An interesting Kickstarter project.

Via (former co-blogger) Andrew Case, who writes:

It will be interesting to see if crowd funding of space projects is viable. I know that there’s a guy who successfully funded a project to study a lunar space elevator, but as far as I know this is the first that is focused on something practical that has a real chance of flying in the short term.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the subject.

I think it’s very viable, and a useful model for the future. It will be even better when we can start crowd funding actual businesses via the JOBS Act, and not just technology development.

[Late evening update]

Yeah, I know, I know. I was gone all day, and Trent provided it in comments, but here’s the link.

[Update a few minutes later]

Ignore my response to Paul Breed in comments. Doug Messier is now reporting that the engine exploded. If so, that puts a different complexion on things, but it still proves out their engine-out capability for the first stage, including shrapnel shield. The question is, as Paul notes, what are the differences between first and second-stage Merlins, if any, that can give us confidence in the second-stage reliability? Also, what would have happened to the Dragon had it happened on second stage? Just a loss of thrust, or an explosion of the entire stage (that is, would the explosion have taken out the tanks above as well, or does it have a similar shrapnel shield)?

In terms of commercial crew, the former wouldn’t necessarily require an abort system, and the latter probably wouldn’t be helped by one, unless there was sufficient warning to activate it. So it will be interesting to know from telemetry how soon they knew the engine was going south.