Hi, I'm Naomi Shaven. Welcome to Axios Recap, where we cover one big story.

Today is Wednesday, December 15th, and we're focused on the new space race.

This weekend next, I'm hosting conversations with my Axios colleagues about the biggest

stories they've covered this year and what they're watching heading into 2022. Today, I'm talking

to Miriam Kramer. She writes the Axios Space newsletter and hosted the second season of how it

happened, the next astronauts. This year was a wild time on

Miriam's beat. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson,

raced to be first to ride their company's rockets to the edge of space. Meanwhile, Elon Musk's

SpaceX put civilians who were not professionally trained astronauts into orbit alone for a three-day mission that redefined who gets to go to space.

I worked with Miriam on our documentary podcast, The Next Astronauts, and watched the space industry closely.

But let's be honest, who wasn't captivated by space in 2021?

In a moment, I'll be joined by Miriam to discuss those big missions, what they tell us about

the ambitions of the private space industry and what we can expect in 2022.

We're joined now by Miriam Kramer, author of Axios Space, and the host of the second season of how it happened, the next astronauts. Hi, Miriam. Hi, thanks for having me. Let's start with

an overview of this year. I think you could make the case that this was the year of spaceflight

opened up to regular people, but I want to define that term really carefully because most of the people

who went this year who made headlines weren't that regular. They were billionaires or

celebrities. You could call them civilians. They were not professionally trained astronauts,

certainly not the people that we think of, to quote you in the second season of how it

happened, when we think about Buzz Light Year. I'm curious how you think historians are going to

think about this year in space when they look back. Yeah, I mean, it's always hard to sort of predict how

people will look back on something that we're living through. But to me, I think that this

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