Spacex Falcon 9

When NASA retires the space shuttle next year, the only American-owned option the U.S. government will have for getting cargo to the International Space Station is to ride with a private spaceflight company. Such an arrangement became viable in June, when SpaceX’s Falcon 9 — a 180-foot, kerosene-and-liquid oxygen-fueled rocket capable of delivering six metric tons of cargo or seven astronauts to orbit—made its maiden voyage to space.
SpaceX engineers designed nearly every piece of the rocket from scratch, and made the Falcon 9 affordable enough that the company will haul cargo to space for $133 million per trip, compared with $450 million for each space-shuttle flight. SpaceX could begin regular cargo flights to the ISS as early as next year. spacex.com