Privately Owned Rockey Successfully Launches

The New York Times reports on a positive development for privately funded spaceflight:

The first flight of a privately developed rocket that may eventually carry NASA astronauts to space took off Friday afternoon and reached orbit in what appeared to be a nearly flawless trip.

The Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, SpaceX for short, launched the 154-foot, 735,000-pound Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, heading east over the Atlantic. The nine first-stage engines ignited at 2:45 p.m. and burned for three minutes before dropping into the ocean while the second-stage engines burned about six minutes to place a dummy payload capsule almost perfectly into the target orbit 155 miles above the Earth.

“We achieved 100 percent of our objectives on the mission,” said Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and chief executive.

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