Space missions reflect history of U.S.-business cooperation | Space

“The Eagle has landed.”

Astronaut Neil Armstrong transmitted that striking statement back to Earth on July 20, 1969, from the surface of the moon.

President John F. Kennedy made the dramatic pledge in 1961 to land a man on the moon before the end of that decade — and return him safely to Earth, the president always carefully added.

On Oct. 13, 2024, Elon Musk and SpaceX Corporation made history by successfully launching and recovering the largest rocket ever made, the Starship Super Heavy. The enormous booster after disengagement was also recovered in a spectacular feat of engineering.

On the morning of June 4, 2022, the company Blue Origin transported a group of five passengers 62 miles above the Earth, to the edge of space. Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, and Amazon, is one of a number of business entrepreneurs pursuing ventures in space, once the exclusive province of governments.

The space business is growing rapidly. In April 2021, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) announced Musk’s SpaceX Corporation would construct a lander to take astronauts to the moon for the first time since the last Apollo mission in 1972.

President Kennedy fostered the strong foundation of business-government partnership in space exploration through his 1962 legislation on communication satellites.

We automatically recognize JFK’s role in launching the mammoth moon…