California ? Trailing an orange pillar of flame, a rocket designed and built by a company founded by a Silicon Valley billionaire became the first privately developed, privately financed rocket to reach Earth’s orbit Sunday, potentially blazing a much cheaper pathway to space.

On its fourth attempt to reach orbit, the Falcon 1 rocket launched by Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the company founded by PayPal founder and Tesla Motors Chairman Elon Musk, reached orbit at 6:26 p.m. CDT, about 10 minutes after it was launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

The company, known as SpaceX, hopes to slash the cost of reaching Earth orbit by a factor of 10, seeding a burst of innovation that some believe will do for space what the Apple II did for computing.

Sunday’s flight was the fourth attempt by SpaceX to place its liquid-fueled Falcon 1 design into orbit. The third attempt failed Aug. 2, losing not only a Department of Defense payload, but also the ashes of more than 200 people, including astronaut Gordon Cooper and actor James Doohan, who played “Scotty” on “Star Trek.”