Corporations In Space!

In other breaking space news, SpaceX's privately developed rocket became the first of its kind to make it into space, following up on SpaceShipOne's suborbital flight in 2004. The launch of the rocket was shown live from Kwajalain Atoll in the Pacific. They attached a camera to the side of the vehicle, following it all the way up into space!

You can ride a rocket into space with the spectacular footage that can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To-XOPgaGsQ

It's a little early to tell, but so far this has gotten even less American media coverage than the Chinese spacewalk, failing to even make the front page at CNN.com. This is unfortunate, because, if space travel is to have any role in the future of humanity (which, in my opinion, it must), then that travel will be done by private companies, not governments. Space needs to be profitable before it can become a part of normal life.

To that end, the stated goal of SpaceX is to make space travel ten times cheaper and more reliable. There is still a long way to go, as the company's first three attempts with its Falcon rocket failed for various reasons before reaching orbit. This particular launch, however, ended on a very high note, the company learning from its past mistakes and improving on its technology. SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk, who make his fortune as co-founder of PayPal. The company says it has vehicles in development for both manned space travel and boosting heavy-duty payloads into orbit... for a fee, of course.

Who knows, maybe someday within our lifetimes, you or I, regular people, really will stand on the moon. And I find it much more likely that I'll be riding a ship with the SpaceX corporate logo on the side than one with the USA flag.