SpaceX Falcon 1Today, history was made. A privately funded company achieved a successful orbital flight of their original and independently developed two stage, liquid oxygen and rocket grade kerosene powered launch vehicle.

Why does it matter? Because for years many individuals have been saying that this wouldn’t (and couldn’t) happen, that private industry did not have the resources nor means to develop the technology necessary to rival the big budgets of governments. This provides an opportunity for an entire industry to emerge out of nothing, for an industry to come about that will provide a cheap, safe, efficient way of transporting people and cargo into orbit.

More importantly, today’s event will create competition. Other companies will spring up with better, cheaper, faster ways of performing the same feat. They’ll be able to carry more payload, transport humans, and make money. In fact, it’s highly likely that SpaceX will have to work very hard in order to stay competitive.

After speaking with a friend about this today, my friend remained skeptical. So I looked up the following figure, and will leave you with it. In 1954, Sir Roger Bannister broke what was said to be an “impossible-to-beat” world record by running 1 mile in less than 4 minutes, at 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.

That record was broken 6 weeks later.