Telescope Reviews: SpaceX flight 4 is coming up

In a few days, if all goes according to plan, SpaceX will attempt the 4th launch of their Falcon 1 launch vehicle. For those who haven't been following SpaceX closely, it's a company founded and funded by Paypal co-founder Elon Musk. (Musk is also the force behind the Tesla roadster.) Musk has dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the company which, while a substantial chunk of his personal fortune, is comparatively small when placed next to a launch vehicle developed by "aerospace prime" companies like Lockheed or Boeing.

So far SpaceX has launched three Falcon 1 rockets which have all suffered failures that prevented them and their payloads from reaching orbit. The first experienced engine shutdown less than a 30s after launch. The second experienced a second stage failure which was attributed to "slosh" in the fuel tank and the third experienced a collision between first and second stages. Though SpaceX has attempted to spin these failures as test flights that were effectively part of an iterative debugging process, this isn't exactly a particularly enticing track record for a company that still preaches the theoretical reliability of its rockets on its web site and claims that its larger Falcon 9 rocket will be human rated--if they can find anyone who's crazy enough to get in the capsule. It also doesn't help that at one point Musk said that if they failed 3 times, it would be obvious that they didn't know what they were doing; he has since recanted this statement.

Despite its setbacks and my sarcastic attitude, SpaceX promises huge things. Their rockets--the Falcon 1 (700 kg capacity) and its much larger brother the Falcon 9 (10,000 kg capacity)--promise to be about an order of magnitude cheaper than existing commercial launch vehicles per unit of payload weight. Like the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters, the first stages of these vehicles are supposed to be reusable. For these reasons, NASA has funded SpaceX for its COTS space station resupply program. Many scientific, civilian and military applications could benefit greatly from cheaper launch vehicles because large percentages of all spacecraft budgets go toward the launcher. So, if SpaceX actually succeeds at providing launches at its price targets it may be one of the most revolutionary developments in space flight.

I for one will be keeping an eye on the launch news over the next few days to see how this goes.