Quote Originally Posted by spqrzilla View Post
And just to increase people's understanding of just how screwed we are these days, the Atlas 5 that we use for most launches these days uses Russian RD 180 motors.
Speaking of which....

Last Friday, SpaceX (the company founder & CEO is Elon Musk of Paypal & Tesla Motors fame) performed a test launch/flight with a Falcon9 from a test range over Texas. Shortly after TO, the F9R systems sensed something wasn't right and executed an "Auto-termination explosion" during the test flight [See video embedded below]. There was supposed to be a launch this evening of another SpaceX Falcon9 rocket but it's been delayed 24 hours due to the failed test launch last Friday. If no one gets figgitty between now & then, it'l launch tomorrow night (SpaceX is notorious for repeatedly delaying their launches & executing/attempting to execute them on holidays - see Falcon9 SES8 launch attempt last Thanksgiving).



ETA: Corrected my text.