During the afternoon hours of Feb. 6, 27 Merlin engines roared to life underneath the Falcon Heavy rocket at the Kennedy Space Center. Spectators watched in awe as 5 million pounds of boost exploded downwards, smoothly lifting the 270-foot-tall spacecraft into the Florida sky. 

This $90 million project headed by SpaceX, a privately owned space company founded by Tesla mastermind and PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, marks an incredibly important shift in not only space travel but the way we view it as a society. 

As someone who was raised on “Star Trek,” “Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmos,’” “2001: A Space Odyssey” and countless other works glorifying the “final frontier” of space travel, I have wondered for years why more people don’t care. Baby boomers were blessed with the space race, an incredible feat of scientific prowess where we as a country rallied behind what seemed to be an impossible task; putting men on the moon. 

According to Time, 600 million people watched as Apollo 11 delivered its payload of lunar module “Eagle” and its three American astronauts to the surface of the moon. Launched from the very same Kennedy Space Center with the only rocket to produce more thrust than the Falcon Heavy, claims SpaceX in its press release, it truly was, in the words of astronaut Neil Armstrong “one giant leap for mankind.”

So why is this new launch so exciting? There were no men aboard the flight (apart from a mannequin dubbed “Starman,” manning an electric sports car), it did not travel to an unexplored planet or make contact with alien life, so why should you care? 

What is most exciting is the fact that people were talking about it the day it happened. It was trending on Twitter, and it was all over Facebook; people were taking an interest. There was a spark ignited that hasn’t been seen for a while, which was the profound widespread interest in a scientific endeavor into space. 

Musk should be credited for doing a great, albeit goofy job at attracting this interest. Putting one of his own cars into orbit around the sun, playing David Bowie’s iconic “Space Oddity” during the livestreamed launch, he knew the way to get the internet’s attention. Not to mention seeing his revolutionary boosters come back down after detaching from Falcon Heavy, and making sonic booms before landing themselves.

According to Business Insider, NASA received a budget of $19 billion which makes up less than half of 1 percent of federal funds available for allocation. A general lack of prioritization of anything science-related by the current administration means private entities like SpaceX have tasked themselves with revitalizing space travel and the populous’ interest in it. Countless environmental concerns worldwide continue to remind us that these are dire times, and we should heed that science now more than ever. Exploration into the great unknown that is space generates massive public curiosity and awareness of what can be accomplished with proper funding. 

The work being done isn’t possible without the countless years of research and programs conducted by NASA, and hopefully the coming projects from Musk and the inevitable companies to follow suit will continue to demonstrate the importance of this human venture and the incredible tasks we can complete. 

To end with another quote from Armstrong, “Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.”

Let’s find that sense of wonder again, shall we?