{"id":114898,"date":"2020-10-22T12:23:24","date_gmt":"2020-10-22T19:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/rocket-builder-firefly-aerospace-aims-for-first-launch-from-california-in-late-december-ceo-says"},"modified":"2020-10-23T00:24:02","modified_gmt":"2020-10-23T07:24:02","slug":"rocket-builder-firefly-aerospace-aims-for-first-launch-from-california-in-late-december-ceo-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/rocket-builder-firefly-aerospace-aims-for-first-launch-from-california-in-late-december-ceo-says","title":{"rendered":"Rocket builder Firefly Aerospace aims for first launch from California in late December, CEO says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/rocket-builder-firefly-aerospace-aims-for-first-launch-from-california-in-late-december-ceo-says2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Firefly Aerospace currently plans for its maiden Alpha rocket launch to happen as early as Dec. 22, co-founder and CEO Tom Markusic told CNBC, as his company prepares for the next major milestone in its plan to offer a variety of space transportation services.<\/p>\n<p>Markusic is confident in the launch date because of the \u201crigid\u201d requirements of Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where Firefly is finishing up work to prepare the launchpad at SLC-2. While \u201ceverything is susceptible to surprises,\u201d with room in the schedule to launch as late as Jan. 31, Markusic said the \u201cfull gamut of rules\u201d at Vandenberg means the company has put extra work into certification for Alpha\u2019s first launch.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe took the hard route to flight, and that was by going to a launch range that has very strict requirements,\u201d Markusic said. \u201cSo our design has been highly vetted, as we have a lot of requirements that are put on us by the range and that makes the rocket ultimately more reliable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Firefly Aerospace currently plans for its maiden Alpha rocket launch to happen as early as Dec. 22, co-founder and CEO Tom Markusic told CNBC, as his company prepares for the next major milestone in its plan to offer a variety of space transportation services. Markusic is confident in the launch date because of the \u201crigid\u201d [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114932,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114898\/revisions\/114932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}