Alex McColgan

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It would be pretty impressive if you somehow missed the news over this last weekend about the successful SpaceX NASA launch to the International Space Station.

Some of you may be wondering though, what is so significant about this?

We've been sending humans to space for a long time, and this trip isn't even to anywhere far away.

The ISS is only a few hundred kilometers above the surface of Earth, after all.

Well, there's a couple of things that make this exciting for space exploration, and space travel in general.

The obvious one, the one everyone has been talking about with every given opportunity, is that this marks the first time astronauts have lifted off from American soil since 2011, since the discontinuation of the space shuttle program.

This is significant, because it means the US is really back in the game now.

During this gap between the end of the space shuttle program and today, only the Russians had capabilities to send astronauts to space.

Every launch went via them and their Soyuz rocket, costing the US an estimated $86 million per seat.

Russia have put their price up over this last decade, perhaps cashing in on the fact that they had a monopoly on the market.

The lowest NASA paid Russia was $21.8 million per seat back in 2007, and the design of the Soyuz hasn't really changed since then.

Which brings us on to the second most significant part of this mission.

NASA has commissioned private contractors to build the next generation of manned launch vehicles and capsules.

The idea is that having some competition in this market will be a good thing for bringing prices down.

So, while the Russians have been charging $86 million per seat, SpaceX, on the other hand, will be charging about $55 million per seat initially.

As more orders come in, they expect to be able to reduce this price tag down further to the $10-20 million mark.

SpaceX can go so low because they utilise reusable boosters, which should reduce their overall cost considerably.

Another of the contractors, Boeing, are also testing their own capsule, although their price per seat will be considerably higher initially at $90 million.

SpaceX has had a big head start.