On Thursday, if all goes to plan, the last Space Shuttle will make its last landing. It will then be grounded in every sense. There is nothing more advanced to replace it: transport to and from the International Space Station will now rely on old fashioned Russian Soyuz rockets.

The end of the Shuttle Programme leaves NASA uncertain of its future and without a clear sense of direction. This is perhaps an appropriate symbol of the United States – and the global economy in general – in 2011.

Some may not see a link between space exploration and the state of capitalism, but it has always been there. In the 1950s and 1960s, both sides saw the space race as a test of their respective economic systems. Although both relied primarily on large amounts of public money, the Americans, who lagged behind at first, won in the end because their state space agency enjoyed the competitive advantage of a network of private sector contractors and sub-contractors. The flexibility and innovation of private enterprise enables it to solve problems far more effectively than a purely bureaucratic system – and, in return, American private enterprise benefitted enormously from the commercial exploitation of a huge range of spin-off “Space Age” technologies. America’s world leadership in the invention and application of new IT would not have been sustained without the fruits of research commissioned by NASA.

Perhaps more important than the direct economic benefits of space exploration was its effect on national perception – and, as we have noted before, perception matters, because it tends to turn itself into reality.  When President Kennedy challenged America to go to the moon by the end of the decade, “not because it is easy but because it is hard”, he helped Americans feel part of something dynamic and progressive. The 1960s turned out to be a decade of political turmoil, but they still retain a glamorous image as a time of technological advance.

That is what is missing in America and the West today, that feeling of being part of an age of general human improvement. Morale may be an intangible, but it is nevertheless a vital component of an enterprise culture. Great enterprises, like the Shuttle and the Moon Landing, make people feel better about their smaller enterprises. As Kennedy and his immediate successors understood, a “can do” attitude is infectious – but so is its opposite, despair.

So it is tragic that NASA has been left to drift and wither at the very time it is needed most.

Fifty years ago yesterday, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. For most of us, that seems a very long time ago, another era, but, in another sense, it seems not long enough, because it still feels as if the “Space Age” has only just begun.

By way of comparison, it was almost exactly fifty years from the first manned flight under power by the Wright Brothers to the introduction of commercial passenger jet services – a remarkably short period of time. Gagarin’s achievement followed within another decade, and within another decade of that men were on the Moon.

There have been other achievements since then, but nothing so spectacular, and if you compare the First Fifty Years of Space Travel with the First Fifty Years of Air Travel, it can look as if human progress is running out of energy.

The reason for this is that the huge sums of money needed for space travel mean that it has been, for the most part, a government monopoly. The development of the aeroplane, on the other hand, was a triumph of private enterprise – sometimes helped by government, sometimes hindered.

For example, it was immense government funding in World War One that enabled private manufacturers, like Sir Tommy Sopwith, to make enormous improvements in aeroplane technology at a time when the whole sector was only just into the second decade of its existence. It was also government taxation that forced Sopwith out of business once the war was over.

Space travel is now moribund because that it what always happens to nationalised industries. The current Administration in the United States has none of the passion for space that motivated some of its predecessors. NASA is near the bottom of the list of priorities at a time of tight budgets. Most other countries share those priorities.

The only hope for space travel, as for so many other things, is if the private sector is allowed to fill the gaps being left by the public sector.

There are plenty of commercial opportunities. Satellite technology is well established. Space tourism is now a fact. The exploitation of mineral reserves elsewhere in the solar system may soon become a necessity. Zero gravity offers some intriguing possibilities for technology. Space based solar power avoids many of the drawbacks of its terrestrial equivalents. The spin-off technologies from space exploration have impacted on every aspect of our lives already.

The Universe awaits us – if we want it.