Editorial: SpaceX walk in Wright Bros. tradition

Three cheers for the billionaire who made the space walk that happened on Thursday. Fortunately, he and his partners on the Polaris Dawn mission lived through the experience.

Some might say the trip into space was a personal bucket list event.

Read more Blade editorials

Wouldn’t the United States be better off developing a cadre of trained professional astronauts, rather than allowing one-and-dones by thrill-seeking billionaires?

Sometimes the taxpayers aren’t in the forefront. We recall that the U.S. government was slow to recognize the value of the Wright Brothers’ innovations in powered flight, which they undertook entirely with their own money. It was reported that the billionaire ballet in space reinforces that space travel is no longer the exclusive provenance of professional astronauts working at U.S. space agencies like NASA. However, the United States should not entirely cede space exploration to billionaire hobbyists.

The experiment in extravehicular activity — not exactly a walk but definitely outside the security of the enclosed, pressurized capsule — came about because of the adventurous spirit and extremely deep pockets of billionaires such as Elon Musk, who owns SpaceX, and Jared Isaacman, the entrepreneur who led the mission and performed the first venture into space.

Mr. Isaacman and the other three travelers on the Polaris Dawn subjected themselves to potential loss of life. With all the space junk orbiting the Earth and with their spacesuits not proved to be worn outside a spacecraft, they were taking a chance. And the entire living area of the capsule was exposed to the vacuum of space, and it was the first time that four astronauts were simultaneously exposed that way.

However, space walks are common occurrences at the International Space Station, which orbits at a level much closer to Earth. The space walk was really for one reason: to test the flexibility of the new space suits in the vacuum of space. Incredibly, NASA is still using suits that go back to the 1980s.

Thankfully, the mission was a success. It’s part of Mr. Musk’s goal of reaching Mars one day. Mars exploration, if it happens, will require less bulky and more flexible suits like those tested this week.

America and the world have a vested interest in a successful private spaceflight industry that is coordinated with NASA. Billionaires like Mr. Musk and Mr. Isaacman are pioneers in a long tradition of the human race.

Northwest Ohio has an interest in this business as well, thanks to the presence of the NASA Armstrong Center in Sandusky. It was announced in February that private contractor Sierra Lobo Inc., with headquarters in Fremont, will receive a $282.1 million NASA award to support the agency’s spaceflight hardware design, development, testing, and operations at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.

Clearly, there is a link between successful SpaceX space exploration and a successful NASA spaceflight.