Although weather may keep the rocket grounded a bit longer - forecasters Wednesday predicted only a 20 percent chance of liftoff at the scheduled launch time of 2:41 a.m. ET due to clouds and possible rain - when the rocket does fly it also will mark the last Atlas mission at a historic, 40-year-old launch complex at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

There won't be much time for nostalgia, however. Startup commercial launch services firm Space Exploration Technologies, commonly known as SpaceX, already is in negotiations with the Air Force to take over Complex 36's two seaside launch pads, fueling depots and various assorted launch support equipment.

"Until the formal process is complete we cannot say the pad is ours," SpaceX founder Elon Musk said in an interview with the industry trade website SpaceflightNow.com. "But it's my understanding that there is no obstacle to us obtaining the launch pad. Unless something very unusual happens, we should receive it."

Musk, a 33-year-old Internet entrepreneur who sold his pioneering electronic payment system PayPal to ebay for $1.5 billion, is developing a low-cost family of rockets that, if successful, may topple the status quo for paying launch services.

SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket, named after the Star Wars Millennium Falcon fleet, is priced at $6 million, more than 75 percent less than the similarly-sized Pegasus booster built by Orbital Sciences Corp.

Though it has yet to prove itself in flight - the debut mission is expected next month from Vandenberg Air Force Station in California - the Falcon line already has garnered four customers, including a flight for the still-under-development Falcon 5 medium-lift booster.

Musk plans to bring both rockets to Florida and pursue NASA business. Payloads launched from Cape Canaveral can reach the International Space Station, a possible future market for SpaceX.

Coincidentally, the company's California launch site also was an abandoned Atlas pad.

Safety and environmental reviews for the Falcon rockets to fly from Florida are under way and expected to take six to 12 months, said Ken Warren, spokesman for the 45th Space Wing, based at Cape Canaveral.

Musk hopes to fly his first Falcon from Florida in 2007.

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