Earlier this year, the Obama administration rolled out an aggressive new space policy, one that would reverse the Bush administration plan to have NASA design new rockets and spacecraft to travel back to the Moon; instead, NASA would rely on the private sector to develop commercial transportation systems for low Earth orbit, and allow NASA to subsequently focus on missions beyond low Earth orbit, based on savings from its current budget, due to the commercial acquisition of transportation services to orbit.
Ironically, the Republicans opposed commercial development of space, claiming that only a Public Option, ie NASA developed spacecraft and rockets, would be safe enough for astronauts, and besides, commercial spaceships were a fantasy.
Today, Obama's decision to depend on the private sector for space transportation was vindicated Big Time:
SpaceX commercial craft heads into space
More below
Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, has developed a commercial capability to send 7 people into orbit and return them. Apart from the soon-to-be-retired Shuttle, no space agency, including the Russians and Chinese have this capability (although the spacecraft orbited today had no crew, and was developed as a cargo vehicle, it virtually identical to the Dragon spacecraft intended to carry crew).
Apart from the successful Dragon spacecraft, SpaceX also successfully launched the Falcon 9 launch vehicle to carry Dragon into orbit. Falcon 9 has more capability than the Soyuz launcher which currently flies NASA astronauts. This is the 2nd launch of Falcon 9, which has a cost to NASA of about 5% of the Space Shuttle, and which carries the same size crew.
Elon's professed goal is to develop a Mars mission, and the next iteration of Falcon is to be sized large enough to support crewed Mars missions.
Today was a great day for space exploration, and Obama should get credit for supporting commercial space development against the heated opposition of the Republicans and ConservaDems.