SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket may launch February 2, 2010

Looks like we may have the final launch date of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which has been under development for quite some time now. SpaceX has had two successful launches of the Falcon 1 rocket so far along with some tantalizingly close but not quite successful launches before those, and so hopefully they will be able to pull this one off as well. The Falcon 9 is a much larger and more complex rocket than the Falcon 1 though, as the comparison between the two shows:

On the other hand, they do use the exact same engines which is a plus, much better than having to develop a completely new engine for the larger Falcon 9.

A nice image of the Falcon 9 showing its size in comparison to a truck and a few other objects on the ground can be seen here, much larger than this image of the Falcon 1 where humans standing next to it are much larger in comparison.

I don't recommend reading the comments below the first link, by the way - it's just the same people arguing the same thing they always do. NASA sucks, the private space industry sucks, everything sucks, you suck sums them all up quite concisely. More intelligent discussion on the same topics can be found in the forums so I recommend going there instead.