(Still) getting off the ground.

• Author: McKelvey, Seth
• Position: Follow-Up - Private space flight

In the November 1981 issue of reason, James C. Bennett imagined a future government finally ending the Space Shuttle program in order to focus on larger issues like "unemployment problems." If President Ronald Reagan nipped the Shuttle program in the bud, Bennett predicted, the private space industry would blossom. Space travel would become "an everyday occurrence" by the year 2000, with competition encouraging innovation and pulling prices backdown to Earth.

In reality, SpaceShipOne, a suborbital spacecraft designed by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, completed the first manned private spaceflight less than a year after President George W. Bush's 2004 directive to end the Shuttle program. Since then, the private sector has been steadily making headlines in the space industry, from inflatable space hotels in the works at Bigelow Aerospace, to the first commercial spacecraft to ever be recovered from orbit, SpaceX's Dragon. Not long after the final Shuttle flight in July 2011, NASA signed a deal with Virgin Galactic to buy seats and cargo space on three private suborbital space flights for a bargain of $4.5 million--less than 1 percent of the cost of a single Shuttle launch.

The Space Shuttle program wasn't the only point of concern for Bennett. Three decades ago, there was no official regulatory agency for private space flight. But it didn't take long for the Office of...