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Americans have always been defined by their frontier.Â
It began with the vast, unexplored West, which historian Frederick Jackson Turner described in an influential 1893 essay as “a new field of opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the past.” Â
By the time Turner put pen to paper, the frontier was already closing. Space, the “final frontier” in “Star Trek,” animated American imaginations for a time, but after the initial excitement of putting a man on the moon, the project seemed to peter out.Â
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President Donald Trump promised in his second inaugural address to revive that dream, telling the crowd that “we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.” Elon Musk, whose innovations at SpaceX will help make this dream a reality, cheered wildly.Â
