PHOTOS OF THE DAY... Since a flawless first launch of this rocket would somehow validate President Obama’s (crappy) decision to cancel the Ares rockets and the rest of NASA’s Constellation moon program last month, just thought I’d post up pics of the successful "hotfire" test of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle yesterday. The hotfire test involved the ignition of all 9 Merlin engines that comprise the first stage of the rocket. The engines fired for only 3.5 seconds, put presumably this was enough time for SpaceX to verify whether or not its newest vehicle (SpaceX's other one being the Falcon 1 rocket) will be ready for a maiden flight that is currently scheduled for April 12. We shall see.
FYI, an on-time launch of Falcon 9 on April 12 would be pretty symbolic...since Columbia ushered in the space shuttle era with the liftoff of STS-1 on April 12, 1981...and Falcon 9 will be ushering in a new age of commercial spaceflight to—low earth orbit. But not to deep space. That’s NASA’s job assuming it gets proper funding from Obama and Congress starting next year. Most likely not.
All images courtesy of SpaceX / Chris Thompson
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