Private Space Exploration for the Intrepid, Impatient

The Scoop: The government gets people and machines into space, so what's the big deal with do-it-yourself space exploration?

For millennia, humans have gazed into the night sky and wondered what's out there. And just 50 years ago, we took the first tentative steps out into our universe by actively exploring it with robots, then humans.

We've accomplished some pretty amazing things when it comes to space. We've built massive rockets and orbiting space stations. We've launched telescopes and rovers and planetary probes. We've seen back through time, to the edge of the Big Bang, and traveled through the rings of Saturn and into the atmosphere of Titan. We've even landed on the surface of a comet!

But most of these accomplishments grew out of government efforts. While that doesn't diminish the magnitude of the accomplishment, some of us look up into the sky and think "when do I get to go?" To many of us, government spaceflight sometimes feels like an unbreakable boundary instead of a path into a new frontier.

When privately-funded SpaceShipOne won the Ansari X PRIZE in 2004 by slipping into suborbital flight more than 60 miles above the planet, it felt like that boundary had finally been broken -- a sudden new hope that we'd all have the chance to go. In fact, SpaceShipOne is just one of the first steps.

The minds involved in private spaceflight have grown tired of waiting for someone else to explore the universe. We don't want someone to tell us about it; we want to see it for ourselves. We recognize the effort and the amazing results of government space exploration and applaud each success, but we want to be a part of the action. True explorers, after all, aren't people who sit around and watch others have all the fun.

The Google Lunar X PRIZE, for example, is designed to let anyone be involved. One thing all of the teams have in common is that they decided not to wait on someone else. Each chose to jump in and take the challenge of sending a robotic explorer to the moon. Some chose to compete because they believe lunar resources should be used, some entered because they believe the human race should expand into the solar system, some because they watched the Apollo landings and have always wanted to go back.

One of these teams will win (more than $30 million is up for grabs), and just as with the Ansari X PRIZE, it will be just one step along the way. But it's an important step, one that will show we mere mortals have the knowledge and willpower to explore the universe. Who knows where this step will lead us? Human missions, maybe, or perhaps on to Mars. Whatever the case, it will lead us somewhere! Human spirit isn't designed to take a look over the top of the hill and climb back down saying, "Eh, I've seen it all now," but to wonder where the next hill is.

We've looked up and wondered, and we're on our way to find out. Want to come along?

Becky Ramsey is the director of communications for space projects at the X PRIZE Foundation, where she works with the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition. The views expressed are the author's alone and do not represent the official position of the Discovery Channel.

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