Gotta admire their ambition ;-) The latest SpaceX promotional video shows a Dragon capsule doing a propulsive landing on Mars! It'll need significant additional reentry braking (large ballute? electromagnetic system?), but still, very, very cool...

Ken Anthony raised an interesting point. When the Dragon is manned, will astronauts board the vehicle when the F9 is still horizontal? I don't see why not... I'm assuming the crew will board before they start propellant loading, and raising the F9 to vertical and loading it with fuel shouldn't take more than a couple of hours.

That would be typical of the SpaceX attitude. To board a NASA spacecraft, you ride an elevator up a hugely elaborate support gantry, and walk across an access arm. To board the Dragon... you climb an ordinary stepladder ;-)

Congratulations to SpaceX and the NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services team for a flawless flight of the Falcon-9 launch vehicle and Dragon orbital spacecraft.

The Falcon-9 launched from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 1043EST this morning. Lift-off, first stage burn, staging, second stage burn and spacecraft separation were all nominal. There was a minor flash fire from one of the fuelling umbilicals on takeoff likely due to a failed check valve, but the rocket itself was undamaged. The flight to orbit was perfect, with none of the anomalous roll seen in the first F9 test flight.

Once on orbit, the unmanned Dragon spacecraft, massing almost 7 tonnes, performed an extended checkout procedure, including propulsion, navigation, communications and control systems. Communications was established with the NASA TDRSS satellite system. The spacecraft simulated maneuvers for approach to the ISS. After two orbits, the Draco thrusters were fired in a deorbit burn. The Dragon spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere, deployed drogue and then main parachutes, and splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean around 800km west of Mexico. According to the post-flight press conference, the spacecraft landed within 1 minute of the intended time, and around 800m (or less than half a mile) from its target aim point.

This represents the first successful re-entry from orbit by a privately-built spacecraft. The Dragon is a man-capable spacecraft, currently lacking only seats, minor upgrades to the life support, and a launch escape system. Previously, only the US, Soviet and Chinese governments have developed orbit-capable manned spacecraft to date.

UPDATE: Here's the post-launch press conference, courtesy of Spacevidcast.com:

(Source: RLVNews)

More discussion of Virgin Galactic's plans to bid for NASA Commercial Crew Development funding in an article in Aviation Week:

“There’s about four companies that are seriously looking at [CCDev Phase 2],” Branson said in an interview with AVIATION WEEK. “Two of those companies we’re in discussions with about teaming up with. ... Over the next month, we’re going to make a decision as to whether to team up with one of those two companies or go it alone, but we plan to be in orbital travel within the next few years.”

• Virgin Galactic eyes NASA Commercial Crew Program -- Aviation Week

Since Space Adventures has already linked up with Boeing for passenger launch on the CST-100 capsule, there is speculation that Virgin is talking to SpaceX, and to Sierra Nevada Corporation (builders of the Dreamchaser spaceplane). Virgin may also be looking at resuscitating the airlaunched concept designed by Scaled Composites for T/Space.

Heartiest congratulations to Elon Musk and the SpaceX team for a stunningly successful maiden flight of the Falcon-9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft demonstrator payload.

The vehicle was launched from LC40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 2:45EDT yesterday. Both stages appeared to function as designed, and placed the Dragon payload in an approximately 250km high orbit. Musk later reported that the rocket's second stage and dummy Dragon capsule hit "essentially a bullseye". The apogee, or high point, was about 1 percent higher than planned and the perigee, or low point, was 0.2 percent off.

Some minor technical issues were noticed, such as a slow roll of the upper stage starting at around T+6 minutes. The roll did not affect the trajectory performance. It also appears that the first stage broke up on re-entry, and was not able to be recovered. SpaceX will address these issues prior to the next mission, the first launch of a functional Dragon spacecraft for evaluation by NASA for ISS cargo resupply. That mission is currently scheduled for "this summer".

This is about the best Youtube video I've found of the launch so far:

More details and discussion:

• Falcon 9 booster rockets into orbit on dramatic first launch -- Spaceflight Now
• Falcon-9 Post-Flight Teleconference -- RLV News
• Shuttle successor succeeds in first test flight -- MSNBC
• SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket enjoys successful maiden flight -- BBC News

The Falcon-9 launch also caused a stir in Australia...

• Oh, those Falcon UFOs! -- Bad Astronomy

Update:
Some interesting nuggets from the post-flight telecon:

• SpaceX has spent $350-400M on Falcon 1 and 9, and another $150-200M on Dragon development, including NASA money and outside private investment.
• The launch escape system will be a 'pusher' attached to the base of the capsule, not a tractor (tower) system as with Apollo. The eventual intention is to use the LES for powered landings on land (as with Soyuz).
• Musk is in initial discussions with NASA on a public-private partnership for the development of a "super-heavy" lift vehicle. (Rocketeer: The current SpaceX test facilities at MacGregor in Texas are at least big enough to accommodate a launcher of Jarvis class).
• Musk will be announcing a number of major launch contracts shortly, including some which were signed before the F9 launch. (Rocketeer: There is speculation that this includes support for the Iridium NEXT telecoms constellation).
• SpaceX has been profitable for the past 3 years. Its current order book is worth $2.9 billion.
• Musk: It is my greatest hope that SpaceX will one day allow almost anyone to go to space.

Update II

If the stories about SpaceX's upcoming launch contracts are true, then there will be a cold wind blowing through the offices of ULA and Arianespace right about now. It is blatantly obvious that current large European aerospace contractors cannot compete with SpaceX on price (case in point: the cost of the Jules Verne ATV was more than twice as much as the entire SpaceX development programme: ground facilities, launchers and spacecraft).

Someone needs to lead development of European cheap access to space, to meet the competitive challenge of SpaceX.

It might as well be us.

I'm pleased to see that SpaceX is pitching towards European orbital microgravity researchers by holding its Second DragonLab User Conference in Haarlem, Netherlands.

Will there be any delegates from the UK? I hope so. I expect not.

Playing catch-up after Easter vacation...

This isn't British, or particularly new, but I thought it was cool. If there's any space event I want to see happen in the next decade, it's this.

Hyperbola has some items from the recent talk by Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, at the Royal Aeronautical Society:-

• AUDIO: CEO Elon Musk SpaceX Q&A session
• Musk: $80 million to go to the Moon

The Lunar Dragon idea came up in a comment I made to Jon Goff back in 2006. Nice to see that it's getting some serious thought ;-)