<SpaceX just sent me their March/April news update. It mentions a couple of interesting points:

• Customers are beginning to line up, although interest in small satellites to LEO does not seem excessive.

• Now that real flight-weight hardware is firing on the test stand, it seems that their first rocket, the Falcon Explorer, will actually have a payload about 25% greater than first targeted, or about 1,250 lbs. to a 200km orbit launched from Cape Canaveral. The price will remain at $6 million per launch.

• Starting late next year, they will begin flying a version of the Falcon with liquid strap-on boosters, raising the LEO payload to 4,000 lbs and allowing for GTO launches of 1,300 lbs. They say that the configuration will be similar to the Delta-IV Heavy, so I presume they'll be using the recoverable first stage as a common core booster. This seems like a nice and easy way of working incrementally towards the much larger booster which they've promised for the future.

• And finally, the really exciting news. Elon musk writes thusly:

"I have been asked several times whether we intend to pursue human spaceflight. The answer is that SpaceX will definitely pursue that market in the long term. In fact, part of the reason why we have spent substantial capital on reliability -- some would argue more than is necessary for satellites -- is that we would like Falcon to be safe enough for human transportation. However, we believe it makes sense to prove reliability with satellites before putting people on the rocket. 99% reliability is considered exceptionally good in the satellite delivery world, but is not very satisfactory for people."

So, it now looks like there is somebody, with real money and resources and a business plan, now intending to put humans in LEO. I imagine he'll be looking at putting a reusable capsule/spaceplane atop the recoverable Falcon first stage. By the time he gets around to doing that, there will likely be a substantial pool of X-Prize contestants with significant experience in low-cost suborbital human spaceflight. Drawing on their experience, scaling their designs up to orbital flight, and using SpaceX's then-proven booster to get there -- suddenly this seems like a startlingly straightforward pathway for the private human expansion into space. Meanwhile, Robert Bigelow is off in Las Vegas figuring out how to give those humans someplace to go...

Folks, I think the Space Age might finally be beginning. This time it feels real, this time it'll work. (And nobody, as they say, will have to get nailed to anything.)

Cheers,

Nathan.