SpaceX Scores With California Launch, Heads Toward Reusable Rockets

It takes about four hours to drive south from Silicon Valley to Vandenberg Air Force Base. Along the way, you pass dozens of California’s epic farms, Hearst Castle, and several picturesque coastal towns surrounded by forests of eucalyptus trees (why these got imported without the complementary koalas will forever baffle me). Finding the actual base is easy enough: Peel off Highway 101 for a few miles until you dead-end at the absurdly large complex. Kind, armed gentlemen will greet you.

These guards let me onto the grounds Sunday morning for a first-of-its-kind event. SpaceX, Elon Musk’s commercial space company, usually launches its payloads from the East Coast. This time, though, it chose California and Vandenberg for the launch of a Canadian weather satellite and to test some new technology on a revamped rocket design. At 9 a.m. the Falcon 9 rocket did just what it was supposed to and surged skyward. It looked like this.