SpaceX Private Rocket Shifts to Island Launch

space.com ^ | 08/12/05 | Leonard David

[KevinDavis]

LOGAN, Utah—Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) of El Segundo, California is putting in place private rocket facilities at a Kwajalein Atoll launch area in the western Pacific Ocean.

Yet the going has been tough for the private start-up, bankrolled by Elon Musk, chairman and chief executive officer of SpaceX.

First, the group’s hoped for premier takeoff of the Falcon 1 booster at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California was stymied by an on-going delay of a Titan 4 rocket launch carrying a classified payload. That booster—the last to fly from Vandenberg—remains ground-bound and won’t be airborne until this October, if then.

The Falcon 1 at Vandenberg was being readied to loft TacSat-1, a satellite built and integrated by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory for the Pentagon’s Office of Force Transformation

[KevinDavis]

[Rebelbase]

Wasn't Kwajalein lagoon an atomic test site going back to the mid 40's?

[KevinDavis]

I don't know...

[Doug Loss]

Kwajalein was the target site for pretty much all ICBM test launches. It was considered the most accurately surveyed piece of real-estate on the planet. That's why most ICBM accuracy numbers had to be taken with a grain of salt. They were measured against Kwajalein, where you knew exactly where things were. Anywhere else, you didn't have that info within a couple of orders of magnitude.

[ASOC]

Huummm, wonder if they are hiring, KRS has posted a lot of new jobs as well.