Falcon 1 launch set for 2:30 p.m. Pacific

‘Update (14:44 Pacific): It’s confirmed, the vehicle was lost. SpaceDaily.com has reported:

While Space X has yet to report was has happened to the rocket, SpaceX vice president of business development Gwynne Shotwell has told reporters that “We did lose the vehicle.”

Update (14:40 Pacific time): SpaceDaily.com is reporting the launch failed, but no details as yet.

Quick update: It launched! The video was very cool, but cut out less than a minute into the flight. I’m trying to find out what happened.

OK, so we have a final (?) launch time for the Space-X rocket Falcon 1– 14:30 Pacific time (about a half hour from now as I write this). You can view it live webcast from the Space-X website.’

March 24th, 2006 2:58 PM by Phil Plait in Cool stuff, NASA, Science | 12 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

12 Responses to “Falcon 1 launch set for 2:30 p.m. Pacific”

1. Thomas Siefert Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 3:10 pm

That camera makes me seasick….., there’s a lot of wind.
2. Thomas Siefert Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 3:32 pm

45 seconds
3. brianh Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 3:34 pm

The live webcast froze up at about T +10… pretty cool launch though.
4. Thomas Siefert Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 3:35 pm

Same here….
5. Thomas Siefert Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 3:55 pm

Oh no….
6. Wolverine Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 4:26 pm

Rats. Wish the feed hadn’t died.

At least it featured a lovely shot of the coastline.
7. Rich Fraser Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 4:32 pm

From the SpaceX website: We had a successful liftoff and Falcon made it well clear of the launch pad, but unfortunately the vehicle was lost later in the first stage burn. More information will be posted once we have had time to analyze the problem.

Might explain the loss of video.
8. Michelle Rochon Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 5:12 pm

That’s just too bad.
9. Thomas Siefert Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 10:23 pm

I thought it was weird that the webcast got cut like that. I would have thought that the video would just turn black, it’s not like the webcast was coming directly from the rocket.
10. Kaptain K Says:
March 25th, 2006 at 5:19 am

Bummer!
11. Wolverine Says:
March 25th, 2006 at 8:15 am

Dang.
12. Nigel Depledge Says:
March 25th, 2006 at 10:25 am

Well, hey, no-one ever said rocket science was easy!

Let’s hope they are learning valuable lessons with each failure.

About Bad Astronomy

Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.

The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.

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