The successful launch - on the first attempt, no less - is a great achievement but these statements are rather premature. Musk said himself that he'll consider SpaceX a failure if it doesn't achieve a fully reusable rocket, which is essential to their operation. There's a lot to do there - especially with recovering the second stage.

Also, other companies like United Launch Alliance are probably worried since any competitor to the field is going to only make things more difficult to them but the U.S. has been losing launch market share for years to the Russians and Ariane. But I wouldn't expect to see payload customers beating down SpaceX's door Monday morning. One in a row is not a track record that is equivalent to the Atlas V or Delta IV launch vehicle families and most will not be willing to risk an expensive satellite or two until further reliability is demonstrated, even with a factor of 2 reduction in dollars/pound to orbit that SpaceX is aiming for.

I did not say that. I said there is more to the (successful launch of the) Falcon 9 than just running the engines in parallel as you asserted.

I'm confused by your "Never had an issue with it" comment then because you list things they have had issues with. If it weren't tough to do multiple engines on the same stage, the N-1 would have worked. I'm familiar with SpaceX but I'm not privy to the details of their test campaigns. Sure, they've done a number of full duration test fires of their full engine - it would be foolish not to. But as I said, there's only so much that can tell you. Your only real indication of whether or not it's going to work is to go launch it.

We'll soon see but, back to my original point, if it's anything less than achieving the intended orbit, the politicians benefiting from Constellation will use it against the proposed changes at NASA.

I couldn't agree more.

I simply disagree. There is far more to the Falcon 9 than just ganging together engines and while the Falcon 1 was an important step it had much less energy, mass, and size than the Falcon 9. I also don't believe that they never had an issue in a single Falcon 9 Stage 1 test. They may never have had one that blew itself apart or was otherwise significantly damaged but I have a hard time imagining that they simply added 8 more engines and it ran right from the first test fire. And SpaceX's own track record will tell you that test fires will only tell you so much and some problems will only become apparent when you go off to fly it. I very much hope they succeed in this first flight of the Falcon 9 but I think it is far from a safe bet that they will.

True, getting cargo to the ISS isn't a big jump in capability given that the Russians have been doing this for years and last year the Airane launched the ATV which docked with the ISS. It would be beneficial (as well as cheaper) to have the ability to do so domestically for not only keeping tax dollars within the U.S. economy but also from the standpoint of maintaining the U.S. rocket industrial base. However, if this launch goes poorly - and there's a decent chance it will considering the challenges and newness of the vehicle - there will be a good number of politicians from Alabama, Florida, and Texas pointing to the failure as indicative of the challenge being above commercial space companies' capabilities, even though the Atlas and Delta have been flying for decades but had initial setbacks too.

I considered the iLiad for my business eReader since it had a large display and touch screen with note taking ability. But with a short battery life, long boot time, and high price, I figured if all three of those things were acceptable, I'd just get a tablet, which would also allow full web, email, and other applications.

I use a Kindle DX for work all the time and have no issues with DRM since I can put whatever I want on it (in PDF but there may be other formats this works with) via USB. If you are worried about "1984"-like issues, you don't even have to turn the wireless on - mine's been off for months. If, however, you want the convenience of purchasing books through their store, then you are locked into their DRM for that purchase no different than a purchase from iTunes.

We have had a number of launch vehicles that have used only liquid propellants:
Redstone/Jupiter http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/redstone.htm [astronautix.com]
Titan http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/titan2.htm [astronautix.com]
Saturn http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/saturnv.htm [astronautix.com]

But, today, all of the current US boosters use a combination solid motors and liquid engines:
Space Shuttle http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/shuttle.htm [astronautix.com]
Delta http://www.astronautix.com/engines/ssme.htm [astronautix.com]
Atlas http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/atlasv.htm [astronautix.com]

The selection of propellant type and combination are the result of a number of design trade-offs. Liquid propellants have much higher performance but also require a lot more inert mass (in the form of turbopumps or pressurization systems, tanks, cooling systems, etc.) than solid motors do. Solid propellants are more dangerous since you have both propellants mixed together (subject to ignition/explosion/detonation due to bullet impact/cook-off/drop/electrostatic discharge/etc.) but they are also very storable compared to cryogenic propellants thus they are often used in most military applications.

That said, it is worth noting that the so-called "New Space" companies developing rockets are using liquid or hybrid (liquid oxidizer/solid fuel) propulsion systems, which at least preliminarily indicates that the extra mass and complexity are worth the performance, safety and infrastructure advantages in a consumer-based market.