Falcon 1 orbits the Earth

Rocketing To StardomBy now we should all be nipping to work by using our personalised jet-packs or magnificent hoverboards, eating three course meals in pill form and spending all our vacation time on the moon or other orbiting structure. But no. None of that has happened. The future is very disappointing indeed. In terms of intergalactic holiday plans, that technology still seems to be a few years off. But it took a great leap forward on this day in 2008 when the Falcon 1 spacecraft became the first privately funded rocket to go into orbit around the Earth, thanks to the Space X organisation.It had always been the dream of Space X and its founder Elon Musk to reduce the cost of space flight and eventually use those cheaper technologies to send a colony of people to Mars. That’s more like it! But unfortunately, despite the successes of Falcon 1, we won’t be taking that particular vehicle for our trip to the Red Planet. Space X ditched the design in favour of the Falcon 9 (we don’t know what happened to the other 7 Falcons) which has completed many successful space missions.