Sunday special: SpaceX and founder aim for watershed launch

SpaceX plans to launch its Falcon 9 rocket on its first test flight next week, a big step in establishing a commercial spaceline to fly freight and passengers to the International Space Station.

The 180-foot rocket and a test model of the company's Dragon spacecraft are scheduled to blast off from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. on May 11.

For firm founder Elon Musk, it's showtime.

"We're super excited to be launching from Cape Canaveral," Musk said. "It's like opening on Broadway."

For others, the flight will be a measure of President Barack Obama's controversial plan to kill NASA's moon program -- dubbed Project Constellation -- and instead invest in developing commercial "space taxis" for astronauts traveling to and from low Earth orbit.

The plan is encountering opposition in Congress. The odds of success on the first launch of any new rocket are about 50-50. A failure would give ammunition to the plan's detractors.

"I hope people don't use us as a bellwether for commercial space," Musk said.

Read the rest of this story, by Todd Halvorson, from Sunday morning's newspaper.