SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket achieved Earth orbit nine minutes into the flight as planned, drawing praise from NASA, the White House and others eager for the company to start resupplying the International Space Station.
"This has really been a fantastic day," said an exuberant Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder. He said Friday's launch helps vindicate President Barack Obama's plan to give private companies the job of ferrying cargo and ultimately people to the space station, freeing up NASA to aim for true outer space.
"This bodes very well for the Obama plan," said Musk, the co-founder of PayPal. "It shows that even a sort of small new company like SpaceX can make a real difference." In a telephone news conference, Musk said celebratory margaritas were on his immediate radar. But he's already looking ahead to the next Falcon 9 launch this summer and, hopefully, the first cargo run to the space station next year. Astronauts could follow within three years of the company getting a contract from NASA, he said, and quite possibly average citizens in five to six years.
"This is the dawn of a new era in space exploration, I think a very exciting era and one which I think will lead to the democratization of space, making space accessible to everyone eventually," Musk said. "Yeah, I think this is really a historic moment." SpaceX's brand new rocket soared off its launch pad into thin clouds at mid-afternoon, carrying a test version of the company's spacecraft, named Dragon. The goal was to put the capsule into a 155-mile-high orbit, which it did. The capsule will remain in orbit for a year before descending and burning up in the atmosphere.
"A near bull's-eye," Musk said.
