Gadgetory

October 27 2012 SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launches into orbit why do I in case you're not familiar with SpaceX it's the company founded by tech entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk his goal is to revolutionize space transportation with the ultimate plan he says of enabling people to live on other planets seven billion people on earth now it will be 48 billion by the midpoint of the century so even if one in a million people decided to do that that's still 8,000 people the Falcon 9 rocket was designed and built under a 1.6 billion dollar contract with NASA the rocket is a hundred and fifty seven feet long and twelve feet in diameter the capsule on top of the rocket is named dragon and it measures 14 and a half feet tall Falcon has nine engines which generate 850 5,000 pounds of thrust at sea level it tops 1 million pounds of thrust as the rocket bursts out of the Earth's atmosphere the spacecraft can also carry up to 7 thousand pounds of cargo and here's another piece of trivia the Falcon name is an homage to Han Solo's Millennium Falcon love it when I visited Cape Canaveral Florida home to NASA's launch operations spacex was gearing up for its launch to send their capsule for a historic first delivery the Dragon capsule will ride into space on top of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket it'll deliver a thousand pounds of cargo to the International Space Station including ice cream and more importantly it will return with cargo that's something that previously could only be accomplished by a shuttle 3 the launch pretty much went off without a hitch dr. dine has cleared the tower one of the nine engines failed during blast-off but it still arrived safely at the International Space Station to deliver its payload weeks later the Dragon capsule returned to Earth and splashdown off the coast of Baja California this mission marks a major shift in the way that we travel into space in the future from government fun to travel to private enterprise and SpaceX and other companies have no intention of stopping at just delivering cargo eventually the company wants to send people into space with the same Dragon capsule their goal is manned test flights in 2015 and SpaceX is not alone in this endeavor billionaire Richard Branson has formed Virgin Galactic he's designed spaceship 2 and has plans to take space tourists into suborbital flight as early as next year spaceship 2 will launch via a larger aircraft instead of from the ground and passengers will be able to fly 60 miles into space and feel the sensation of weightlessness so while NASA and the space shuttle have been grounded the future of space is now in the hands of private enterprise and it looks like these companies are off to a pretty solid start