© SpaceX

Last week Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), an American company that designs, manufactures and launches American rockets and spacecraft, launched its Falcon 9 rocket into space.  Then again three days later SpaceX’s unmanned Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial spacecraft to successfully attach to the International Space Station.

Wow!  I can’t remember feeling like this since I was in grade school sitting on a linoleum floor watching any of the Apollo launches on a 19-inch black and white TV on a rolling AV cart.  It’s good to know that Americans are back in space, even if it isn’t NASA.

Burt Rutan said it well in a talk he gave back in 2006 when he said “It’s not good enough for us to have generations of kids that….look forward to a better version of a cell phone with a video in it.  They need to look forward to exploration.”

It’s good to see that entrepreneurs are stepping up and filling the gaps when it comes to space travel.  I don’t know if these ground-breaking commercial steps into space will lead to any type of space tourism that I could afford during my lifetime, but hope has returned, along with that childhood twinkle in my eye and my imagination.