MCGREGOR, Texas -- With a mighty roar that could be heard even
through the concrete walls of the blockhouse at a rocket-testing
facility here, a Space Exploration Technologies rocket engine
called Merlin blazed to life Friday. The camera views on the
monitors in the control room trembled as the engine shook the
ground of the empty Texas plain with 73,000 pounds of thrust --
enough power to send a 1,500-pound payload into orbit.
Enough power, that is, if the engine could stay lit for at least
160 seconds. Propulsion engineers watched their displays anxiously
for signs of trouble, with test engineer David Yarborough counting
out the seconds and test director Jeremy Hollman keeping a hand
poised over a red abort switch.
After 162.25 tense seconds, the engine ran out of fuel and shut
down without mishap, mission accomplished. It was the first time
this feat had been achieved, and the engineers jumped from their
chairs to exchange high-fives with test conductor Kent Harris,
propulsion chief Tom Mueller and launch manager Tim Buzza. This
moment, two years in the making, meant that Merlin was almost ready
for its space debut.
The kerosene- and liquid-oxygen-powered Merlin, and Falcon I, the
rocket whose first stage it will send into space, are the
brainchildren of Elon Musk, founder and CEO of Space Exploration
Technologies, or SpaceX. The 33-year-old South African made a
fortune when he sold his last startup, PayPal, to eBay in 2002, and
he used some of the $1.5 billion proceeds to found SpaceX in El
Segundo, California. The company's mission: to provide affordable
access to space. Friday's test put SpaceX a big step closer toward
realizing that goal. "This essentially marks the completion of our
engine development," Musk told Wired News.
Musk is one of a growing number of wealthy entrepreneurs reaching
for the final frontier. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen footed the
bill for SpaceShipOne, a suborbital rocket plane that last year won
the $10 million Ansari X Prize for the first manned commercial
spacecraft. Richard Branson, Virgin Atlantic's maverick chairman,
plans to enter a fleet of SpaceShipTwos into regular service for
suborbital tourist flights in a venture called Virgin Galactic. And
Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos is ramping up a suborbital space program
of his own called Blue Origin.
With most of the other space entrepreneurs focused on suborbital
flight, Musk is closest to the holy grail of manned commercial
spaceflight: orbit. Although Falcon I, with its single Merlin
engine, will be able to launch only small satellites, five Merlins
will be mated to the first stage of the far more powerful Falcon V
rocket, perhaps as early as this year. Falcon V, Musk told Wired
News, will be able to carry at least five people into low Earth
orbit.
Five to orbit is a significant number; it's the number required to
win the next big space prize. America's Space Prize is a $50
million purse established last year by Las Vegas hotelier and, yes,
space entrepreneur, Robert Bigelow. Bigelow will award the money to
the first U.S. company to build, without government funding, a
spaceship that can send five people into orbit twice within 60
days. Bigelow has more than an academic interest in commercial
spaceflight; through his Bigelow Aerospace, he's expanding his real
estate empire off-planet with the first commercial space stations.
While he can launch his stations on existing unmanned commercial
rockets, he needs an orbital passenger vehicle to succeed in his
venture.
Musk told Wired News that he intends to win America's Space Prize,
and that he can do it by the Jan. 10, 2010, deadline (that's when
Bigelow wants to open his commercial space station for business).
The space prize is right in line with Musk's business plan. "We
hope to be the company that takes people back and forth from Earth
to either the International Space Station or to Bigelow's space
station, or to applications we don't know about today," said Musk.
Ultimately, though, his ambitions extend beyond even orbit. "I
think it's very important that we become a spacefaring
civilization, and that we eventually become multiplanetary."
For now, he and his engineers are "heads down, focused on getting
Falcon I right," for its maiden flight. In March, once the final
checkouts are completed -- akin, said Musk, to software beta
testing -- Falcon I will lift a Department of Defense satellite
called TacSat-1 into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in
California. Also on board will be an aluminum urn made by
Houston-based Space Services. About the size of two soda cans
stacked together, it will carry ashes from the cremated remains of
125 people from around the world for a "burial in space."
It was 6:40 p.m. when Merlin shut down after its first
full-duration firing, the end of a long, hard day for the
engineers. Night had fallen, and all that was visible in the views
from the cameras aimed along the engine's blast radius were grass
fires in the fields beyond the Texas test stand. "We friggin'
earned that one," said Mueller with feeling. "That was a long time
coming."