[05-24-11] After the drama of the aborted launch of the Falcon 9 May 19, SpaceX<\/b> successfully launched the Falcon 9 May 22, carrying the Dragon spacecraft towards the International Space Station. Now the company has signed its first deal for the Falcon Heavy vehicle and is set to announce it later this week. The Falcon Heavy represents SpaceX\u2019s entry into the heavy lift launch vehicle category.
\n SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell gave her reaction to the successful launch of the Falcon 9 earlier this week. She told Satellite Today Insider<\/i>, \u201cThe joy is pretty indescribable. The job is so difficult; a million things needs to work to be successful and they did!\u201d
\n Shotwell also puts the events of last Saturday into perspective, when SpaceX had to dramatically abort the launch of the Falcon 9 in the last seconds. \u201cEverything went as it should have on Saturday,\u201d she said. \u201cWe had an issue. We found and fixed the problem and flew on the very next go. I am very proud of my team for how they handled the situation.\u201d
\n The company is aiming to carve out a niche for itself in the launch services business, a difficult area to gain customers\u2019 trust. Despite the events of last Saturday, Shotwell believes no damage has been done to the company\u2019s reputation. \u201cI think we impressed people precisely because Saturday\u2019s attempt was not dramatic \u2014 the system responded exactly the way it was supposed to,\u201d she said. \u201cOur customers were very supportive of how SpaceX responded. They have universally applauded our patience and maturity to stop the launch, review the issue, find root cause and fix it \u2014 rather than allowing launch fever to overtake us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether the events lead to a change of procedures is yet to be determined. \u201cWe are taking our time to determine if we need to change any procedure,\u201d added Shotwell. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[05-24-11] After the drama of the aborted launch of the Falcon 9 May 19, SpaceX successfully launched the Falcon 9 May 22, carrying the Dragon spacecraft towards the International Space Station. Now the company has signed its first deal for the Falcon Heavy vehicle and is set to announce it later this week. The Falcon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83064"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}