Infinity or Bust

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What's more, while rocketeers like Branson and Musk promise the moon, a little skepticism would go a long way toward determining whether the time has really come to trade the starts and spurts of science for the swashbuckling mentality of the marketplace.

'There has been a lot of hype,' says Roger Launius, chairman of the Space History Division at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and former NASA chief historian. Though he tips his hat to Rutan's SpaceShipOne (which hangs in his museum), he notes that NASA was flying similar Mach 3 aircraft at higher speeds more than 40 years ago. On suborbital flights like those being sold by Branson, passengers can float weightless for a few minutes and quickly snap a shot of the curve of Earth before heading for safe ground. Breaking through to what most of us consider space-the dark expanse John Glenn reached in 1962-is far more demanding and risky.

That so much attention has been lavished on an industry whose accomplishments lag decades behind NASA's is testament to the savvy marketing of outfits courting capital and public opinion. Commercialization has been framed as populism, as the answer to an innovation-stifling bureaucracy, and several millionaires stand to profit. These outfits have not had to face the tough scrutiny that comes with inevitable failure, however, or the soul searching triggered by the loss of human resources-traumas that have left NASA averse to risk. The public mourned the astronauts lost in the Challenger and Columbia accidents as people who died for their country and for science. How will we regard the deaths of adventurers risking life and limb for a $200,000 view?

The space program was never a pure pursuit of knowledge, of course: Apollo was largely a warning shot in the Cold War. But the impact of the feat managed to transcend politics. It inspired wonder and, as it evoked the promise of worlds beyond our own, encouraged people to envision new possibilities. Those intangibles, unlikely to fit into a business plan, are at risk if exploration is put at the mercy of pure profit.

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