Finally!

It looks like SpaceX has finally launched their Falcon 9 rocket. It also looks like it went off almost perfectly. Congratulations, SpaceX.

This launch opens up many possibilities. For one, the cost per launch of a Falcon 9 rocket is around $50 million, about 15% of that of the Space Shuttle. Also, it takes the space business further away from the government, which is more interested in other pursuits. Commercial space is really where it's going to be at, the way that airplanes were last century.

However, there's still some other stuff that has me worried about commercial spaceflight. First of all, it seems to be getting off to a slow start. The Falcon 9 was delayed by over half a year before it finally got off the ground. Commercial spaceflight has been crawling along since it first started. The first person in space from commercial spaceflight was about 7 years ago (I think). It took the US government 8 years between the first orbital spaceflight and the moon landing. Meanwhile, commercial spaceflight has seemingly gone backwards. While there are numerous projects in development, there hasn't been a real breakthrough in a while. Which could be said about the entire field, I suppose.

Second of all, there's the enormous work involved with launching people into space. The Wright Brothers were able to fly largely on their own financial and intellectual steam. They were bicycle shop owners. The founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, also founded PayPal, which was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion. He was able to employ professional engineers and scientists to get the Falcon 9 off the ground. The Wright Brothers didn't even build the engine used in their plane. They just made it aerodynamic. I don't see anybody selling rocket engines on the corner.

That doesn't mean that it's all expensive. There has been a few successful attempts to get pictures of space with just a balloon, a camera and a cellphone. I highly recommend that you try it. It would make for a great summer project.

I'm still pretty excited for the coming expansion of commercial spaceflight, if it ever does get here. For now, however, I'm gonna keep a lookout for stray rocket engines.

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