Heartiest congratulations to Elon Musk and the SpaceX team for a stunningly successful maiden flight of the Falcon-9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft demonstrator payload.

The vehicle was launched from LC40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 2:45EDT yesterday. Both stages appeared to function as designed, and placed the Dragon payload in an approximately 250km high orbit. Musk later reported that the rocket's second stage and dummy Dragon capsule hit "essentially a bullseye". The apogee, or high point, was about 1 percent higher than planned and the perigee, or low point, was 0.2 percent off.

Some minor technical issues were noticed, such as a slow roll of the upper stage starting at around T+6 minutes. The roll did not affect the trajectory performance. It also appears that the first stage broke up on re-entry, and was not able to be recovered. SpaceX will address these issues prior to the next mission, the first launch of a functional Dragon spacecraft for evaluation by NASA for ISS cargo resupply. That mission is currently scheduled for "this summer".

This is about the best Youtube video I've found of the launch so far:

More details and discussion:

• Falcon 9 booster rockets into orbit on dramatic first launch -- Spaceflight Now
• Falcon-9 Post-Flight Teleconference -- RLV News
• Shuttle successor succeeds in first test flight -- MSNBC
• SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket enjoys successful maiden flight -- BBC News

The Falcon-9 launch also caused a stir in Australia...

• Oh, those Falcon UFOs! -- Bad Astronomy

Update:
Some interesting nuggets from the post-flight telecon:

• SpaceX has spent $350-400M on Falcon 1 and 9, and another $150-200M on Dragon development, including NASA money and outside private investment.
• The launch escape system will be a 'pusher' attached to the base of the capsule, not a tractor (tower) system as with Apollo. The eventual intention is to use the LES for powered landings on land (as with Soyuz).
• Musk is in initial discussions with NASA on a public-private partnership for the development of a "super-heavy" lift vehicle. (Rocketeer: The current SpaceX test facilities at MacGregor in Texas are at least big enough to accommodate a launcher of Jarvis class).
• Musk will be announcing a number of major launch contracts shortly, including some which were signed before the F9 launch. (Rocketeer: There is speculation that this includes support for the Iridium NEXT telecoms constellation).
• SpaceX has been profitable for the past 3 years. Its current order book is worth $2.9 billion.
• Musk: It is my greatest hope that SpaceX will one day allow almost anyone to go to space.

Update II

If the stories about SpaceX's upcoming launch contracts are true, then there will be a cold wind blowing through the offices of ULA and Arianespace right about now. It is blatantly obvious that current large European aerospace contractors cannot compete with SpaceX on price (case in point: the cost of the Jules Verne ATV was more than twice as much as the entire SpaceX development programme: ground facilities, launchers and spacecraft).

Someone needs to lead development of European cheap access to space, to meet the competitive challenge of SpaceX.

It might as well be us.