Next week, Jeff Bezos will fly to suborbital space on his new shepherd capsule, built by

his space exploration company Blue Origin.

This past weekend, Richard Branson flew to the edge of space on one of his Virgin Galactic

Space Plains.

Welcome to space.

So all you can sound that I was once a child with a dream, looking up to this dawn.

I'm an adult in a spaceship with lots of wonderful adults looking down to a beautiful, beautiful

earth.

These two moments reflect a culmination of years of work from the two private companies and

others like Elon Musk's SpaceX to grow the commercial spaceflight industry.

For decades though, exploring the universe has been a government-led effort.

Now it is time to take longer strides.

Time for a great new American enterprise.

Time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many

ways may hold the key to our future on Earth.

Today with billionaires funding space exploration initiatives, that balance is shifting.

There are American heroes.

Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, have both testified against commercial spaceflight in the way

that you're developing it, and I wonder what you think of that.

I was very sad to see that.

Those guys are heroes of mine, so it's really tough.

The relationship between private space industry ventures and government-supported initiatives

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