SpaceX to Launch First Falcon 9 No Earlier Than May 8

SpaceX's Falcon 9 on the pad at Cape Canaveral. (Credit: Chris Thompson/SpaceX)

An update from SpaceX on the first flight for the Falcon 9:

SpaceX is working closely with Ensign Bickford Aerospace & Defense Co., supplier of key components of the Flight Termination System (FTS) that will be used on Falcon 9, to complete testing of the FTS hardware and provide final data to SpaceX and Air Force Range safety officials for review and acceptance.   Certification of the Falcon 9 FTS and subsequent range availability will put the first Falcon 9 test launch towards the latter half of the anticipated March-May window, with the first attempt no earlier than May 8, 2010.

SpaceX had been hoping to launch this month. That could have put the flight uncomfortably close to President Barack Obama’s visit to Florida, where he will defend his decision to cancel the Constellation program in favor of commercial rockets. The prospect of Falcon 9 failing on its first launch, something that is not unusual in the rocket business, has caused concerns that it would reflect badly on the President’s initiative.

A three-week gap puts some distance between the two events, and it could prove politically advantageous to a White House that has been on the defensive over the past two months. The launch would have been an unwelcome sideshow,  with intense media scrutiny and heavy pressure on SpaceX to succeed. Critics would seize upon a launch failure as proof of their arguments against the policy.

In order to win the debate, the President has to make the case that the policy is a broader one than critics have claimed. That is to say, NASA’s options include proven rockets like the Delta IV and Atlas V, which are built by organizations whose experience goes back to the beginning of the Space Age. In other words, the Administration is not gambling the entire future of America’s human space flight program on a single entrepreneurial start-up with a rocket that has no flight experience.

This fact has gotten a bit lost as critics have defined the terms of the debate. President Obama will need to restate the policy clearly and reclaim the initiative. That way, if Falcon 9 succeeds on its first flight, that will be seen as a positive. If it doesn’t, the failure won’t be viewed as proof that the policy is doomed.

It might help if SpaceX and its always chatty founder, Elon Musk, maintain a low profile during the next month. It would give the Administration some room to make its case.  Critics have all but turned Musk into a poster child for the Administration’s alleged disregard of astronauts safety in its willingness to put them on untested rockets operated by commercial companies. This is unfair to Musk and SpaceX, and it is a distortion of the Administration’s human space flight policy. But, it is argument that has gained traction.  The more focus there is on SpaceX, the more the argument resonates.