Scammer
Banned
Commercial space capsule test.
[video]http://cnn.com/video/?/video/us/2010/12/07/zarrella.spacex.launch.cnn[/video]
If all goes as planned, earthlings could witness the launch Wednesday of the first commercial spacecraft to orbit Earth and re-enter successfully.
The launch window for the first demonstration flight of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule will be from 9 a.m. to 12:22 p.m. ET at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, NASA said.
A successful launch and re-entry would be the latest steps toward commercial space ventures that could eventually ferry astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station.
In July, a test launch of the Falcon 9 rocket was "essentially a bullseye," SpaceX officials said after the rocket successfully pushed past the earth's atmosphere and deposited a mock-up of its Dragon space capsule in orbit.
NASA has been flying shuttles in low Earth orbit and going to and from the space station for 30 years. The government would like to see whether private companies can do it cheaper and more efficiently, as the shuttle program is about to fly into retirement.
NASA has selected SpaceX and another company, Orbital Sciences, to each develop an orbital vehicle because the United States will not have its own way to get to the space station. The United States will be renting space from the Russians aboard their Soyuz spacecraft.
But the competition is rabid. SpaceX is the first company to reach the launch pad. By this summer, it had spent almost $400 million to get there.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, said in July that if all goes well after a series of test flights, SpaceX will be ready to begin flying cargo to the space station next year.
If NASA awards SpaceX a contract, Musk says they can begin ferrying astronauts to the space station within three years.
He said his company is profitable, but his motivations go beyond dollars.
"We want to see a future where we are exploring the stars, where we're going to other planets, where we're doing the great things that we read about in science fiction and in the movies," he said at the time.
Live coverage of the Wednesday's launch will air on NASA Television and on the agency's website, NASA said.