The private
launch firm SpaceX will loft its Falcon 1 rocket on Nov. 25, marking the
booster's maiden flight and hopefully the first of many space shots to come,
the company's chief said Friday.
Elon
Musk, founder and CEO of the El Segundo, California-based SpaceX, said his
firm's first Falcon 1 rocket will liftoff from its equatorial launch site at 4:00
p.m. EST (2100 GMT) on a mission to orbit a small U.S. Air Force Academy
satellite.
"I actually
don't feel nervous, I feel relief," Musk told reporters during a press
conference. "No matter what happens next week, this is something that is the
first stepping stone in reducing the cost of access to space."
SpaceX's
Falcon 1 rocket carries a reusable first stage, the firm's homegrown Merlin
engine and a price tag of about $6.7 million, SpaceX officials said.
The rocket's
first flight will launch from the U.S. military's Ronald Reagan Ballistic
Missile Test Site on Omelek Island near Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean's
Marshall Islands - where it will be 9:00 a.m. local time when the countdown
reaches zero - though future spaceflights will also be staged from California's
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, they added.
"We feel at
peace with ourselves in this launch because we've really done all we can," Musk
said. "I think that I can say with confidence that we've left no stone
unturned."
SpaceX is
using its debut of the Falcon 1 rocket to launch FalconSat-2, a student-built
satellite to measure space plasma's effect on global positioning system (GPS)
satellites and other space-based communications systems, according to the U.S.
Air Force Academy. The satellite is part of a program run by the U.S. Air Force
and the Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA).
Long
road to space
Musk, who
also co-founded the electronic payment service PayPal, founded SpaceX - short for
Space Exploration Technologies - in 2002 to offer low-cost commercial space
launches. But the path to the launch pad has not always been smooth.
The need
for additional checks of the Falcon 1's Merlin engine prompted a delay from an
Oct. 31 target earlier this year. The October launch target itself was a
fallback date for a planned Sept. 30 space shot, which was rescheduled after a problem
cropped up during a Merlin engine test at SpaceX's test facility in central
Texas.
"We
actually delayed the launch a few times to really put extra care into the
engines," Musk said.
SpaceX had
also hoped to make its first Falcon 1 launch from its Vandenberg launch site,
but encountered delays
while waiting for a Titan 4 rocket to deliver a classified National
Reconnaissance Office payload into orbit. The firm also filed a lawsuit
against Boeing and Lockheed Martin accusing the aerospace companies of violating
antitrust laws for U.S. government launch services.
"Really,
all we're asking for in that lawsuit is the ability to compete on
a level playing field," Musk said.
Opening
the launch door
SpaceX's
Falcon 1 rocket has a four-hour window to launch FalconSat-2 into an orbit that
is expected to reach an altitude of about 310 miles (500 kilometers) at its
highest point.
A staff of
about 25 flight controllers and engineers will watch the space shot from a
control center on Kwajalein Atoll, though the rocket's launch pad sits on
Omelek Island, Musk said.
If
successful, the space shot will be followed in March 2006 with the second
Falcon 1 launch carrying the TacSat-1 satellite built by the U.S. Naval
Research Laboratory for the Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation.
SpaceX has
sold a total of six Falcon 1 launches to date and plans to include a previously-flown
first stage on firm's fourth space shot, Musk said. The second Falcon 1 rocket
should be completed within one month's time, with a third to follow in 2006, he
added.
Aiming higher
While
orbiting small payloads appears profitable - the U.S. Air Force awarded SpaceX
an up-to-$100 million contract to launch satellites under its DARPA/FALCON
program - Musk and his firm have larger goals in mind.
Designs for
a fully reusable
Falcon 9 rocket are currently underway to launch payloads of 21,000 pounds (9,500 kilograms) into
Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in a medium configuration, and up to 55,000 pounds
(25,000 kilograms) to LEO in its heavy configuration, SpaceX officials have
said. An intermediate rocket - the Falcon 5 - is slated to make its first
flight by 2007, they added.
Musk said
SpaceX also expects to unveil plans for a rocket engine he dubbed "the largest
one in the world" to in February 2006, as well as compete for NASA's commercial cargo contracts
- and potentially crew flights as well - to resupply the International Space
Station (ISS).
"Our
funding needed to complete the man-rated Falcon 9 is about $100 million," Musk
said, adding that he has financed about 98 percent of SpaceX's costs to date
with $100 million of his money. "My interest is in helping others get into
space and helping us become a space faring civilization."
Musk said
he intends to begin searching for investors to join SpaceX early next year, but
is fully prepared to cover the Falcon 9 costs himself, if needed.
The U.S.
government has nabbed launch services aboard the first Falcon 9 flight set for
2007. A second Falcon 9 flight is slated for 2008 for Las Vegas, Nevada's
Bigelow Aerospace, which is developing inflatable
orbital modules to support a private space station, SpaceX officials said.
Musk said
he also hopes to launch Falcon family rockets from Cape Canaveral, Florida in
the future, and believes that it is essential to push humans further into
space.
"Becoming a
space faring civilization or a multi-planet species...it may well be the hardest
thing that humanity ever does," Musk said. "Life has a duty to extend itself
and we, as life's representatives, should do so."
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