Atlantis is Back. Is that It?

The Gemini-Apollo-Shuttle show had a good run. It swelled American pride, brought us scientific advances and set the stage for the next act.

For the next five years or so, America will need to hitch $60 million per seat rides on Russian Soyuz rockets in order to get to what may be called the International Space Station but what we all know is our Space Station. That's pricey but at $1.5 billion per shuttle launch that buys 25 rides and the money saved can be used to refocus funding and talent on the future.

True, only the world's governments have the resources and commitment to take on the massive development projects: damning rivers for irrigation and power, multimodal transportation networks, smart, integrated energy grids, basic medical research, new destination cities, green energy and the Space Station.

But in nearly every case, commercial interests like Virgin Galactic, now attempting the first for-profit passenger suborbital space flights, soon show up to exploit the discoveries and take them even further, often in wonderful, unforeseen directions.

Private patrons have been around since the Italian Renaissance and the Age of Exploration. Witness Columbus' four expeditions on the Nike, the Pfizer and the Sara Lee. Seriously though, many of the 15^th and 16^th century adventurers such as those of John Cabot were partially or fully underwritten by wealthy merchants.

Cabot or Giovanni Caboto, as he was known in his native Italy, was the first European, since the 11^thcentury Vikings, to set foot on mainland North America. He did so in the name of England. What's with all these Italici; Columbus, Cabato, Amerigo Vespucci, Verrazzano, Marco Polo shilling for monarchs in Spain, Portugal, France and England?

Ever think what it would be like if the Spaniards had gone north and the English south? Would we now be a Spanish-speaking world power fretting over the Anglo hordes threatening our southern border? Or would we be a very large Paraguay?

Kings and queens may have gotten the ball rolling but it was the bankers, mercantilists and privateers who took advantage of the discoveries, creating the wealth that eventually gave the West the most dynamic civilization in history.

Similarly, Jefferson may have underwritten the original "One Nation Tour" by Lewis and Clark, corporate logos not yet having been invented, but the Conestoga wagons and mule trains and railroads that followed up their expedition was good ol' private enterprise at its finest.

That's what's going on now in the U.S. space program. Uncle Sam has paved the way, set the standards and provided the science for those who will follow -- currently four NASA-supervised corporations are competing to service the Space Station.

Let commercial interests takeover driving the busses while NASA launches its next act, deep space travel.