For the last half-century, space flight has been the domain of the world's superpowers.

All that is set to change as soon as Saturday when SpaceX, the private rocket company in Hawthorne, will attempt to launch a spaceship with cargo into orbit and three days later dock it with the International Space Station.

If successful, the mission could mean a major shift in the way the U.S. government handles space exploration. Instead of keeping space travel a closely guarded government function, NASA has already begun hiring privately funded start-up companies for spacecraft development and is moving toward eventually outsourcing NASA space missions.

PHOTOS: A private spaceship launch

The upcoming launch is "the first step in the handoff" to private industry, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "Everybody realizes the importance of this mission," he said. "Nobody will be rooting against SpaceX."

But if the mission fails, it could trigger serious doubts about NASA's decision to hand these responsibilities to a fledgling private space industry. Doubters have already begun to raise questions. Some former astronauts, members of Congress and space experts say the current plan to subcontract space missions is foolhardy. They say the plan is risky and that outer space is no place to roll the dice on unproven companies.

On launch day, it falls to SpaceX and its 40-year-old billionaire founder, Elon Musk, to prove they're prepared.

With SpaceX engineers at the controls in Hawthorne, a towering rocket will blast off from a launch pad about 2,600 miles away in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and lift a gumdrop-shaped space capsule with a half-ton of food, water and other supplies up to the crew aboard the orbiting space station.

But delivering cargo isn't the key mission the space station is well-provisioned. The main purpose is to demonstrate that the space capsule can rendezvous with the $100-billion orbiting outpost and link up with the space station's onboard computers. If all goes well, the crew aboard the space station will snag the spacecraft with a robotic arm and lead it in for docking. Weeks later it will be released and sent back to Earth.

"We're ready to take that next step," Musk said. "It's been a long road to this point."

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A new frontier for space travel