After weeks of feeling down about the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown, I saw something on TV that has raised my spirits.

I had always been jealous of those who got to watch the moon landing in 1969 live on television.

I had a very good excuse for missing it, I was many years away from being born, but I would have loved to have watched that moment in history.

We now have a modern version.

I’ll never forget where I was when I saw the SpaceX launch.

I was at home. Of course I was, there’s a lockdown on.

This modern spacefaring event was broadcast via the Internet in high definition, which shows how technology has advanced since the 1960s.

Famously, Apollo 11 had less computing power than the modern day wrist watch, although to be fair, watches have far less rocket fuel, which may be more important.

Sometimes brute force is more useful than smarts, but that’s not the lesson that cheered me up.

The new rocket can fly itself.

I heard the commentator during the launch say that it can get itself from Earth and dock with the International Space Station on its own.

The Falcon 9 rocket that gets the module into space can also fly back down to Earth and land itself on a drone ship.

Humans are hardly needed. I’m sure the hipsters of the future will offer artisan hand-steered space flights but in general the computers will be in charge.

That didn’t raise my spirits.

It must have been a strange feeling for the astronauts Bob and Doug because we are so used to being the ones in charge.

They were sat there, feeling nervous but not being in control. I’ve had Uber rides like that.

It was also a space event of our time because it’s about the money.

When Nasa sent people into space it was to show what humanity could achieve.

SpaceX sending people into space is the first time the private sector has done it.

It’s one small step for a company, one giant leap for tourism.

It won’t be long before you can pay a huge amount of money to take your holiday in space.

Yes, you will have to wear the spacesuit, the helmet and be trapped in a small capsule, but with the coronavirus quarantine rules here on Earth, normal flights will be like that anyway.

The reason I feel better after watching the take off is that it showed me that we can still meet challenges. Be it Spanish Flu or the Apollo missions, we did it once, we can do it again.