PayPal founder's "budget" rocket roars into space
A rocket funded by PayPal founder Elon Musk roared into space this morning and almost reached orbital velocity. The Falcon 1 rocket completed its five minute 200 mile journey and met "95%" of its objectives, according to Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corporation.
The flight wasn't completely successful and the rocket failed to reach orbital velocity. According to a statement issued by Space X, "The second stage didn't achieve full orbital velocity, due to a roll excitation late in the burn, but that should be a comparatively easy fix once we examine the flight data."
The Falcon 1 rocket is a two-stage rocket that uses liquid oxygen and rocket fuel-grade kerosene for fuel. Future satellite launches could be done on the cheap with Falcon 1 because it costs just $7 million dollars per launch which is about one-fifth the cost commercially established rocket launches.
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Humphrey Cheung was a senior editor at Tom's Hardware, covering a range of topics on computing and consumer electronics. You can find more of his work in many major publications, including CNN and FOX, to name a few.