In a matter of days, Space Exploration Technologies, Inc. (aka SpaceX) has managed to win the Kentucky Derby (a flawless Falcon 9 rocket launch on May 22), followed by the Preakness (successfully berthing its Dragon space capsule to the International Space Station on May 25), and the Belmont (de-orbit of the Dragon capsule and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on May 31).
If this sequence of mission events sounds familiar to space fans, it's only because SpaceX has replicated NASA and Russian low-Earth orbit tasks that ought to be fairly routine after nearly 50 years of human space flight.
What makes SpaceX a thoroughbred race horse is that it has reached this "plateau" at a tiny fraction of the cost customarily appropriated by governments to do the job. It's an amazing feat given the complexity of the tasks and engineered systems themselves, but a phenomenal event because doing so has broken the space access monopoly held by governments since the dawn of the space age.
No good deed goes unpunished, however. Having exceeded all expectations for the Falcon/Dragon "test mission" at a fraction of the cost NASA would otherwise have paid, SpaceX will face stiff headwinds from political forces who are reluctant to cede access to the International Space Station to "for profit" uses and ventures that were unimaginable when governments controlled the territory known as Earth-orbital space.
As the debate unfolds, perhaps even in the presidential election season, over what private investments can be allowed to advance into space and share facilities like the space station or to visit the Moon, one must simply remember that space is-- above all else-- a human endeavor. What makes humans tick is the desire to manifest their inventions and creativity in places they have not been before, and by the way, reap all the heavenly financial and spiritual rewards they deserve.
It would be absurd to promote freedom and economic liberty on Earth only to leave our cherished principles behind simply because we break the bonds of gravity. As a "teaching moment" to politicians and economists, let the SpaceX Triple Crown achievements this month serve to inspire expanding the idea of human freedom into the cosmos.
