On Friday, Elon Musk’s company SpaceX is scheduled to begin trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange. This will be a profoundly positive event for both the United States and the investing public. The public offering of SpaceX represents the nation’s renewed commitment to technological innovation, industrial strength, and leadership in the final frontier: outer space.Since the late 1950s, space exploration has been primarily the responsibility of the federal government. The Apollo moon landings of 1969 and the early 1970s demonstrated what America could achieve when national ambition was matched with resources and the talents of the nation’s best and brightest. But after the moon landings, the U.S. space program gradually lost momentum. The SpaceX offering changes that trajectory. It promises to reignite space exploration but also to demonstrate the economic feasibility of building data centers in orbit.The company has transformed the economics of space transportation through reusable rockets, dramatically reducing launch costs while increasing reliability. Today, SpaceX is responsible for the majority of U.S. orbital launches. Its Falcon rockets, Starlink satellite network, and Starship program have established America as the clear global leader in commercial space activities. SpaceX has dramatically reduced the cost of transporting people and materials into orbit. Under NASA, historical launch costs averaged roughly $18,500 per kilogram. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket has reduced that figure to approximately $1,400 per kilogram. The Starship program is designed to lower launch costs even further, potentially by as much as 99% compared with historical averages. SpaceX management believes launch costs can eventually fall to around $200 per kilogram, a threshold that could make orbital data centers economically viable and largely neutralize opposition to the construction of large data centers.