And this is largely because the company is entirely commercial. They build rockets and spacecraft to their own specs not based on government contracts and to government rules and specifications. They have built an entire orbital launch vehicle which is competitive in capabilities to the Ariane 5, the Delta IV, the Atlas V, and the Proton M, all of which took enormous government programs and billions of dollars to develop. SpaceX build their rocket from scratch for less than half a billion dollars all told. That is revolutionary.

More so, they are only the 4th entity in the world who has succeeded in any degree in creating and launching an orbital spacecraft that is capable of being manned and they are almost certain to be the first non-government entity in history to launch astronauts into orbit.

And that is just the prelude. They are also working on the Falcon Heavy, which will provide extra capability and far lower costs than the Falcon 9. And they are working on a fully reusable launch vehicle from the 1st stage up through the crew capsule, which would revolutionize manned spaceflight in a way that we can scarcely imagine today.

"we usually spend years to build something to put into orbit, even though 99% of the work is done in six months, because we have to be 1000% sure it will work, as it is too expensive to try again. If we can send something into space for a tenth of the current cost it means we can do it much more often, do more things, and do it faster."

So, I guess it's like low cost airlines did not change the flight industry (you could go from A to B even before) but they changed the game cause now it's a smaller deal to do it.

and hell yes, I stayed up to see it live!!