THIS IS, IN FACT, ONE OF THE LITTLE-NOTICED SUCCESSES OF THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, THOUGH I’VE WRITTEN ABOUT IT ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS: How Obama brought capitalism to outer space.

Obama’s true legacy may be something altogether different: the standing up of a commercial space industry that has ended the government’s monopoly on space.

When the space shuttle was retired in 2011, NASA looked to the commercial sector to fly its astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, fertilizing the industry with billions of dollars in contracts. And in the past few years, the industry has begun to blossom, reinvigorating interest in space with dramatic landings of rockets on ships with other, unprecedented feats. . . .

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeffrey P. Bezos’s Blue Origin promise suborbital tourist flights within a couple of years. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.) SpaceX and Boeing are working toward flying astronauts to the space station. Bigelow Aerospace is building inflatable habitats that could ultimately succeed the station. In fact, one of the habitats is currently attached to the station.

“It will become one of the great ironies in the history of exploration into space that someone many politicians called a socialist was a champion for the possibilities of capitalism in space,” said James Muncy, a space policy analyst at PoliSpace, a consulting firm.

You can accomplish a lot by not interfering.