SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Monday reminisced about the first failed launch attempt of the company’s Falcon 1 launch vehicle after the Polaris Dawn crew landed safely back to Earth in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft after conducting the first-ever commercial spacewalk.
What Happened: “It has been 18 years since the first Falcon flight of Falcon 1 failed,” Musk wrote on the social media platform X. The post was accompanied by a photo collage of two images side-by-side.
While one image shows Musk sitting by the debris from a failed Falcon 1 launch, the other shows an astronaut conducting the first commercial spacewalk as part of the recent Polaris Dawn mission to space.
SpaceX attempted its first launch of the Falcon 1 in 2006 which failed. It failed again in March 2007 and then again in August 2008. After three consecutive failures to launch, the team was low on cash but had a spare vehicle. The team worked on it and eventually, the first successful launch came in the second half of 2008— on Sept.28.
"If the fourth one had not succeeded, SpaceX would not exist. It was a very close call," Musk previously said about the fourth launch attempt.
Why It Matters: SpaceX has come a long way since.
The Musk-led company completed 67 missions using its Falcon launch vehicles as of the end of the second quarter, with its Falcon 9 workhorse alone accounting for 66 launches. The company is looking to launch 144 times in 2024, averaging twelve times per month.
Last week, four commercial astronauts were launched into space by SpaceX’s Falcon 9. The company’s Dragon spacecraft and the four-member crew spent about 5 days in space before returning to Earth on Sunday. The crew also conducted a spacewalk at about an altitude of 738 km on Thursday, marking the first-ever commercial spacewalk.
While space agency NASA routinely conducts extravehicular activities with government astronauts, no commercial spaceflight companies or astronauts have attempted it before, making this a landmark achievement for SpaceX.
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