Enlarge / The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft arrives at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (credit: NASA)

When NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken blast off inside a Crew Dragon spacecraft later this month, they will not only launch into space. They will also inaugurate a potentially transformative era for the space agency.

No private company has ever launched humans into orbit before. Therefore the success of their mission, and others to come in the near future, may go a long way toward determining whether the promise of commercial spaceflight and lower cost access to space becomes the new reality.

This moment has been a long time coming. Nearly 15 years ago, NASA placed a small bet on the nascent commercial space industry when it sought to diversify its fleet for delivering cargo to the International Space Station. NASA had the space shuttle to ferry supplies, of course, but that aging vehicle was not going to fly forever. So the agency’s administrator at the time, Mike Griffin, committed $500 million in seed money for the development of new, privately built spacecraft.