STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: The year 2025 puts us one-quarter of the way through the 21st century. A lot has happened in those 25 years, and a look back shows how our world has changed. It even suggests trendlines toward the future. Think about what happened in the first quarter of the 20th century...
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INSKEEP: ...When music like this was popular. Henry Ford, for example, perfected the mass production of cars, which led us to change how we work, how we travel, where we live, the way we build our cities - basically, everything. Here's another example. The Wright brothers' first flight, in the early part of the century, pointed toward air travel, globalization, even our journeys beyond the globe.
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JACK KING: Liftoff. Liftoff on Apollo 11.
INSKEEP: A perceptive observer of the early 1900s might not have predicted what was coming, but they would have clues. In that spirit, we're looking back at the first quarter of our century.
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INSKEEP: Today's first installment looks at the evolution of space travel. A big thing that's happened in our quarter century is the privatization of space. Our guide into orbit is Brendan Byrne of Central Florida Public Media, who's a longtime watcher of the rocket launches from his state.
BRENDAN BYRNE, BYLINE: I think the one thing that you might want to kick this off with is what starts the century off.
INSKEEP: Three astronauts arrived at the International Space Station with a plan to stay in orbit for months, conducting experiments.
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UNIDENTIFIED ASTRONAUT: We have research in six or seven basic scientific areas.
INSKEEP: And the constant movement of crews and supplies created work for spacecraft - Russia's Soyuz capsules and American space shuttles.
BYRNE: The U.S. government operated the space shuttle. It was like NASA's semitruck. That's really how it got everything into space.
INSKEEP: How was that semitruck program doing as the century turned?
BYRNE: It reached some uncertainty, especially in 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, which killed all seven astronauts on board as it was returning from space.
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INSKEEP: This is special continuing coverage...
I was on the air that day for hours of live coverage.
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INSKEEP: Across hundreds of square miles of Texas and Louisiana this evening, crews are searching for what remains of the Space Shuttle Columbia.
BYRNE: This really started setting things in motion, where NASA had to think about what the future of human space flight was going to be without the space shuttle.
INSKEEP: How did the agency begin to turn to private companies to come up with replacement vehicles?
BYRNE: One of the most impactful decisions that NASA made was the commercial resupply contract. This was a contract that it had offered to the private sector to basically ship supplies to the International Space Station. We're talking science experiments, food for the crew, clothing for the crew, and a major award was given in 2008 to private companies to do this. One of those companies was SpaceX.
INSKEEP: The company founded by Elon Musk was short of money and close to collapse.
BYRNE: And then NASA comes in and gives them some $1.8 billion to develop a new rocket and new capsule that will deliver these supplies. And essentially, if it's not for this contract, SpaceX is not a company at this point. It folds.
INSKEEP: Instead, SpaceX developed a new, efficient way to fling material into orbit.
BYRNE: Traditional rockets utilize multiple stages - the missile-looking rockets. And all of those stages fall back to Earth, usually burn up in the atmosphere, drop into the ocean, and you're talking tens of millions of dollars' worth of hardware just gone. Well, SpaceX wanted to change the way rocketry was done by returning that first-stage booster. These are roughly 200 feet tall. And in 2015, they did land their first stage. So the rocket launches from Kennedy Space Center. It pushes the second stage with the payload into orbit. And then that first stage, that 200-foot-tall first stage, directs itself back. It spins around on its way down. It fires its engines, and it lands autonomously on a barge at sea.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Booster [inaudible] shutdown.
BYRNE: Steve, I can recall seeing it in person, and it is the most terrifying thing 'cause it's like a missile falling out of the sky. And then, at the last moment, you see those engines fire, and then this rocket gracefully lands itself back down to earth. It's also accompanied by three massive sonic booms that really startle you.
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INSKEEP: It was the sound of a new era, with private companies taking more and more of the mission. NASA's next step was inviting SpaceX and Boeing to develop spacecraft that carried astronauts.
BYRNE: And essentially, NASA is not going to tell SpaceX or Boeing what to build. They are just going to say, we need a transportation system to get up there. It's been described to me as, instead of buying a car, NASA is now calling an Uber to get its astronauts up to the International Space Station. And...
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
BYRNE: So this is - the commercial industry is now responsible for what is arguably NASA's greatest assets - its astronauts.
INSKEEP: What role are these private companies supposed to play in the next steps for NASA, which seem to involve a return to the moon and even a trip to Mars?
BYRNE: NASA's plan involves these commercial companies when it comes to getting humans to the lunar surface. They are - for the first part of our next moon program, which is called Artemis, which was the twin sister of Apollo, NASA is relying on Starship, which is being developed by SpaceX and Elon Musk. It's also put out a contract for a future lander that is built in part by Blue Origin, whose founder is Jeff Bezos, another billionaire who got into the rocket game in this first quarter-century.
So while NASA is getting its astronauts to the moon - in its orbit - these private companies are going to be getting them down to the surface. And NASA will retire the International Space Station within this decade. It's relying on commercial companies to fill that gap in low Earth orbit. Now NASA says it can focus on going to places like the moon and Mars, getting its astronauts farther into deep space than ever before.
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INSKEEP: So that's where we stand at the end of a quarter-century, as observed by reporter Brendan Byrne. Private companies have assumed more responsibility from the government. And now something else is happening.
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ELON MUSK: (Shouting) Yes.
INSKEEP: Elon Musk, the head of SpaceX, has taken a position as a government adviser and celebrated at a rally on President Trump's Inauguration Day.
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MUSK: And we're going to take DOGE to Mars.
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INSKEEP: It wasn't clear how his Department of Government Efficiency would steer that mission, but Musk, as a private contractor, can expect a role, and now has a role in the government that gives the contract.
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