Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has received the first order for its Falcon Heavy rocket.

A joint press release from Intelsat and SpaceX announced the contract for the launch of an Intelsat satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit. Intelsat chief technology officer Thierry Guillemin said, “Timely access to space is an essential element of our commercial supply chain. Our support of successful new entrants to the commercial launch industry reduces risk in our business model. Intelsat has exacting technical standards and requirements for proven flight heritage for our satellite launches. We will work closely with SpaceX as the Falcon Heavy completes rigorous flight tests prior to our future launch requirements.”

This contract represents another step forward for SpaceX. SpaceX chief executive officer Elon Musk said, “The Falcon Heavy has more than twice the power of the next largest rocket in the world. With this new vehicle, SpaceX launch systems now cover the entire spectrum of the launch needs for commercial, civil and national security customers.” Falcon Heavy also plays a key role in Musk’s long-range plans for sending humans to Mars.

Commercial customers like Intelsat may also help convince the critics of SpaceX’s viability. After last week’s successful docking of the SpaceX Dragon capsule with the International Space Station, Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) released a bizarre sour-grapes statement stating, “The reality remains that SpaceX has spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to launch a rocket nearly three years later than planned. The ‘private’ space race is off to a dilatory start at best, and the commercial space flight market has yet to materialize.”

We’re not sure what Shelby means by the “commercial space flight market.” If he means human spaceflight, he seems to have missed the steady stream of citizen space explorers who have visited ISS, beginning with Dennis Tito. If satellites count, he’s missed all of the previous commercial customers who’ve signed with SpaceX – ORBCOMM, MDA Corporation, SES, Thaicom, NSPO, Asiasat, Satélites Mexicanos, Space Systems Loral, CONAE, Iridium, Spacecom, and Bigelow Aerospace  – as well as those served by United Launch Alliance, Orbital Sciences Corporation, and their foreign competitors. Shelby also failed to note that the Space Launch System, mandated by Shelby and other Congressmen over NASA’s objections, is spending not hundreds of millions but billions of taxpayer dollars and will be much later to the party than SpaceX, if it shows up at all.

The successful capture and berthing of the SpaceX Dragon capsule is cause for celebration. The clockwork precision of the flight, with no trace of glitch or gremlin, speaks well for the technical competence of Elon Musk and his crew atmSpace Exploration Technologies.

This is a step forward for commercial space and very good news for the future of ISS, NASA’s future space exploration plans, and, of course, the SpaceX company. It is even good news for SpaceX competitors, such Boeing and Sierra Nevada, whose own case is boosted by the proof that commercial companies can deliver.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WAY7boAE68&w=700]

Today’s accomplishment will go a long way toward convincing Congress of the value of commercial space – and yet, convincing Congress (and some elements at NASA) should not have been this hard. ISS has been serviced before by quasi-commercial (though largely state-owned) Russian and European enterprises. The fact that there was so much resistance to allowing American companies to compete with Energia and Arianespace is a sad commentary on our current Congress and its lack of faith in American private enterprise. Seeing is believing, the saying goes, but St. Paul said that faith is evidence of things unseen. Today’s political leaders seem to have faith in nothing but themselves, but it will be hard for anyone to oppose commercial ISS missions after this.

So, why only two cheers, then? Because, as heretical as it might sound to say this, SpaceX is not the most important act in commercial space. SpaceX will ensure NASA’s access to the International Space Station, enable Bigelow Aerospace to proceed with its own space station plans, and perhaps even take humans to Mars, but it will be the suborbital companies like Armadillo Aerospace, Blue Origin, Masten Space Systems, Virgin Galactic, and XCOR Aerospace that open up space for the rest of us.

In 1974, the influential and widely circulated Business Week ran a story on Seymour Cray and his supercomputer, which it called “the machine that will change the world.” That same month, Popular Electronics, a small hobbyist publication which almost no one read, ran a cover story on the Altair 8800. Not “the machine that will change the world,” but “the computer you can build.” The Altair was not a powerful computer, and almost nobody took it seriously, except the people who wanted one – and there were a lot of them. Of course, we know which machine ultimately changed the world.

Reusable suborbital spacecraft will also change the world. They will enable large numbers of people to build and fly experiments, and to fly in space themselves. Dramatic reductions in  launch costs, not increases in capability, are what will truly open the space frontier, and those cost reductions are easier to achieve on the low end. We don’t expect a lot of people to agree with these statements. Many people won’t understand them at all, just as most people didn’t understand the importance of microcomputers when they first appeared in the 1970’s.

Even many people who call themselves “NewSpace” advocates don’t get it. A good example is the Space Frontier Foundation, which took control of the Suborbital Flight Experiment Workshop we developed and is now converting it into a seminar on how to build payloads to fly on traditional science platforms like ISS and weather balloons. Much like the (hypothetical) guy who showed up at Steve Jobs’s garage with a COBOL program on a stack of punch cards, they think they get it but they don’t.

That having been said, it was very important for everyone in commercial space, including the suborbital companies, for SpaceX to succeed. There were too many people out there, including legislators and investors, who who waiting to point fingers and say, “If Elon Musk couldn’t do it, nobody can.”

That statement is, of course, nonsense, especially when the value of “it” varies greatly from one company to another. This irrational attitude was fomented by some of the more rabid SpaceX fanboys whose mantra was, “If Elon Musk can’t do it…” — although not by the professionals at SpaceX, who know better. That overenthusiastic cheerleading had the unfortunate effect of tying the fate of the entire commercial space industry to the success of SpaceX on this one mission, which never should have happened. Fortunately, the Dragon capsule performed flawlessly, but still, the stakes were higher than they should have been. We didn’t need SpaceX to succeed today, but we couldn’t afford for them to fail. For that reason, we give SpaceX two solid cheers.