First Rocket Is Lost by Space Company

Topper

A private venture hailed as the beginning of a new age of cheap and
reliable access to space suffered a setback yesterday when its first
rocket was lost over the Pacific Ocean about a minute after liftoff.
The rocket, called Falcon, was being launched from Omelek Island in
the Marshall Islands by SpaceX, a company that has $200 million in
contracts from the Pentagon, foreign governments and private companies
to put small payloads in orbit. The company said Falcon was carrying
an Air Force satellite.
The founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, said in a statement, "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."
In an interview, a spokeswoman for the company, Diane Molina, said no
further information would be available until SpaceX had a better idea
of what went wrong. Mr. Musk has put $100 million of his fortune from
dot-com ventures like PayPal into the space company. He has been an
evangelist for the notion that going to space, for cargo and human
flight, could be far cheaper than the systems paid by governments and
large contractors.
The road to the first mission had several delays. Charles A. Lurio,
a space consultant, wrote in an e-mail message that the Web video from
a camera on the side of the rocket showed a sudden swing as if it were
pitching over. "I'm disappointed by the event," he wrote, adding that
it was "a bad day, but only the beginning of the SpaceX assault."

Published: March 25, 2006
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

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