stage after sepaation continues balistically. Lands about 600 miles downrange, where there's a recovery ship waiting. Has high speed drough chute, which pulls out the main chute, will hit the water at about 25 feet per second. Recovery ship will locate it. First stage has GPS locator, plus two sonar devices, and a radio finder. "We have a lot of ways to find this stage, and we really want to bring it back, no matter what kind of shape it's in." Ship will bring it back to the harbor at Kwajalein.

DARPA, the customer, takes control of the satellite at plus 10 minutes after launch.

Q: How many days do you have to get the rocket up?
A: I'm not aware of any restrictions we have right now. It's going to happen either when we said, or fairly soon thereafter. Prelaunch checkout going extremely well. We anticipate no problems.

Q: Any dress rehearsals to work out bugs?
A: We've done a wet rehearsal, where we load propellant and do a simulated coundown. We've done everything we think we can do before launch to be ready.

Q: Which version of the Falcon would you use for the new NASA contracts?
A: Falcon 9.

Q: From which facility?
A: We suspect from the Cape (NASA's manned launch faciltiy at Cape Canaveral on Florida's east coast)

Q: When will you fly cargo missions to the space station?
A: I hope in the next 3 to 4 years.

Q from me: Have you talked with NASA about what form your contract with them might take?
A: We expect an RFP next month, contracts to be awarded in the May timeframe. They will be commercial-like contracts, different from NASA's usual mode.

--Update--
Another question from me: Are you developing a manned vehicle right now, or have you thought that far ahead yet?
A: I can't comment on that right now.

--Update--
Boeing and Lockheed can't win on a level playing field. The only way we can fail is if we're stupid. If we build a good rocket and we launch it and it's reliable, then we have a very bright future and there's very little a competitor can do to stop us.

Q: Is Blue Origin a potential competitor?
A: Not right now--they're doing virtical take off and landing suborbital vehicles. I'm very glad for companies like that.

We have to cut back on the bureaucratic drags on development. I think there's an acknowledgement at NASA of that, and we're going to see some improvements in the new contracts, which will have much less bureacratic overhead.

A traditional cost-plus contractor with NASA has an incentive to increase bureaucratic demands, because they'll get more money that way. We don't have that incentive.

Last few questions coming up....

--Update--
Q: What's next in the entreprenurial space field?
A: Lots of people doing things--Paul Allen [who funded SpaceShipOne], Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin, John Carmack with Armadillo Aerospace...Musk thinks we're heading toward a Netscape moment, when someone turns a profit, and hopefully it'll be SpaceX, and then investment capital will start to flow in.

Q from me: What's the current price for Falcon 1?
A: $6.7, which includes not only the rocket launch, but third-party insurance, range fees, other costs.
Q: That's an increase over your previous $6 million price, correct?
A: No, that price only included launch, didn't include the other expenses, which are now rolled into the price. We are actually the only launch company to publish our prices.

I'm super late now. I must go catch a plane now.

SpaceX announcing launch date tomorrow

Dianne Molina at SpaceX has just told me that the company's unmanned orbital launch vehicle, Falcon I, has a firm launch date.

The date will be announced in a press conference at SpaceX headquarters in El Segundo, California tomorrow (Friday) at 2 p.m. Pacific. I'm stuck here on the East Coast, but I'll blog the phone conference set up for folks like me who can't make it in person.

Falcon I has faced a long series of delays leading up to its maiden flight, the latest of which involved getting bumped from its planned first launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base, forcing a move to SpaceX's launch complex at Kwajalein Atoll in the western Pacific Ocean.

If successful, SpaceX will drastically undercut the orbital launch market with $6.7 million launches (SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has told me that his nearest competitor charges around $25 million). Musk says he wants to become the Ford of space. "Ford didn't invent the internal combustion engine," he told me when I visited SpaceX earlier this year. "But he found out how to make one at low cost." Likewise, "We didn't invent the rocket engine; what we're trying to do is figure out how to make it low-cost."

Musk is also the only well-funded player, to my knowledge, who has publicly stated his intention to compete for Robert Bigelow's America's Space Prize, which will award $50 million to the first privately funded spaceship that can carry passengers to orbit and dock with the commercial space stations Bigelow is building.

A successful Falcon I launch, which will carry an Air Force Academy satellite on a mission to measure space plasma phenomena, will set SpaceX apart from a multitude of other companies building commercial space hardware but that have not yet launched vehicles. And maybe help me snag magazine assignments to cover the company. :)

Stay tuned!

"The Future Now"

That's the tagline I saw on the cover for the revamped Popular Science making its debut with the January 2006 issue. It went to press last week and it'll be on stands in about a month.

The mag has gotten a top-to-bottom makeover and I got a glimpse of it when I stopped in at the editorial offices a little more than a week ago. The design is streamlined, simplified, and very easy on the eyes without being slick. I think that's quite an accomplishment in this era when a lot of publishing seems to be about design for its own sake at the expense of the content.

I'll have two stories in that issue, one about a rocket powered bicycle built by Orion Propulsion's Tim Pickens, and another about the launch of suborbital tourism by Virgin Galactic and Rocketplane Ltd.

Those of you who paid special attention to my blog posts about the latter two companies are probably wondering whether what I wrote in print bears any relation to what I said here. Well, you'll just have to buy the issue to find out!

During my visit to PopSci I had a good discussion with my main editor about how the magazine decides what to cover. It's a simple as that new tagline that will go under the name "Popular Science." If it looks like it really does represent the future, in it goes. If not, well, no need to belabor the point; it just isn't included in the magazine.

Looking at my ever-growing stack of back issues (my latest eBay purchase is the May 1876 issue), I can see that Popular Science has consistently covered the most important technology stories of the day and quite a few that became big only in later years. There are surprisingly few stories about completely mad schemes (they all have at least some relation to reality), and none ripping into ideas the editors and writers felt just had to fail.

In short the magazine takes to heart the adage "If you have nothing good to say, don't say anything at all." It's always been an optimistic look at the future, leaving pessimists of all stripes to other venues.

It's a great legacy, and I'm going to do my best to live up to it.

"Magnificent Desolation"

Those are the words of Buzz Aldrin as he walked on the moon with Neil Armstrong on July 20, 1969. It's also the title of a new 3D IMAX movie produced by Tom Hanks that tries to give you the feeling of walking on the moon.

It's not just hype; it really is the closest you can come to walking on the moon without actually going there. I've just seen it, and though it's pricey for a movie and it's only 40 minutes long, it's worth every penny.

The lunar landscapes are painstakingly, lovingly recreated, especially the site of Apollo 15's landing, Hadley Rille. There's some spectacular scenery there--the Apennine mountain range, the plain at Hadley, and the long, sinuous trench of the Rille itself. It's a good choice for special treatment, and 15's commander, Dave Scott, served as technical consultant on the movie.

It seems most people don't remember 15, only Armstrong and Aldrin's 11. Part of the mission of the movie is to tell the story of those other lunar landings, the ones that didn't get so much coverage, and yet were even more spectacular. Those guys on the last three flights--15, 16, and 17--lived on the moon for three days at a time.

I've spent many hours watching the TV downlink from Apollo 15 trying my damndest to imagine myself there, to see the Earth hanging over the dead, blasted landscape, to feel myself at a sixth of my normal weight. As best as I can tell, director Mark Cowen got it right. And just to prove it, he dares to show clips from the astronauts' actual footage along with the recreations. It looks seamless.

Except on one point, the only mar on an otherwise flawless production. There's sound in space in this movie. Why is it that filmmakers can't resist embellishing scenes of spaceships and astronauts with engine rumblings and, as in the scene this shot is taken from, footsteps.



When the boots of the guy playing Scott come at you the dust flies in your face. A cool effect in 3D, except that it's accompanied by the sound of pebbles raining down on you. When I heard that I was immediately yanked back down to Earth to a sound stage and some foley artist spilling sand on a microphone.

2001: A Space Odyssey proved back in 1968 that the best way to take viewers out of this world is to tell it like it is--without sound in space. (I still think that's the best science fiction film ever made, but that's another story.)

Go see Magnificent Desolation. Hell, go see it a couple or three times; I probably will. Just, if you're a purist like me, try to overlook the misguided sound design and focus instead on the gorgeous scenery.

Humbled

I've reached something of a turning point here....

Since I put my blog up only a couple of months ago, I've attracted a regular readership that draws from not just the few space fans and friends I thought it would, but also the main reporters working the field and many of the engineers and managers of the spaceship companies I write about.

I must say I was a bit unprepared for such quick success, and until last week, I blithely went along posting anything that came to mind, dashing off opinions and handling facts and research less carefully than I did for my "legitimate" print articles. I used the blog as a kind of personal sounding board to generate article ideas and think aloud about the work I did for my magazine and newswire work.

For instance, last week I banged out a post about competing spaceship companies in my usual mode. Only difference here was that I cast doubt on the feasibility of one of them. I also reported unverified hearsay as one of my data points, which turned out to be false. Man, did I get hammered by my readers. And I touched off some valuable discussion about the merits of various technologies for reaching space and how to evaluate them. All of which will help me better research my print articles.

What I should have done was to raise the concerns I had as a way to solicit the kind of feedback I ended up getting, without passing judgment before I had all the facts in. Certainly, I owe it to my readers to report on my subjects fairly and accurately and to clearly distinguish fact from opinion. I'll do better from now on.