Maiden Flight of Falcon 9

At the end of last week SpaceX corporation successfully launched the Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Cape Canaveral facility. After a number of postponements the rocket successfully launched and reached a low Earth orbit a short while later. The launch consisted of a separation and firing of two separate stages to demonstrate and test the full rocket capabilities.

Credit: SpaceX

Falcon 9 is an impressive launch vehicle. It is a two stage vehicle using a combination of liquid oxygen and rocket grade kerosene propellants capable of launching sizable payloads into both low Earth and geostationary transfer orbits. Standing around 55m tall it is comparable in size and performance to many other common launch vehicles such as the Atlas V and Ariane 5.

SpaceX is one of the leading private enterprises developing rocket capabilities to place satellites and people into space. Despite being less than a decade old the company has already secured lucrative contracts with industry for its launch capabilities.

As seen with the Ansari X-prize winning SpaceShipOne built by Scaled Composites a new era of enterprises and exploration beckons. Both companies have evolved not out of large scale state funding, but from private individuals applying passion, knowledge, and personal funding streams. This, as history shows, is the natural evolution of technology and transportation. The privateer develops the industry through the combination of a talent and a financier, for example James Watt and Matthew Boulton's exploitation of the steam engine.

The space race of the 1960's, however, was always different. The development of rocketry by the German's during WWII was accelerated by the potential to deploy at distance a nuclear warhead once the American's had developed atomic bombs. This made the rocket and its development government property and its evolution, for ill and good was backed with heavyweight funds.

The downside of this, in the view of some, is that it has created space programs that are bureaucratic and highly inefficient with politics getting in the way of progress. In more austere times, therefore, as we find governments slashing state budgets in all directions, it may finally be the turn of the privateer. Whether all the dreams and aspirations are fulfilled remains unknown, but the next decade may prove quite a ride for rocket launches.