After more than three years of development, an upstart competitor to the Goliaths of the global launch industry announced Friday that it would attempt its first blastoff in one week.
The Falcon 1 rocket from Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is scheduled to lift off from a launch complex on the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands at 9 a.m. local time on Nov. 26, which translates to 4 p.m. ET on Nov. 25. The launch window lasts four hours.
SpaceX, as the company is known, was founded by software millionaire Elon Musk. In announcing the launch, Musk said he saw the launch as "the first steppingstone in reducing the cost of access to space."...
During Friday's news conference at SpaceX's headquarters in El Segundo, Calif., Musk said "approximately $100 million" has been invested in his company, with 98 percent of that coming from his own wealth. The other 2 percent came from "friends and family who were crazy enough to put some money into the company," he joked.
Musk already has plans to beef up his line of launch vehicles with a heavy-lift Falcon 9, which could conceivably be used for human spaceflight. Indeed, he told reporters that future generations of Falcon rockets would be used for "not just satellites, but really ultimately for human transportation."
So, one week and counting...
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