From a small step for man to a giant gold rush for mankind

If the 20th-century space race was about political power, this century's will be about money. But for those who dream of sending humans back to the moon and possibly Mars, it's an exciting time to be alive whether it's presidents or billionaires paying the fare.

- Oliver Holmes

Space flight is having a renaissance moment, bringing a fresh energy not seen since the days of the Apollo programme and, for the first time, with private companies rather than governments leading the charge.

A series of recent milestone missions, not least the increasingly successful test flights of the largest rocket ever made and the first privately built probe to land on the lunar surface, have embedded a growing idea that humans are entering what has been termed the "third space age".

"To say we're in a new era, that's absolutely fair," said Greg Sadlier, a space economist and the co-founder of the know.space consultancy. "We're in the era of competition, or the commercial era. The barriers to entry are lower, the costs have fallen, which has opened the doors to a much larger pool of nations," he said. "It's the democratisation of space, if you like."

Today, more than 70 countries have space programmes, but for a long time, the US and the Soviet Union were the only big players.