Privately-made Falcon 1 rocket roars on the pad

[Robb]

Privately-made Falcon 1 rocket roars on the pad

Rocket-launch newcomer Space Exploration Technologies Corp. today accomplished a critical engine firing at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, a long-awaited event that puts the company much closer to its inaugural blastoff later this summer.
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The low-cost, privately-developed Falcon 1 rocket is the creation of Elon Musk, the South African spending his own cash to bring the new launcher from the drawing board to reality. Musk was co-founder of PayPal, the online payment system, and earlier the Zip2 software company.

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Using a tiny launch team compared to the standing armies typically involved with the rocket countdowns, a seven-person control team, a five-person pad crew and three extra technicians performed today's engine firing. The nerve center overseeing the operation was SpaceX's mobile trailer parked outside NASA's control building on Vandenberg's South Base -- about five miles from the pad -- that allowed the Falcon team to tap into the installation's fiber lines and Range communications loops.

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SpaceX's customer for the first Falcon flight is the U.S. Department of Defense. The small TacSat-1 experimental communications satellite, built by the Naval Research Laboratory, will be carried into space.

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[OKthatsIT]

1. Not good...Perchlorate fails onto the produce fields.

very toxic stuff in Rocket Fuel.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Perchlorate?

The article says the engine uses kerosene and liquid oxygen.