For the third time in just eight months an unmanned cargo ship bound for the International Space Station blew up just after launch yesterday. Space X, the company founded by Elon Musk, launched an unmanned Falcon 9 rocket yesterday, but it never got close to the International Space Station. Two minutes after leaving the launch pad, it blew up and scattered supplies, hardware and dozens of student science experiment in the sea off the coast of Florida. That raises questions about the future of America’s privatized space program. Ashlee Vance is a technology writer for Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the author of Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future.
Photo courtesy of NASA
Special thanks to Paul von Zielbauer for production assistance.