Or so says Elon Musk.

Here's hoping for a badly needed success.

Go Elon...

Robert

meanwhile in other part of town..
go mike!
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2007/03/lunar_precursor.html#more

Elon has some balls, threatening Russian business with a low-cost launcher. If the launch succeeds, he should be careful not to leave his food unattended around pale, droopy people.

It seems http://www.spacefellowship.com/ and http://www.nasaspaceflight.com will cover the live launch, any other sources we can follow tomorrow ?

around pale, droopy people.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 18, 2007 01:13 PM..

yeah like from the crack NASA hit teams!

Seriously If Elon succeeds (1 in 3 chance for success I give him...maybe 5050) and he makes his cost numbers it is the begginning of the end for NASA ops.

Robert

The last failure was because a nut covered in anti-corrosion material "spontaneously corroded" in the 18 hour period between final inspection and launch, which was the first time in the history of firm they'd ever found corrosion in such a part. I'd be interested to find out if any firm, anywhere, that uses anodized aluminum B-nuts has ever encountered stress corrosion like that.

Not that I'm saying the failure was implausible in itself, given that it was a first launch; or that stress corrosion isn't a feasible explanation in general; or that I think military procurement people could ever be such sleazeballs (sardonic grin) as to do the bidding of more powerful contractors; but *spontaneous* stress corrosion in spite of *anodization* over a period of *18 hours* that happened to be between final inspection and launch? Maybe 9/11 was really an accident due to simultaneous avionics failures...

I recall Musk himself responding in an article, seemed to think the corroded nut theory was ludicrous, noting the 18 hour fact with a kind of "oh, I see" sarcastic undertone. There's no denying SpaceX has had a rocky relationship with the military, being driven out of Vandenberg from its own privately-built facilities so Lockheed could use the space, and then having to sue when the Pentagon decided to scrap the entire bidding process and just hand out launches to ULA by default.

So I agree with anon's odds: This launch will most likely fail due to another bizarre, highly improbable anomaly, and SpaceX's credibility and solvency would be roughly one more launch failure away from disappearing. But I could be wrong, and I offer my embarrassment as a sacrifice to the rocket gods if they will make this flight succeed. And if they need still more sacrifices, they're welcome to let the Falcon hit some pigeons on the way up.

Also, just for the sake of argument, would they be able to tell if a leak was caused by a projectile impact?

Go go Elon !