The new space race

LATER this month, if all has gone according to plan, a rocket called the Falcon Heavy will take off from Cape Canaveral, in Florida (see ). Its mission is to put a sports car in orbit around the sun. The Falcon Heavy is the latest product of SpaceX, a firm founded by Elon Musk, an American billionaire. The car is Mr Musk’s own, made by Tesla, another of his businesses. SpaceX has the explicit aim, besides making money, of enabling people to travel to and colonise Mars. Before then, the Falcon Heavy may earn its keep lifting satellites and carrying tourists on “slingshot” trips around the moon.Mr Musk’s ambition is to propel humanity beyond its home planet. But what is going on in space today also reflects the shifting balance of power on Earth. In the days of the space race between America and the Soviet Union, the heavens were a front in the cold war between two competing ideologies. Since then, power has not merely shifted between countries. It has also shifted between governments and individuals.