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What is Falcon 1
The falcon 1 was an expendable launch system privately developed and manufactured by SpaceX from 2006 to 2009. It was launched on 28 September, 2008. It became the first privately developed fully liquid fuelled launch vehicle to go into orbit around the world.
The Founder of SpaceX is Elon Musk with his company Space Exploration Technologies Corporation in 2002. It started business objective to launch services for cost selling and then sell the projects to commercial buyers. SpaceX sponsored the development by their own pocket to launch vehicle.
The Falcon 1 rocket was developed with private funding, the total development cost of this mission was approximately 100 million dollars. The Falcon 1 first two launches were purchased by the United States Department of defence under a program that evaluates new launch vehicle for DARPA.
SpaceX launched the first Rocket, Falcon 1. It is a two stage launch vehicle capable of having a 1000kg metric into low earth orbit. SpaceX started getting funds due to their mission of falcon 1. They were heavily funded by NASA and also later got supported from government. They were even funded from several DOD entities including several million dollars from the air force under the program of DARPA.
The start-up of Falcon 1 was not to great. Their first launch was failed within 25 seconds of its flight. The second flight was successful launched but didn’t touch the earth’s orbit. Even their third attempt failed in the staging stage, after a heavy failure SpaceX Launch processing stream and made recommendations for some significant changes. After 6 years in July 2009, Falcon 1 got their first success after its launch and crossing the orbit with the help of Malaysian Razaksat satellite.
Read more- The Early History of successful Space Program, SpaceX
The work of Falcon 1
Falcon 1 was launch on 3 August, 2008 from Kwajalein. This flight carried the trailblazer satellite for the US air force, The Nanosail D and Presat Nano satellites for NASA and a space burial payloads for celestials. This rocket did not reach the orbit but Merlin 1c engine, performed perfectly.
Falcon 1 had total 5 main projects and out of that first three were failures. The first rocket failed due to over weight on the flight, even it was made little cheaper and pre-lift off computer checks that increases by a factor of thirty.
The second mission failed due to technical issues inside the rocket, even after planning 95 % due to 5% of miss management caused them problem and they had to achieve a failure. The SpaceX team started working more aggressively and with better management.
After the failure of their third flight falcon 1 was totally bankrupt and company started falling. Elon showed faith on falcon1 and after a long wait he collected funds and stared launch of their fourth mission. After showing so much faith their fourth mission finally got success and even followed by one more success of their fifth mission.
The success of SpaceX and Falcon 1
According to Space X, Falcon 1 was made to minimize the price per launch for low earth orbit satellites, and optimize flight environmental and time to launch. Elon musk dreamed of having a vehicle that collects the information and samples around the space. His company Space X provided huge fund for the start-up of their new mission Falcon 1.
When SpaceX finally achieves a long sought success. It started moving rapidly to exploit the new vehicle operational status and begins to gain market and started launching their services. However, Falcon1 vehicle had success after the launch of Razaksat.
For a mission like falcon 1 who got a bad start and got a success after 6 long years. Many thoughts were to abandon the mission but instead after showing long good faith falcon1 started a success and got profit in one hand. One could never imagine a mission that had a failure but then started earning good profit.
The Falcon 1 rocket is the first in a planned family of falcon boosters under development by SpaceX. Its engines burn liquid oxygen and kerosene, and the first stage is intended to splash down in their pacific ocean to be recovered for reuse, this shows that Space x showed a faith on falcon 1 and started doing progress after its success on it.
It is even said that, the company like NASA abounded their project after a superb launch of falcon 1, and even NASA started funding to SpaceX for the progress of Falcon1.
But for now, Musk told his employees that celebration was in order to their first success after six long years of consist failure.
Future of Falcon 1
After the fifth flight of falcon 1, future launches were eventually cancelled or postponed and the vehicle decommissioned from services of Space X Stated ‘we could not make Falcon 1 work as a business’.
The story of falcon 1 shows total faith upon it by Elon musk but due to its failure all its missions and aims were transferred to Falcon 9. Space X is now working on their new project of Falcon9 but with the same objective.
Space X is even in talks with the start-up of a new space vehicle related to Falcon1 known as Falcon1e, the more information about falcon1e is not out busted but the work on it will start soon.
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