SpaceX to break the final frontier in reuse with national defense launch

Enlarge / The GPS III SV-05 vehicle is encapsulated in the Falcon 9 rocket's payload fairing. (credit: Lockheed Martin)

A few years ago one of SpaceX's earliest employees, Hans Koenigsmann, told me one of the company's goals was to take the "magic" out of rocket launches. It's just physics, he explained.

As its Falcon 9 rocket has become more reliable and flown more frequently-18 launches so far this year, and counting-it seems that SpaceX has succeeded in taking the magic out of launches. And while reliability should definitely be the goal, such regularity does distract from the spectacle of watching a rocket launch.

But there are still some special Falcon 9 missions, and that's certainly the case with a launch expected to occur at 12:09 pm ET (16:09 UTC) on Thursday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. With the launch of a next-generation GPS III spacecraft, SpaceX will fly a national security mission for the first time on a reused booster.

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments