In the week or so since it became known that Eileen Collins would appear at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night, the space community has buzzed with questions and concerns. A brilliant astronaut and the first woman to command a space shuttle, Collins has a sterling reputation among the flight directors, astronauts, and engineers at NASA who worked with her. Why would she jump into the political fray, many asked? And for Donald Trump, of all people?

I felt the answer was pretty simple. Like a lot of astronauts, Collins comes from a military background (she's a colonel in the US Air Force) and is therefore more likely to be conservative politically. Perhaps she had discussions with the Trump people, and they endorsed her view that NASA should return to the Moon before going to Mars. In any case, it's not like she's the first former astronaut to take on politics (Hello, John Glenn and Harrison Schmitt).

So on a night when Ted Cruz stole the show at the convention for political observers, the four-minute speech given by Collins garnered the most interest among the space industry. Her remarks were largely a fairly standard call to restore some glory to America's space program, and she touched on how it has been unacceptable to rely on Russia for transport to the International Space Program for the last five years. America can, and must, do better than that, Collins said.

"Nations that lead on the frontier lead in the world, and we need that visionary leadership again, leadership that will inspire the next generation of explorers to have that same passion," Collins said. "We need leadership that will make america's space program first again. Yes. And we need leadership that will make America great again."

Politically there was some question as to whether Collins was supposed to explicitly endorse Trump at the end of her speech, which she did not. But what most interested—and ultimately disappointed—me was Collins' time-worn, Cold War-era perception about NASA and what really makes America's efforts in space great in the 21st century.

In some respects NASA has never been better. Its Solar System exploration program, multiple rovers on Mars, new mission to Jupiter, and recent flyby of Pluto are things the rest of the world cannot begin to match. The same goes for the agency's astrophysics and Earth observing programs.

It is also absolutely true that the space agency has relied on Russia for transportation to the station since 2011, and NASA does indeed face lots of questions about the viability of its human spaceflight program. NASA has adopted a big-budget, big-rocket approach that focuses on Mars as its ultimate destination. But the space agency presently lacks the funding to execute this plan, and a Trump administration would need to pump a lot of money into a government program some have criticized as a "socialist plan" for space exploration.

It does not seem likely that the future of US spaceflight lies in trying to recreate the Apollo moment that culminated 47 years ago with the Apollo 11 Moon landing. That was a phenomenal achievement, but the Cold War is over, and we are never again going to spend 5 percent of the nation's budget on spaceflight to promote American exceptionalism. Moreover, we live in a multipolar world. NASA's most meaningful achievements today are accomplished with the help of international partners. NASA leads, certainly, but it is stronger with other nations at its side.

Why leave commercial spaceflight out of the picture?

Here's what Collins really missed on Wednesday night, however. Yes, NASA relies on Russia. But within a couple of years, the country will have not one, but two commercial vehicles providing rides to the space station from US soil, manufactured by SpaceX and Boeing. Despite the bleak picture Collins painted on stage in Cleveland, there is an incredible vibrancy in the US launch industry that the rest of the world is scrambling to catch up to. NASA isn't driving this push to build modern, low-cost rockets—all-American capitalism is.

Probably the most exciting spaceflight development of the last decade or so has been the successful pursuit of reusable rockets by SpaceX and Blue Origin. This low-cost rocketry is what will ultimately make America greater in space. Successful entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have invested billions of their own dollars into aerospace, and their vision isn't to choose a few of the best and brightest like Collins to send on missions into space. By lowering launch costs, they want to put thousands, and eventually millions, of people into orbit and beyond. Musk wants to send them to Mars. Bezos wants to move manufacturing and resource extraction off the planet Earth.

It is not clear either will succeed, but preliminary tests of their hardware show that the two tech billionaires are building launch systems and spacecraft on par with or better than NASA's—and at a fraction of the cost. To their credit, some at NASA realize the important role private space will play in the future. The agency has nurtured the commercial crew program to replace the space shuttle, and it has increasingly positioned the station as a way for companies to test business models in orbit.

But the public needs to recognize this as well, which is why I was disappointed by Collins and her pining for the Apollo era on such a big stage. The reality is that the best way to "lead on the frontier" in the 21st century is not through flags and footprints, but rather by sending people into space to stay, in a sustainable way, with the eventual aim of making space profitable. One would hope that Donald J. Trump, if he is elected president, would recognize such capitalism when he sees it.