Space travel is extraordinarily expensive but that is about to change – and the impact could be profound.

Imagine you are flying from London to New York. After safely touching down at JFK, you disembark to head for passport control and collect your bags.

As you do so, a tow-truck lumbers across the tarmac, drags away the aircraft and pushes it into the sea.

That – roughly speaking – is analogous to the economics of most space travel.

Ever since Soviet scientists successfully fired Sputnik into low Earth orbit in 1957, the industry has struggled but failed to develop launch vehicles which can be safely and reliably reused like regular aircraft.

That simple fact has ensured sending people and equipment into space remains extraordinarily expensive - accessible at least until very recently to just a handful of sovereign governments willing to fork out the billions of taxpayer dollars required.

All that is about to change – and the impact could be profound.

With vast sums of private money flooding into the coffers of companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin – backed by billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos – the race to develop commercially viable, re-useable rockets is advancing quickly.