 NASA hasn't sent human beings above low Earth orbit since the Apollo program ended in the 1970s. And with the shuttle program ending, we haven't even been sending our own astronauts up to the ISS. That's going to change. NASA has announced that they want to send US astronauts from US soil starting in 2017, and their ambitions are even bigger. It's not just NASA either. Companies like SpaceX, the United Launch Alliance, and Virgin Galactic are trying new ambitious things that we've never done before. I think space is coming back in a really big way. Oh my god. Oh my gosh! Oh my god. What we're here to see is the Atlas V rocket launch, which is going to be carrying a Navy communications satellite to provide cell phone service. Not super sexy. And a lot of our rocket launches have been like that. Not really compelling in the same way that human space flight can be. The space program has literally had its ups and downs, if you'll pardon that little bit of a pun. But there have been some changes. We certainly experienced that at the end of the Apollo program. Today, there's only two countries that have the ability to launch humans into space, and the US is not one of them. We obviously had huge excitement around the Apollo program. That was renewed with shuttle. And then when the shuttle was decommissioned, we kind of went into this bathtub or hiatus, where the excitement level went down and NASA wasn't able to do what it normally does to excite the country. But I think we're seeing a resurgence of that. We are certainly at the turning point in the space activities because we are if you want, the period of the space shuttle and the space station. The major developments are completed and we need to look beyond. By looking beyond, of course, the next step at the international level is agreed to be space exploration. Moon, Mars, and so on. There's something really amazing about sending people beyond our own planet. I mean, it's maybe the most impressive thing that we've accomplished as a species. The idea that we might be going to Mars really excites me, and I think it excites a lot of other people too. I've seen a really renewed interest in what's going on in space, in part because we're doing things we haven't done before. One of the things that's different from the early days, from the Apollo missions, is that we actually have private companies that are interested in space now. That's pretty cool. I think that potentially things like space tourism might make people care about the big missions more, and more likely to fund them. We definitely are a renaissance in what a lot of people call new space, which is the movement from government-dominated programs like the space shuttle program into public-private partnerships, where NASA is investing in programs, but companies are also investing to try to make it commercial as well. For the private sector, as we said, there has been a clear identification of the private sector taking more responsibility in the lower-to-orbit destinations. Of course, this is in general beneficial. It has to be very strictly coordinated with the government activities, I believe, because we cannot afford to have major failures or take risks which cannot be calculated. It's not like space is easy, though. Just last year, we saw three major accidents within the space of about two months. Two of them were uncrewed, thank goodness, but one person died. It's kind of like the early days of Apollo, when the rockets weren't totally ready for prime time, and we saw a lot of explosions. I mean, commercial spaceflight isn't there yet. It just isn't. Space never has become routine. There were 135 shuttle missions, which seems like a lot, but when you compare that to cars operating on the freeway or commercial aircraft, where you may have a million flights a day operating, it's really a very small number. At some point, there's going to be a conjunction between the reliability and cost of the technology and processes it takes to get to space in a burgeoning commercial market, particularly for low-Earth orbit. There's going to be a time in the future where you don't have to be a billionaire to get to space, but your average citizen has an opportunity to go to space, maybe work in space during research, at least go to space and look back at Earth, which is an incredibly unique perspective. So this was my first rocket launch. I've never been to one before, and it was amazing. I'm so excited. I kind of cannot contain myself. I'm like, I've got butterflies. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. This is like the biggest explosion I have ever seen. I wasn't expecting to be as excited as I was. It was like a kind of giddiness, butterflies in the stomach feeling that I hadn't really been expecting, especially because this isn't even a very important mission. And honestly, I don't think I had a single thought in my head except, holy shit, this is so cool. Wow. I can still see it. I think we like to think of ourselves as a space-faring people. We like to think of space as part of our home now. And I think the excitement of what's going on in space travel, space launch, space exploration, I think it's starting to hit its stride again. It is capturing the public's attention and the imagination and making people think a little bit more about, what is out there in the future? Are we going to Mars? When are we going to Mars? When is that going to take place? When am I going to get to fly in space? And all those things are possible. The thing is, I think that people really are interested in space. I was in Times Square when Curiosity landed, and it was packed. I think people really responded to how ambitious that mission was and how ambitious its landing was. I think people care about space when we're doing exciting new things, especially when we do things we haven't done before, especially if people are involved. Something like an asteroid redirect mission, a moon base, Mars, maybe even Venus, those are things I think people would get behind. I think those are things people care about. And I think that's what's coming. Space is about to get really exciting for everybody, and I really can't wait.