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24 | SUMMER 2018 Look down from a higher altitude and you'll see that this resurgent space industry is mirrored across the country. New FAA-designated space- port plans are hatching in unlikely places like Waco, Texas, and Camden, Georgia. Shoreline launchpads vie to loft new rockets and munici- pal airports prepare to host spaceplanes. States and cities from coast to coast are fighting to attract space companies and the high-tech jobs they promise. This industrial surge began humbly in 2004, when the U.S. government loosened its grip on some NASA launches to spur competition. Before then, NASA always bought the blue- prints for the vehicles they commissioned. The new contracts are different — the space compa- nies build and operate the hardware, fulfill any NASA contracts and then can sell their services. The change is bearing fruit beyond NASA. Empowering space companies has made space launch cheaper, more routine and open to more competition. The crowd gathered for the Falcon Heavy debut watches as two pinpricks of light appear in the sky. These are empty fuel tanks, flying back to land and be reused. "If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplanes, the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred," says SpaceX founder Elon Musk. The Falcon Heavy showed that commercial space can reach higher than Earth orbit and bring heavier gear along for the trip. And the price — about 25 percent the cost of an equiva- lent-sized rocket — will spur new business ven- tures and more launches. This expanding industry is already arriv- ing. A privately owned space station com- pany announced operations. New firms plan to establish constellations of small satellites to bring better communication to the entire world. And asteroid mining companies like Planetary Resources now see a way to get their equipment into space at a price that makes it worthwhile. The result is a golden age of spaceflight, defined as a "period when a specified art, skill or activ- ity is at its peak." There has never been as many new spacecraft being tested and flown as there are right now. Not all of them will survive to become profitable companies flying missions, but even a small percentage of survivors would represent a fundamentally changed way of accessing space. The question now is not whether or not indus- try can make the leap, but how high they can reach. No wonder range rats like Doug Hall are smiling. JOE PAPPALARDO is a contributing editor at Popular Mechanics and author of Spaceport Earth: The Reinvention of Spaceflight. You can often find him looking up.