Culture | Reach for the stars

How SpaceX set off a new race to commercialise space

Ashlee Vance charts the contest in “When the Heavens Went on Sale”

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA - MAY 30: In this NASA handout image, A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft is seen in this false color infrared exposure as it is launched on NASAs SpaceX Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley onboard, Saturday, May 30, 2020, at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Demo-2 mission is the first launch with astronauts of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agencys Commercial Crew Program. The test flight serves as an end-to-end demonstration of SpaceXs crew transportation system. Behnken and Hurley launched at 3:22 p.m. EDT on Saturday, May 30, from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. A new era of human spaceflight is set to begin as American astronauts once again launch on an American rocket from American soil to low-Earth orbit for the first time since the conclusion of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011.  (Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images)
Blast-off for SpaceX & coImage: Getty Images

Kwajalein Atoll is as close to the middle of nowhere as you can get. Some 3,000km (1,900 miles) from Papua New Guinea, and almost 4,000km from Honolulu, this tiny speck of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean became, on September 28th 2008, the unlikely site of an improbable revolution.

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