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The primary mission was a success. The secondary mission was a failure. $10 million probably covers Orbcomm's launch costs.

SpaceX is awesome, but this isn't an unqualified win. There are groups out for SpaceX's head and they will try (unsuccessfully, I hope) to use this "engine incident" against them. SpaceX did not want this to happen at all.

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They shure didn't want this to happen but they also demonstrated they were able to manage engine failure. That's worth something for the future.

What groups? I haven't heard of any opposition to SpaceX. Heck, NASA contracts with them.

http://news.yahoo.com/spacexs-elon-musk-bemoans-opposition-c... talks a bit about it some.

SpaceX is dramatically lowering the cost of space launch. They are eating the lunch of dinosaur space companies who are only too happy to apply FUD that SpaceX is being "too cheap." There's a lot of money on the table being consumed by people who just have to keep on doing what they are doing and don't like competition.

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