This last weekend was a monumental weekend for a company called SpaceX. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, who made his fortune from Paypal.
SpaceX is committed to developing and launching partially reusable rockets to put cargo and eventually people into Earth orbit.
This is a big deal because this is a private company, I repeat, a PRIVATE COMPANY! Putting people in orbit! ORBIT...around EARTH!
NASA likes them so much that in 2006 they were selected at one of two companies to provide crew and cargo resupply demonstration contracts to the International Space Station (ISS)...and with the Space Shuttle coming to an end and the Ares rockets looking like they won't be ready until 2015 or so, NASA just may need SpaceX to bring crew and cargo to the ISS. Sure beats paying the Russians $20 million for a Soyuz launch...
This past Saturday, after 3 unsuccessful launches, SpaceX was able to put a dummy satellite into Earth orbit, becoming the first, privately funded liquid fueled rocket to do so.
Please keep in mind that this private company has achieved that up until now, only countries have been able to do!
Here is the video of the launch...
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