NASA Was about to Eat Itself — Then Private Enterprise Stepped In | Julian Guthrie

I came to the story, this book, originally through an interview that I did with Peter Diamandis for the San Francisco Chronicle. And I asked him this seemingly simple question of how did this whole XPrize thing start. And he said, "Well, how much do you know about the private space flight prize?" And I said, "Not so much."

So he started telling me and I'm like, oh my god, that is an amazing story. So Peter, when he was reading The Spirit of St. Louis in late 1993, he's reading this book and he lands on this passage where he realizes that Lindbergh didn't fly as a stunt in 1927, but he indeed flew to win this $25,000 prize. And it was an ah-ha moment for him or for sure to take a page from the golden age of aviation when, after Lindbergh flew, it really sparked this commercial airline industry.

All of a sudden, everyday folks thought that commercial air travel was safe. So Peter thought he could use that model, that incentive prize model to spur innovation and spur breakthroughs in spaceflight. So that was really it. And the incentive prize model also has a habit of attracting kind of these off-the-grid, think-different types who wouldn't necessarily do anything that is affiliated with the government, who work in small teams, who like to innovate or tinker, or they're kind of the hackers or the makers or the tinkers of today.

So it seems to attract those types, and it has throughout history. People didn't think Lindbergh, who was 25 years old when he made this flight, and no one thought that he would be able to make that momentous flight, which after he landed in Paris made him the most famous man on earth. Throughout history, there have been the greatest innovations, which did not involve the government.

Whether it's the railroads, whether it's the personal computer, and whether it's with this space milestone that was made, you know, the government actually set Peter on this quest of his to create a private path to space because it was the magic of NASA in the 1960s that first captivated his attention and the attention of so many people, including many of the folks who I interviewed for my book. That Apollo 11 landing in July 1969 transfixed them and it set people on this path of the desire to get to space.

It was a moment in history when technological breakthroughs were really at their peak. I mean, what was achieved in eight years from the time this moon mission was announced by President Kennedy to the time man first set foot on another celestial body, it was an incredible show of ingenuity and determination and bravery really. So that was the government at its best.

And then private industry, Peter's idea, going back to this particular space prize, was that where NASA had left off, NASA had gotten very big. NASA had gotten very – programs had gotten very, very costly. The space shuttle mission was exorbitantly expensive. It was not as safe as everyone would have wished. The belief was that these small teams, these kind of maverick individuals could then step in.

And now it's interesting because NASA is Elon Musk's biggest provider, contractor. But I think that once SpaceX, once Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin, once Virgin Galactic, once these flights become much more routine, then you're going to see it moving back away from the government and more toward the private citizen, so the Peter Diamandis' of the world are actually going to get to fly...