Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX launched two NASA astronauts into space Saturday afternoon at 3:22pm (19:22 GMT), making the company the first commercial entity ever to achieve such a feat.

On Wednesday, weather, specifically the threat of lightning, forced the SpaceX and NASA teams to scrub the original launch date. .

When the Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon-9 rocket blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center's launchpad 39A, in Florida, it took the United States into a new commercial era of human spaceflight.

Commercial spaceflight," said Bob Cabana, the space centre's, and former NASA astronaut. .

And Commercial Crew with both SpaceX and Boeing, that's the beginning of a whole new era of spaceflight," Cabana said. .

If SpaceX is successful, Demo-2 will pave the way for NASA to certify the company's Crew Dragon - Falcon-9 space transportation system for human spaceflight to and from the International Space Station (ISS) and other low Earth orbit destinations. .

Some 12 minutes after liftoff, the Crew Dragon inserted NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley reached their initial orbit.

What is new is how NASA intends to shrink the cost of launch through its Commercial Crew programme. .

Since the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011, NASA and the European Space Agency have shelled out enormous sums of taxpayer monies to their send astronauts to the ISS on board Russia's Soyuz launch system, because the Soyuz was literally the only option - a seller's market.

The year 2017 is notable, because despite NASA having spent money, effort and political capital to support its Commercial Crew program, Space X and its competitor Boeing Co, missed that year's aspirational deadline to start commercial human transportation services to and from the ISS. 

Boeing Co, which hopes to soon join SpaceX in providing commercial human transportation services, is currently readying itself to re-do its orbital flight test

The NASA OIG also reported the Commercial Crew contracts were worth $6.8bn, with Boeing accounting for $4.3bn, and its competitor SpaceX garnering roughly $2.5bn

While Starliner is still working out the issues, SpaceX intends to not only take professional astronauts up to the ISS, but has started to book tourists, as well. Axiom Space has reportedly started selling Crew Dragon seats and a 10-day stay on board the ISS, with a blast-off date in the second half of 2021