New era lacks the drama that defined legendary space race

It will be 50 years in September since President John F. Kennedy gave a speech at Rice Stadium in Houston extolling the benefits of space flight and doubling down on his pledge to put a man on the moon within eight years. It should be remembered that the United States had only put a man in space in May 1961 and its first man in orbit in February 1962.

And yet Kennedy had the confidence — perhaps the audacity — to proclaim: “We choose to go to the moon, we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

Kennedy never got to see his prediction come true, but it did. Neil Armstrong stepped out of the lunar lander and onto the surface of the moon July 21, 1969. Armstrong and his crew mates, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin, safely splashed down July 24.

That flight — and hundreds of rocket launches and exploratory flights that came after it — made history. Much of that history was written in the context of a space race between the two global rivals of the late 20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union. The race was effectively over before half of today’s U.S. population was born.

So perhaps it is only those of a certain age who recognize what a dramatic shift in space history occurred Tuesday when the Falcon 9 rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral, carrying a load of groceries and supplies to American and Russian astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

A new creature

Falcon 9 is not a U.S. rocket. Or a Russian rocket. It is a commercial venture, owned by SpaceX company. And while the reaction to the first U.S. astronaut sent into orbit was “Godspeed, John Glenn,” the reaction of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, was: “For us, it’s like winning the Super Bowl.”

And that may be fine with most Americans, especially those born after the first U.S.-Soviet joint space flight in 1975, and tens of millions of others who were never that enamored of space flight or thought (wrongly, in our view) that it was a monumental waste of money.

The privatization of space and the abandonment of the U.S. space shuttle program was drafted during the administration of President George W. Bush and executed during that of President Barack Obama.

Perhaps it’s a natural progression for a populace that has become more and more suspicious of “big government.” Fifty years ago, Kennedy spoke of the government’s space effort, still in its infancy, yet already seen as the creator of “a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs.” Yesterday’s launch represents the ultimate shift, from companies depending on NASA to NASA depending on companies.

Perhaps that is the wave of the future, with profit motive providing the only spark that is needed to ignite the next generation’s journey into space.

Or perhaps a 21st century space race between, say, China and the United States will bring another shift in the paradigm.