A frustrating scrub Saturday ended the first shot at launching the privately-developed Falcon 1 rocket, delaying until sometime in December the debut mission of this new low-cost booster fleet that could revolutionize the space marketplace.

The Falcon 1 rocket stands atop the launch pad built on Omelek Island in the Central Pacific. Credit: Thom Rogers/SpaceX

Space Exploration Technologies was hoping to get its initial rocket into orbit from Omelek Island, a tiny dot of land among the Kwajalein Atoll located in the Central Pacific Ocean. Technical snags with ground fueling equipment at the launch pad, however, thwarted efforts to ready the 70-foot tall vehicle for its planned liftoff.

"As I warned, the likelihood of an all new rocket launching from an all new launch pad on its first attempt is low," SpaceX founder Elon Musk said following the scrub.

It was a confusing day with conflicting information and spotty communications for reporters trying to cover the historic flight via SpaceX headquarters.

Launch had been scheduled for 4 p.m. EST (2100 GMT). That time was pushed back an hour, then even more as the 25-person launch team wrestled with equipment glitches.

As countdown clocks finally moved closer to liftoff, it was determined that a valve on an auxiliary liquid oxygen supply tank at the pad was incorrectly set to the venting position. The valve must be adjusted manually, forcing a crew to take a boat to Omelek Island from their safe fallback position for the hands-on fix.

The team was racing to get the valve closed to prevent too much super cold liquid oxygen from escaping, which would cause a lengthy delay to resupply the pad commodities.

The valve was fixed and liquid oxygen reserves were transferred from low-pressure tanks to the high-pressure tanks used for refueling the rocket. The cryogenic oxidizer naturally boils away aboard the rocket, requiring replenishment through the countdown.

The rocket's Merlin first stage and Kestrel second stage engines consume the liquid oxygen and a highly refined kerosene propellant during the flight.

The Falcon 1 rocket stands atop the launch pad built on Omelek Island in the Central Pacific. Credit: Thom Rogers/SpaceX

Clocks were reset for liftoff at 8 p.m. EST (0100 GMT). However, the rocket servicing by the ground systems was too affected from the earlier problem to continue with the launch attempt.

"The time it took to correct the problem resulted in significant LOX boil off and loss of helium, and it was the latter that caused the launch abort. LOX is used to chill the helium bottles, so we lose helium if there is no LOX to cool the bottles," Musk explained.

Helium is used for pressurization.

"Although we were eventually able to refill the vehicle LOX tanks, the rate at which we could add helium was slower than the rate at which LOX was boiling away. There was no way to close the gap, so the launch had to be called off."

Further complicating matters, the main engine computer experienced a reboot that needed additional investigating to fully understand, which Musk said was "arguably reason in and of itself to postpone launch."

When the launch can be rescheduled hinges on getting more helium and liquid oxygen delivered to Omelek from the U.S. The earliest time frame for another launch try is mid-December.

Musk told reporters at a pre-launch news conference that getting supplies like cryogenic oxidizer to the Kwajalein launch site in the Central Pacific was not easy.

"It's really quite challenging to establish a launch site 5,000 miles away on a tiny island in an atoll in the Pacific. It is a logistics challenge, a technical challenge. We have to transport liquid oxygen at minus 300 degrees F to a tropical island," he said.

SpaceX chose the Kwajalein site because of its close proximity to the equator, allowing Falcon rockets to use the Earth's rotation as an advantage to launching heavier payloads. The expanse of the ocean also allows the rockets freedom to fly in the different directions needed to reach a wide range of orbits -- from polar to equatorial. That's something not possible from U.S. sites like Florida's Cape Canaveral or California's Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Falcon will launch from this seven-acre island named Omelek. Credit: SpaceX See a larger image here

The Falcon 1 booster is SpaceX's first rocket -- one capable of hauling small payloads into space. But it serves as the foundation for the company's development of significantly larger vehicles for lofting heftier cargos.

Musk has invested a large stake of his own money in creating the Falcon family that promises to dramatically reduce launch costs and improve reliability over existing rockets.

The Falcon 1 is being sold for $6.7 million, a Falcon 5 for $18 million, and the Falcon 9 varies from $27 million for medium-lift to $78 million for the heavy-class rocket. The prices appear substantially cheaper than existing U.S. rockets on the market today.

This first mission carries a cadet-built science spacecraft for the Air Force Academy. It also serves as a demonstration flight for the military's DARPA research agency.

SpaceX has a mixture of government and commercial orders for a half-dozen Falcon 1 missions, two Falcon 9 vehicles and a $100 million launch services deal with the Air Force.

The company expects to conduct three Falcon 1 launches during the next 12 months.

"We had to sign those launches up before there was any evidence that we could put something in space," Musk said, adding he was optimistic about attracting more customers after achieving the first successful launch.