If you saw or heard the commotion as the Space X Falcon Heavy rocket lift off from Cape Canaveral this week, you know just how much excitement this was for a lot of people.
And not only because Space X and Tesla founder Elon Musk put his own personal 2008 edition of a Tesla Roadster inside as the payload, with a “Starman” mannequin wearing a spacesuit in the car’s driver’s seat.
Sure some think he’s crazy. But he’s also crazy smart and crazy rich.
But beyond the quirkiness of Elon Musk, there lies something that a lot of Americans so far seem to like.
Ask someone about it and they will probably say that what he is doing makes sense. A private company, Space X, investing in new space travel technology and contracting with government to make it happen.
Yes it’s different than what we became used to when maybe we were growing up when it comes to space exploration. NASA doing what it did to meet what was considered the unattainable goal by President Kennedy to land a man on the moon before time ticked into 1970.
The Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle programs, the scientists, the technicians and of course the brave U.S. astronauts who risked their lives, and sometimes lost their lives, moving our country into future long before any other country in the world.
But some of that same spirit that drove NASA to blast off from the early days of unmanned space travel to what they eventually did sending people to space frequently, safely and for long periods of time is now driving this next phase of space travel technology.
That’s the spirit that has been expressed as well as anyone could when Captain Kirk said it….about Space being the final frontier…boldly going where no man has gone before.
(Photo credit Getty Images)