Keith Cowing
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Update: Audio recording of short press conference (quality is poor, sorry)
The third attempt by SpaceX to launch its Falcon 1 rocket failed this evening several minutes into its flight.
The rocket lifted off around 11:35 pm PDT from SpaceX's Falcon 1 launch site at the Kwajalein Atoll, about 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii.
A cause for the anomaly has not yet been identified.
A video of the launch and short flight of the rocket is provided below.
From: Elon Musk
Sent: Saturday, August 02, 2008 9:45 PM
To: Space Exploration Technologies
Subject: Plan Going Forward
It was obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit on this flight. On the plus side, the flight of our first stage, with the new Merlin 1C engine that will be used in Falcon 9, was picture perfect. Unfortunately, a problem occurred with stage separation, causing the stages to be held together. This is under investigation and I will send out a note as soon as we understand exactly what happened.
The most important message I'd like to send right now is that SpaceX will not skip a beat in execution going forward. 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. We have made great progress this past week with the successful nine engine firing.
As a precautionary measure to guard against the possibility of flight 3 not reaching orbit, SpaceX recently accepted a significant investment. Combined with our existing cash reserves, that ensures we will have more than sufficient funding on hand to continue launching Falcon 1 and develop Falcon 9 and Dragon. There should be absolutely zero question that SpaceX will prevail in reaching orbit and demonstrating reliable space transport. For my part, I will never give up and I mean never.
Thanks for your hard work and now on to flight four.
Elon
