SpaceX looks to relaunch Tuesday after reviewing fail data.

I happened to be up late last night and saw they were webcasting the launch, which I watched. I was surprised at how excited I was by the whole thing TBH. In a world where everyone seems to be trying to create the next social network for cats it's truly exciting to see something as revolutionary and innovative as what SpaceX is doing (to the economics of launching into orbit).<p>I was disappointed to see the launch aborted but also impressed to see that they could abort the launch after ignition and not lose the vehicle ("safe'ing the vehicle" as they said a number of times).<p>Oh they made one factual error in the Webcast too (or one is on their site). A pre-launch question came up about what they look for in hiring. A representative said they must be US citizens. According to the site, you can be a US citizen or permanent resident.

I was talking with some friends who are Aerospace Phds at Stanford last night. They told me how the last few decades were sort of a "dark ages" in the Space field, that there is now a glimmer at the end of the dark tunnel.<p>It seems that in many ways, this launch is a make or break point in the private Space sector. For the sake of shifting our attention to truly great, ambitious endeavors, and for the sake of many great engineers who have chosen to devote their lives to a now-unsexy craft (and the many who may follow in their footsteps in the future as a result of these projects), I truly hope that this mission ends in a resounding success.<p>I personally haven't been this excited about a technological milestone in <i>years</i>.

Apparently the valve in question was a turbopump valve. I don't know how the turbopumps work in the Falcon 9, but they are a fairly interesting topic in general. For example, in the German V-2 rockets the turbopumps were steam driven. The steam for this was created with hydrogen peroxide and a catalyst; almost like a little miniature rocket engine inside of a larger one. I think this highlights just how much complexity we can forget liquid fuel rockets have.

This is the cooles rocket since the Saturn 5, maybe even cooler!<p>Video from the aborted start: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI31ibLRCm8" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI31ibLRCm8</a><p>Detect an anomaly in your system? Just shut down the engine after ignition and abort the launch. Fuck yeah!<p>Good luck on the next attempt! You guys are heroes!