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In late 2001, Tom Mueller was sacrificing his nights and weekends to build a liquid-fuel rocket engine in his garage. Mueller, a propulsion engineer at Redondo Beach, Calif.–based aerospace firm TRW, felt like an “unwanted necessity” at his day job. His prolific ideas about engine design were lost at such a large, diverse company. To satisfy his creative impulses, he built his own engines, attached them to airframes and launched them in the Mojave Desert with fellow enthusiasts in the Reaction Research Society, America’s oldest amateur rocketry club. RRS members, many of them employees at aerospace firms, meet regularly in...

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) passed another significant milestone on the way to first flight of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle by completing qualification testing for the first stage tank and interstage at the company's structural and propulsion testing facility near Waco, Texas.

On the 40th anniversary of the successful U.S. mission to the moon, proud celebrations took place to recognize the accomplishments by the National Aeronautics & Space Administration. There was even a well-timed space mission, with NASA's Space Shuttle blasting off to carry additional gear to the International Space Station, the research facility that orbits 220 miles above the Earth's surface. One option under serious consideration is whether NASA should tap the private sector more actively. Since its founding, the agency has done the heavy lifting in space exploration largely by itself—conceiving of missions, designing rockets, and executing flights. Companies such...

A Malaysian satellite rode a Falcon 1 rocket into orbit Monday night, marking the first time the privately-developed booster has successfully launched an operational spacecraft.

I want to see something to go into space!!!!

An explosive confrontation has shaped up between SpaceX, which tests rockets in McGregor, and a lawmaker in Alabama over who gets $150 million in federal stimulus money. President Barack Obama wants to help private companies develop rockets that could haul people to the International Space Station. SpaceX believes it could fit the bill and wants a chunk of the money.

A NASA-funded study found that a human-rated Delta IV heavy rocket could be a cheaper route to the International Space Station than NASA's Ares I crew launch vehicle. But the human-rated United Launch Alliance rocket would be less expensive only if the Ares V heavy-lift moon rocket development is deferred, the Aerospace Corp. study reports. And the Delta IV alternative could add two years or more to the "gap" in U.S. human access to orbit if it starts this year, according to the unreleased study obtained by Aviation Week.

SpaceX's new Falcon 9 takes a crucial step to the launchpad Since January, SpaceX's heavy-payload Falcon 9 launch vehicle has stood 180 feet above Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, undergoing ground-systems tests in the run-up to its first test flight. The reusable Falcon series, named for the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars, has nine engines that provide more than a million pounds of thrust. Last September, the smaller, 70-foot-tall Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to orbit the Earth. The co-founder of PayPal, Elon Musk, established SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of increasing space...

New Merlin Vacuum engine demonstrates highest efficiency for an American hydrocarbon rocket engine. McGregor, TX. – March 10, 2009 – Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) successfully conducted a full mission duration firing of its new Merlin Vacuum engine on March 7, at SpaceX's Test Facility in McGregor, Texas. The engine fired for a full six minutes, consuming 100,000 pounds of liquid oxygen and rocket grade kerosene propellant.

SPACEX MANUFACTURED HEAT SHIELD MATERIAL PASSES HIGH TEMPERATURE TESTS SIMULATING REENTRY HEATING CONDITIONS OF DRAGON SPACECRAFT HAWTHORNE, CA – February 23, 2009 – Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) announces the passing of a significant technical milestone in the development of its Dragon spacecraft with the successful arc jet testing of PICA-X high performance heat shield material. Subjected to temperatures as high as 1850 degrees Celsius (3360 degrees Fahrenheit), the tests simulated the reentry heating conditions that will be experienced by the Dragon capsule. Panels of the high performance carbon-based material will protect cargo and crew during the spacecraft's return from Earth...

Dec. 30, 2008 -- NASA has committed nearly $2 billion to a California start-up intent on breaking the status quo for launching cargo into space. Come January, SpaceX will see if the U.S. government is prepared to take the next step and buy into a plan for launching people into orbit as well. Once the shuttles are retired in 2010, NASA plans to buy rides for astronauts traveling to the space station from Russia, which sells a three-person craft called Soyuz. NASA's most recent contract with Russian space officials covers transportation and training for three astronauts to and from the...

NASA Awards Space Station Commercial Resupply Services Contracts To SpaceX and Orbital WASHINGTON -- NASA has awarded two contracts -- one to Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., and one to Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif. -- for commercial cargo resupply services to the International Space Station. At the time of award, NASA has ordered eight flights valued at about $1.9 billion from Orbital and 12 flights valued at about $1.6 billion from SpaceX. These fixed-price indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts will begin Jan. 1, 2009, and are effective through Dec. 31, 2016. The contracts each call...

The Falcon 1 booster redeemed itself Sunday with an electrifying launch that put an exclamation point on six years of hard work and disappointment for SpaceX, the startup company chartered to revolutionize space travel. The 70-foot-tall rocket successfully delivered a 364-pound hunk of aluminum to orbit on the launcher's fourth flight, ending a streak of three consecutive Falcon 1 failures dating back to 2006. "That was freakin' awesome," said Elon Musk, CEO and chief technical officer of Space Technologies Corp. Musk established SpaceX in 2002 and funded the company from the fortune he earned from starting Zip2 and PayPal. "We...

SUCCESS! SpaceX confirms Falcon 1 has reached orbit, making the first privately-developed all-liquid fuel rocket to achieve this feat.

Launch going off at Kwajalein today 7pm EST. Live feed starts 1/2 hour before. The rocket has a new Spacedev satellite on it, built for the Air Force.

This summer, NASA plans to propel a satellite the size of a loaf of bread through space with an ultra-thin, 100-square-foot sail called NanoSail-D. Developed and constructed in just six months as the result of a partnership between Marshall Space Flight Center and Ames Research Center, NASA will ride the sail into space on an upcoming flight of the new Falcon 1 launch vehicle developed by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California. The launch is scheduled for take place from Omelek Island in the Pacific Ocean. Once in space, a Poly Picosatellite Orbital Deployer, or P-POD, developed at the...

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) conducted the first two-engine firing of the first stage of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle on 18 January on a test stand outside McGregor, Texas. The Merlin 1C gas-generator cycle, liquid oxygen/kerosene engines operated at full power, generating more than 180,000lb thrust (805kN) during the 14s run. In the next test, scheduled for February, three engines will operate for a full first-stage burn time of 180s. The test series will continue with five, seven and finally the full complement of nine first-stage engines.

One down, two to go… the first of three review phases required by the Safety Review Panel (SRP) at NASA have been completed quite successfully by SpaceX for the mission of sending their Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. Over four days at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, SpaceX engineers who are developing the Dragon spacecraft presented their Phase I plan for this voyage to ISS. Addressed were 23 specific hazards, with special attention paid to the danger of collision. The latter problem happens to one of the most difficult hazards to mitigate, with this topic the primary...

Development of Space Exploration Technologies' (SpaceX) Dragon crew and cargo capsule is progressing, with testing and selecting under way for the mix of internally developed and commercially procured subsystems. The crew and cargo versions of the blunt-body capsule are essentially the same, with a 3.81m (12.5ft)-diameter base, when the ablative thermal protection system is in place, and a maximum take-off weight of around 7,000kg (15,400lb,) including 2,500kg of crew or cargo mass. The SpaceX-built Falcon 9 to launch the Dragon will have at least an 8,700kg payload capability to low-Earth orbit.

The millionaire behind the maverick SpaceX rocket venture, Elon Musk, says the verdict on last week's partly successful Falcon 1 rocket launch is "looking increasingly positive" now that his team is getting a close look at the data. Before its second-stage engine cut off prematurely, the Falcon flew to a height of 180 miles (289 kilometers) - a performance not quite good enough to reach orbit, but good enough for Musk to declare the end of the rocket's test phase and the beginning of its operational phase.