Without NASA there would be no SpaceX and its brilliant boat landing

NASA's Kirk Shireman, left, was content to watch as Elon Musk handled all the questions after the dramatic Falcon 9 rocket landing. (credit: NASA)

You almost had to feel sorry for Kirk Shireman on Friday night. The affable, able manager of the International Space Station sat next to Elon Musk during a news conference after a Falcon 9 rocket had just delivered a cargo-supply ship to orbit and then made a stunning landing back on a robotic barge. For most of an hour he waited, patient and silent. Only at the very end of the briefing did a single, solitary question come Shireman's way.

A three-decade veteran of NASA who played pivotal roles in both the shuttle and space station programs, Shireman might have been thinking this: Hey, what about us? NASA is the one with the $100-billion orbiting laboratory where humans have now lived in space for 15 years. While no one anticipated it when NASA and Russia began building the space station 20 years ago, one of its most important functions has become enabling commercial activity in space. With the station, NASA created a market for companies like SpaceX to deliver supplies and, as early as next year, astronauts into space.

Friday afternoon's launch offered a spectacular display of this commercial aspect. As its largest payload, the SpaceX Dragon delivered Bigelow Aerospace's expandable habitat to the station. By connecting this inflatable room to the station later this month, Bigelow can gain invaluable testing experience, including in situ monitoring by astronauts next door. They may also prove to NASA that the technology is safe and perhaps lead to larger habitats for use near the Moon or deeper into space.