Third Time's Not a Charm...

August 03, 2008

...but it's also not a time to give up.

I'm still reeling from flying more than 30 hours to catch the total solar eclipse on Friday, but in case you haven't heard, private company SpaceX's third shot at a reusable Falcon 1 rocket system failed during launch late last night.

A serious (and expensive) bummer, and yet more proof that no matter how many smart people you put into a room, getting into space ain't easy.

Check out David Chandler's Next Generation blog for some details on the recent SpaceX failure.

I got this email forward by Elon Musk, co-founder of the company, in my inbox last night. You can also check it out on the SpaceX Web site, too (see here).

He first issued it to employees:

Plan Going Forward

It was obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit on this flight [Falcon 1, Flight 3].  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--

Glad to hear they're not giving up, and looking forward to their fourth -- and hopefully successful -- attempt.

NOTE: I just realized I posted the same email after Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy did, so to his credit here's a link to his post.