More space for the day

Kenneth Chang has an article in The New York Times about SpaceX:

An unmanned rocket carrying equipment and supplies for the International Space Station reached orbit on Saturday morning, but an audacious attempt to land the rocket’s first stage on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean was unsuccessful.
With a brilliant burst of flames, the Falcon 9 rocket, built and operated by Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX, roared into the predawn sky (photo) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
“Orbit is nominal,” George Diller, the launch commentator, said on NASA Television about fifteen minutes later. “Nothing is amiss.”
It was the fifth mission under a two billion dollar contract with NASA. The cargo capsule on top of the rocket, with more than five thousand pounds of payload, is to arrive at the space station on Monday.
The landing platform, which is three hundred by a hundred and seventy feet, was floating in the Atlantic Ocean about two hundred miles east of Jacksonville, Florida. Elon Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX, wrote on Twitter that the attempt to land the first stage on a platform in the ocean, in the hope that it could be used again, failed. “Close, but no cigar this time,” Musk wrote.
After the first stage separated, its engines fired again to turn it around and bring it into a controlled descent. SpaceX had tried similar maneuvers on three earlier flights and twice had slowed the fourteen-story-tall rocket stage to hover over the ocean before it toppled over and broke apart.
This time, SpaceX placed a platform in the ocean. The company also added “grid fins” to the side of the rocket to steer it precisely to the platform. Musk had guessed that the chance of success on the first try would be fifty-fifty at best. SpaceX staff members observed the landing attempt from a safe distance away on a second ship. In the early morning darkness, SpaceX did not get a good video recording of the landing attempt, Musk said. “Will piece it together from telemetry and ... actual pieces,” Musk wrote.
If recovering the first stages of rockets like the Falcon 9 proves viable, the cost of future launches could be greatly reduced.
The launch had been scheduled for 19 December 2014, but was postponed to 6 January 2015 after a test firing of the rocket engines was cut short. The 6 January attempt was called off with less than ninety seconds left in the countdown because of a problem with the steering mechanism on the second stage. On Saturday, the launch appeared flawless.
The cargo includes the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System, an instrument that is to measure the distribution of clouds, dust, smoke, and other particles in the atmosphere. The information will aid computer models of the planet’s changing climate.
The capsule is also carrying passengers: flatworms and fruit flies. The two species are well-studied organisms on Earth, and scientists are hoping to understand how the biological processes change in the absence of gravity. Also aboard are student experiments to replace those that were destroyed when a cargo rocket built by the Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Virginia exploded in October of 2014.
NASA hired SpaceX and Orbital to ferry supplies to the space station, part of an effort to reduce costs and spur the private space industry.
Until Orbital can resume flights— it plans to launch the next two missions using a competitor’s rocket, the Atlas 5, from the United Launch Alliance— NASA will have to rely on SpaceX. The Russians continue to launch Progress cargo ships to the space station as well.
After a month at the space station, the SpaceX capsule will return to Earth, parachuting into the Pacific Ocean with experiments, equipment, and trash.

Rico says he hopes Musk can pull this off; cool video, if nothing else...