A successful launch on Wednesday could forever change how the world thinks about getting people to space.
It took work across three presidencies, those of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump, but the United States is at last prepared once again, after nearly a decade, to launch American astronauts into orbit from American soil on an American-built rocket.
“This is a unique moment where all of America can take a moment and look at our country do something stunning again,” Jim Bridenstine, NASA’s administrator, said during a news conference on Tuesday.
Lori Garver, who served as NASA’s deputy administrator during the Obama administration, said in an interview that she hoped this moment would have come sooner. But she also said she was “really pleased with how, even in the pandemic, much attention and excitement there is for it.”
The United States sent astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s and then built the world’s only space shuttle fleet for trips into and out of orbit. But the destruction of the shuttle Columbia in a 2003 accident eventually left NASA dependent on costly Russian spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
The replacement that the American space program finally settled on is an innovation not of technology, but philosophy and policy.
Instead of building its own replacement for the shuttle, NASA is handing over responsibility for carrying astronauts to a private company, SpaceX, one of the obsessions of the serial entrepreneur Elon Musk. If Mr. Musk’s engineers succeed on Wednesday in sending Douglas G. Hurley and Robert L. Behnken to orbit, it will forever change how the world thinks about getting people to space.
If a private company can loft humans to orbit today, why not the moon next or Mars some decades in the future? A successful launch could ignite a future long imagined by science fiction writers in which space is a destination for more and more people.
Almost everything about the journey to space scheduled on Wednesday is different from earlier eras of human spaceflight.
The launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida where the mission will blast off — the same one used by the last shuttle mission in 2011 — has been rebuilt to handle Mr. Musk’s Falcon 9 rocket.
Instead of riding to the spacecraft in Astrovan, a modified Airstream motor home that NASA used to transport shuttle crews, Mr. Hurley and Mr. Behnken will take a trip in a gull-winged Model X S. U. V., manufactured by Mr. Musk’s other major company, Tesla.
Wearing stylish SpaceX spacesuits, the two will walk across a sleek walkway about 230 feet above the ground to board the SpaceX-built capsule, which sits on top of the Falcon 9.
This launch will be the first time a private company and not a governmental space agency will be in charge of sending astronauts to orbit. Even though the passengers are still NASA astronauts, and the agency’s officials certainly could call off the launch if they saw something concerning, it is a SpaceX control room with SpaceX employees scanning the monitors who will be directing the launch.
“We’re really looking to be a customer to SpaceX, and to other companies, in the future,” said James Morhard, NASA’s deputy administrator. “That’s what we’re trying to do is to create an expanse, really expand the economy in low-Earth orbit. That’s really what this is about.”
Already, two companies have announced plans to buy launches in SpaceX’s capsule, the Crew Dragon, to take non-NASA passengers to space.
