Dragon

The dailybeast.com reports:

It’s official: Dragon has launched. The private, unmanned space shuttle built by a California’s SpaceX successfully launched early Tuesday morning from Cape Canaveral, Fla.—the first mission by a spacecraft not commissioned by the government. The Dragon capsule blasted atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, and the space station was flying 249 miles above the north Atlantic Ocean as the rocket lifted off, NASA officials said. If the mission is a success, it represents a potential new stage in American space exploration: NASA hopes low-Earth orbits will be privately funded, allowing the space agency to focus on new spacecraft and missions to Mars, as well as asteroids and the moon.

This a significant achievement for SpaceX and for CEO entrepreneur, Elon Musk, who had the courage to fight conventional wisdom and create a private company that does things better and less expensively that a government agency.

In its own way, SpaceX bolsters the argument for smaller government and for the privatization of selected government functions. In the case of NASA, a bloated bureaucracy will slowly be replaced by private companies like SpaceX that can accomplish many of the same things as NASA, but perform them at less cost to the taxpayer. Sure SpaceX will make a profit (a dirty word among many on the Left nowadays) but the taxpayer benefits.

People like Rep. Paul Ryan suggest that similar solutions can be developed for some of the entitlement programs that will soon bankrupt our country. Those suggestions are demonized by President Obama and his supporters—people so entrenched in 20th century thinking that they can't get out of their own way. Their solution is the grow government, ensuring that it becomes integral (and invasive) in every aspect of our lives.

I would go further and suggest that we could easily envision companies like:

• PostalX, that would take over the role of the postal service,
• WeatherX, that might replace NOAA,
• BusinessX, that would eliminate the need for the commerce department,
• EdX, that would perform the limited administrative functions that should be (but aren't) the only provence of the Department of Education,
• HealthX, that would coordinate a national healthcare initiative that would do what Obamacare dishonestly claims to do, but with significantly less cost to the taxpayer and far less government involvement,
• MilX, that would take over many of the high cost logistical functions that are performed by the military,
• SeniorX, that would revamp social security, saving billions and allowing our country to remain solvent.

And that's just a beginning.

In an earlier post I argued that we've now reached the era of peak government. I hope that the success of SpaceX will lead competent political leaders of the future to consider other X's as government becomes smaller.