FYI,

"PayPal Co-Founders Invest $20 Million in SpaceX"
SPACE.com
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080805/sc_space/paypalcofoundersinvest
20millioninspacex

: Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Chief Executive Elon
: Musk recently accepted a $20 million investment from Founders
: Fund, a $220 million venture capital firm managed by his fellow
: PayPal co-founders.

: "Founders Fund has a track record of investing in companies with
: the potential to revolutionize industries. We are pleased to be
: included in their portfolio and welcome [Founders Fund managing
: partner] Luke Nosek to our Board," Musk said in an Aug. 4
: statement. "Founders Fund shares the SpaceX vision of creating a
: world-class company that will shape the future through
: technological innovation."

: Nosek, like Musk and two of Founders Fund's other three managing
: partners, was a co-founder of PayPal, which was sold to online
: auctioneer eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

: Musk first mentioned an outside investment in an Aug. 2 message to
: employees released shortly after the Falcon 1 rocket's latest
: launch failure. The privately financed rocket has launched three
: times since March 2006 but has yet to reach orbit.

: In his message, Musk said he had accepted the investment "as a
: precautionary measure to guard against the possibility of flight 3
: not reaching orbit." Musk did not quantify the investment or
: identify the investor in that message, but said the money, combined
: with existing cash reserves, would enable SpaceX to continue
: launching Falcon 1 while developing the larger Falcon 9 rocket
: along with Dragon, a reusable capsule designed to carry cargo to
: the International Space Station.

: Falcon 1's latest launch occurred at 11:34 p.m. Eastern time
: following an earlier abort and appeared to be going well until a
: video transmission from the rocket stopped two minutes and 11
: seconds into the flight. A SpaceX announcer said there had been a
: vehicle anomaly and abruptly signed off. SpaceX officials later
: said the first and second stages of the rocket failed to separate.
: Musk has made no public statement since the launch failure beyond
: the message to employees, which was read to reporters and posted to
: the company's Web site.

: SpaceX spokeswoman Diane Murphy said Aug. 4 that the company would
: hold a media briefing "as soon as we have definitively determined
: what went wrong."

: According to U.S. Army Lt. Col. Harold A. Buhl, commander of the
: Army's Reagan Test Site in the Kwajalein Atoll, the rocket safely
: splashed down in the Pacific Ocean "well east" of the Marshall
: Islands.

: "There was no command flight termination action taken as the system
: ceased powered flight following the anomaly, and the track to
: splash was within the cleared maritime area," Buhl said in an
: Aug. 4 e-mail. "There was never any risk to personnel or property
: as the area was completely contained as open ocean — no habitated
: islands or aviation/shipping lanes."

: Lost in the failure was Trailblazer, an experimental satellite
: built by Poway, Calif.-based Space Dev for the Pentagon's
: Operationally Responsive Space Office, along with a NASA solar sail
: experiment and a payload adapter demonstration for the Malaysian
: space agency.

Mark Reiff