SpaceX ship launches into orbit

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. » A rocket ship built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company thundered away from Earth with two Americans on Saturday, ushering in a new era in commercial space travel and putting the United States back in the business of launching astronauts into orbit from U.S. soil for the first time in nearly a decade.

NASA’s Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken rode skyward aboard a white-and-black, bullet-shaped Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off at 3:22 p.m. from the same launch pad used to send Apollo crews to the moon a half-century ago. Minutes later, they slipped safely into orbit.

“Let’s light this candle,” Hurley said just before ignition, borrowing the words used by Alan Shepard on America’s first human spaceflight, in 1961.

The two men are scheduled to arrive Sunday at the International Space Station, 250 miles above Earth, to join three crew members already there. After a stay of up to four months, they will come home with a Right Stuff-style splashdown at sea, something the world hasn’t witnessed since the 1970s.

Doug Marshburn, of Deltona, Florida, shouted: “USA! USA!” as he watched the 260-foot rocket climb skyward.

“I’m very proud of the United States. We are back in the game. It’s very satisfying,” he said.

SpaceX became the first private company to launch people into orbit, a feat achieved previously by only three governments: the U.S., Russia and China.