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On February 8, 2018, the eyes of the world once again, fixed upon Cape Canaveral.

This time people watched with anticipation as SpaceX launched its new Falcon Heavy rocket.

The near-simultaneous landing of its two booster rockets was like something out of a sci-fi flick.

It looked like the future.

The subsequent view of a cherry red Tesla Roadster drifting through space was like something out of a Douglas Adams novel.

The landmark launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket is a milestone in a new space race, not one between nations, but instead between private companies.

Is this the best thing for the future of human space travel?

[MUSIC PLAYING] 19 00:00:53,370 --> 00:00:56,099 The private funding of space is not something new.

In fact, this was the case in the beginning of rocketry.

Robert Goddard, the father of rocketry funded his research out of his own paycheck.

The idea of governments funding private aerospace companies is also not new.

In fact, modern commercial air flight is a direct result of this relationship.

World War I spurred great leaps in airline technology and manufacturing capability.

To encourage commercial use of this new capacity, the US Congress passed the Air Mail Act of 1925.

Private companies quickly took over the air mail industry.

This spurred more technological and business innovation.

And before long, commercial passenger flights became a thing, a big, big thing.

Just as with air flight, the US government has taken steps over the years to pave the way for commercial space flight.

Ronald Reagan signed the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984, which for the first time made commercial launches legal.

Under each of the following presidents, NASA's monopoly on space flight was further diminished.

The agency's directive became increasingly focused on science and deep space travel, while private industry was encouraged to take over the day to day business of transport to Earth orbit.

To spur private competition, NASA implemented its Commercial Orbital Transport Services Program in 2011.

COTS awarded government contracts for resupplying the International Space Station.

And this is where SpaceX made its grand entrance.

Funded by COTS, its Dragon Module was the first private spacecraft to dock with the ISS in 2012.

Orbital ATK followed closely.

And now, both companies regularly resupply the ISS.

The Sierra Nevada Corporation is expected to join the ISS Private Club when it docks its Dream Chaser spacecraft in late 2020.

This is considered a big win for NASA.

The shuttle program costs around $4 billion a year.

But these resupply missions run closer to $50 million a pop.

But what about manned space flight?

Well, at some point both Dragon and Dream Chaser are expected to carry actual people to the ISS, and perhaps beyond.

But that hasn't happened yet.

To date, only one privately developed craft has carried a person to space.

This was SpaceShipOne.

In 2004, the first private astronaut, Mike Melvill, blasted this rocket-powered plane into a suborbital trajectory, topping 100 kilometers in altitude.

And only just kissing space.

But it counts.

SpaceShipOne's adventure won its maker, Scaled Composites, the cool $10 million of the Ansari XPRIZE.

Virgin Galactic teamed up with Scaled Composites to form the spaceship company, with the plan to turn its SpaceShipTwo into a regular space tourism vessel.

That hasn't happened yet, for reasons I'll get back to.

So why hasn't private manned spaceflight become a thing yet?

Because money.

Almost all private companies are driven by the profit motive.

And besides the distant dream of space tourism, there isn't much money in sending people to space, at least compared to launching satellites.

That's where the profit is for the moment.

And as a result, there are many private companies in the business of slinging satellites into orbit.

Private industry's also eyeing the heavens for its vast natural resources.

In 2015, Barack Obama signed the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, which will allow US companies to own materials extracted from space.

Asteroid mining seems likely to drive the next wave of private enterprise, because the potential profits are astronomical.

That's a whole other topic though and it's deserving of its own episode.

So here we get to the main argument for public versus private space programs.

It's long been perceived that in order to do important, but unprofitable, work we need collectively funded and administered agencies, like NASA.

Grant enterprises, like the Apollo moon landings, inspired generations.

But didn't turn a dime.

The Hubble Space Telescope and other space-based observatories have revealed the deepest mysteries of our cosmos and keep a watchful eye on our own fragile planet.

But these will never excite shareholders.

We've sent probes to every planet in our solar system and landed on several, but not a single CEO got rich doing it.

National space agencies have done incredible things.

But is their role diminishing, even for the big low-profit stuff?

There appears to be a new model emerging for some of these moonshot ventures.

And I'm talking about private funding by idealistic billionaires.

Elon Musk is getting the most press right now.

He seeded SpaceX with cash from his first project, PayPal.

Now that SpaceX has a working heavy launch vehicle with reusable boosters, Musk is eyeing colonies on Mars and beyond.

But Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and his Blue Origin company, is neck and neck in the whole relanding rockets thing.

In 2015, his New Shepard rocket performed the first successful vertical landing after a spaceflight.

SpaceShipOne was solely funded by Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, while its successor SpaceShipTwo is now owned by billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic.

Then, there's Russian billionaire Yuri Milner with his breakthrough Starshot Program.

His seed funding may put the first robotic probe in another star system.

We talk about that project in this episode.

But is this the way we want to go?

Shouldn't our most grand enterprises be funded and operated collectively, chosen by humanity, or at least those we vote for in elections.

Or is it OK to cede these important decisions to individuals and private companies?

Well, there are arguments on both sides.

On one hand, private industry is less constrained by politics and public opinion.

The last few US presidents have ordered NASA to redefine its goals at some level.

First, it's Mars.

Then, it's back to the moon.

Then, Mars.

And then, the moon again.

Massive human effort is wasted every time a large program is scrapped, often for poorly informed political reasons or as publicity stunts.

Government agencies are also a little more constrained by public opinion.

For example, the shuttle program was shut down for years after the Challenger disaster.

Private companies can afford to take more risks.

For example, SpaceshipX recently put out a video of how not to land a booster and estimated that the Falcon Heavy had a 50-50 chance of blowing up on the launch pad.

Musk hit that launch button anyway.

Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo is still forging ahead, even after the fatalities of a test flight crash and an earlier tank explosion.

Aerospace billionaires see themselves as the new Wright brothers and see risk and sunk investment as necessary for true innovation.

And they want to move quickly.

They want to move quickly, not necessarily to turn a profit, but to see the fruits of their labors before they die.

And this gets us to one of the main dangers in over reliance on rocketeer billionaires.

They won't always be around to see their visions through.

Despite its struggles with shifting politics, NASA has been at the forefront of science and space exploration for 60 years.

And its motto, for the benefit of all, is still held dear.

Will this be true of the space programs built by today's billionaires after control slips to boards of directors?

These are not known for their idealistic tendencies.

And whether our aerospace executives are idealists or not, they have a huge influence on the future of our species.

Should that influence be something you can seize with hard work and cash, but without a single vote in a public election?

I'm not sure I know the answer.

And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Although, I'm actually not sure we'll have much choice in the matter.

Private spaceflight is here to stay.

And that's pretty exciting, wherever you stand on the issue.

The next step may be to figure out how to best marry public will and private enterprise, so that we may ensure the benefit of all in our next steps in exploring outer space time.