Private Space Flight

I'm going to have a hard time putting this into perspective (that's going to have to come in a later post). Spacex, the private space flight company, successfully launched their Falcon 9 rocket into earth's orbit Friday afternoon. For an account of the launch, check out spaceflightnow.com's blow by blow. The guiding principle behind privately funded space programs is that free market competition will help to advance human space exploration. Still, nobody is pretending that these sort of enterprises would be possible without NASA's huge body of work and expertise. Burt Rutan gave a TED Talk a while back about the potential of private space flight.