It makes me wonder how you deal with something like this. If something like this happened in Russia (or "somewhere"), and somehow the US didn't know about it, they would have jets up in the air and the whole country put on red alert as soon as they find out about a rocket being launched, I expect. Does SpaceX have to send letters out to the major nations of the world, or something? Or have I got all this out of movies and there's no real way to track recently launched missiles?
Oh dear. "the flight of our first stage, with the new Merlin 1C engine that will be used in Falcon 9, was picture perfect. Unfortunately, a problem occurred with stage separation, causing the stages to be held together. This is under investigation and I will send out a note as soon as we understand exactly what happened. "
That link (the comment this was referring to is now deleted) is to the second launch of the Falcon 1 which made it further than the launch today, which was the third launch. Today's launch only made it roughly 140 seconds (no stage separation) before the "anomaly".
Thanks. And it is sad. I was pretty much hoping to just be a smartass. I love the new space race, however slow it seems to be playing out. I went to the first SS1 launch. But traditional private rockets have a terrible history. I think Rutan's way is best.
It makes me wonder how you deal with something like this. If something like this happened in Russia (or "somewhere"), and somehow the US didn't know about it, they would have jets up in the air and the whole country put on red alert as soon as they find out about a rocket being launched, I expect. Does SpaceX have to send letters out to the major nations of the world, or something? Or have I got all this out of movies and there's no real way to track recently launched missiles?