*SpaceX rocket completes big test

Hawthorne-based Space Explorations Technologies, or SpaceX, is the first commercial company to send a rocket and capsule into space and bring the spacecraft safely back to Earth. The Dragon capsule was empty and unmanned for this morning's test, but the plan is to fill it in the next few months with cargo - and ultimately an astronaut to transport to the space station. It's kind of a big deal because the administration is relying on commercial space efforts as a way to free up NASA funds for loftier missions. By the way, SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk, who also developed the Tesla electric car. From the Washington Post:

The rocket is a pipsqueak compared with the space shuttle it will partially replace - measuring 157 feet with the capsule and weighing 735,000 pounds. The much larger shuttle was needed to fly parts up to the $100 billon international space station, but the fleet is being retired because of its age and because its job is largely done. Each shuttle flight costs about $1 billion, while the entire NASA contribution so far to SpaceX has been $253 million, according to NASA officials. On Monday, as the Soyuz-size rocket went through final testing, NASA officials praised the SpaceX effort as quicker and cheaper than previous NASA development projects. While the launch is several years late and over budget, the additional costs have been picked up by investors and the delay is much shorter than in previous programs.

Some backstory on Musk and SpaceX, from a 2007 Inc. magazine profile:

After SpaceX's third launch failure, Musk announced that the company was raising outside capital for the first time -- $20 million from the Founders Fund, a venture capital fund run by his former PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. The investment did two things: It showed that somebody other than Elon Musk believed he might succeed, and it gave him enough money for at least two more launches. Rocket companies normally spend months after a launch failure carefully reviewing what happened before they make their findings public. But just four days after the crash, Musk took to the SpaceX blog and wrote that he was "certain as to the origin of this problem." He planned to have a new rocket on the launching pad within a month. To industry veterans, the swiftness of the response was impressive -- and also a little frightening. "A lot of people were seriously questioning whether SpaceX could put everything together and have a successful launch," says Jeff Foust, an aerospace analyst with the Bethesda, Maryland, consulting firm Futron and the editor of The Space Review, an online journal that covers the industry. "If Elon had failed again, he would have been roundly criticized for not taking a more methodical approach. It was a bit of a bet on his part."

But SpaceX didn't fail. On September 28, 2008, Elon Musk's Falcon 1 rocket became the first privately funded spaceship to reach orbit from the ground. A grainy webcast shot from a camera mounted on the rocket showed the engine burning red above the blue Earth, while loud cheers from hundreds of employees echoed over the feed. In December, NASA announced that it had purchased 12 flights on Musk's new, larger rocket, the Falcon 9, to resupply cargo to the International Space Station; the contract was worth roughly $1.6 billion over seven years.