The True Price of Privatizing Space Travel
On New Year’s Day 2001, the first crew of the International Space Station spent a quiet day in orbit. The commander, U.S. Navy Captain William Shepherd, decided to honor a naval New Year’s tradition, in which the person at the helm recites a poem. Shepherd had written something for the occasion, which included the following, recorded in the ship’s log:
Though star trackers mark Altair and Vega / Same as mariners eyed long ago / We are still as wayfinders of knowledge / Seeking new things that mankind shall know.
The station had been under construction, in orbit, for four years at that point, but Expedition 1 marked the beginning of continuous human habitation.
Today the space station’s “wayfinders of knowledge” are still steering an orbiting laboratory for experiments in biology and materials science. But just as explorers
