Falcon 9 Blasts Off from Florida

Taking another step toward commercial manned space flight, a Falcon 9 rocket was launched from Kennedy Space Center Friday.

Built by SpaceX, a Silicon Valley-based company, the nine-engine, 180-foot rocket carried a mock-up of the company's spacecraft, named Dragon.

NASA, which funded the project with $1.6 billion, hopes to use the Falcon-Dragon vehicle for hauling cargo and, someday, astronauts to the International Space Station.

After several hours of technical difficulties, the SpaceX vehicle finally launched and then separated, sending the second stage into space at 2:49 p.m.

SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies, was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, a South African-born entrepreneur who co-founded PayPal.

The Pasadena, Calif.-based Planetary Society, which counts Musk as a board member, hailed the launch, saying, "Today's flight of Falcon 9 could be the first small step toward relieving NASA launchers of the burden of low-Earth orbit, thus freeing the U.S. space agency to reach new worlds.

"With this success for the commercial spaceflight industry, the United States is better positioned to ramp up its ambitions for exploring the solar system."