2021 to be remembered as the year space tourism took flight

NBC's Tom Costello looks back on the history-making year in aviation

NEW YORK, NY (NBC News) - From New Mexico to Texas to Florida..put 2021 down as the year the private space race came roaring off the pad.

"For the next generation of dreamers, if we can do this, just imagine what you can do," said Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson.

Billionaires Branson, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk bringing commercial space travel one rocket ride closer for all of us back here on Earth.

On his first trip Bezos brought along 82-year-old Wally Funk, one of the original female Mercury astronauts who never flew.

Then, Captain Kirk himself, 90-year-old William Shatner choked up with emotion after landing back on Earth.

"What you have given me is the most profound experience i can imagine," Shatner told Bezos.

On September 15th, it was more civilian astronauts onboard a Space-X rocket that made history in a three-day orbit around the world.

"We can see the entire perimeter of the earth which is so beautiful."

The trip was part of a fundraiser for St. Jude Children's Hospital, where crew member Haley Arsenal was treated for cancer as a child. But, with prices starting at a $250,000 per seat, space tourism is still way out of reach for most of us Earthlings.

"It's important to you that this becomes accessible to everybody?" asks Tom Costello.

"That's why we started it… I think ultimately the price will come down to the level where an awful amount of people will be able to do it," responds Branson.

But Bezos and Musk aren't content with joy rides around the Earth. Musk's Space-X has won a NASA contract for its starship to carry astronauts to the surface of the moon. That same system could eventually fly on to Mars.

And Bezos is planning to build a commercial space station called Orbital Reef. It's a sort of floating business, and proof the commercial space race is hot and at full throttle.

And the U.S. is not alone. China is putting astronauts in space, already building its own space station, with plans to put humans on the moon by 2030.

And then there's Mars, the ultimate goal. This year, NASA pulled off yet another first after landing a rover on the surface. It also flew a helicopter, a drone really, over the Martian surface.

NASA's animation shows the actual chopper flight so far. While it's flying, it's making 500 calculations per second.

It's a vast universe holding billions of galaxies and hundreds of billions of planets. So what are the chances that we're not alone? That life exists on at least one of those planets? The problem? We humans love sci-fi and we tend to think of aliens as the characters we see on TV and in the movies," says Lori Glaze, NASA's director of planetary science.

"Our understanding of life doesn't mean that we understand all the options, all the possibilities of the various life forms that may be out there," says Costello.

"Absolutely true. Yes, just because we understand our own life doesn't mean that we know what to predict of how life might form in another different environment, says Glaze.

But have aliens already visited us? What about the UFO sightings from credible sources like Navy pilots? Astrophysicist Adam Frank is a sympathetic skeptic.

"Why do U-F-O's always look like exactly what we expect them to look like from all the movies we've watched. Like I like to say, if it sounds like a science fiction story it is," says Frank.

Frank believes life probably does exist beyond earth, but he hasn't seen compelling evidence that they visited earth yet.

"If there is intelligent life out there, experts say it is probably many light years away and each light year is at least a 37,000 year journey. So we're talking about 100,000 years to get there more maybe even further." says Frank.

So you better pack an overnight bag.