The cancellation came just 17 minutes before blast-off. The launch is now scheduled for Saturday at 3:22 p.m. ET. (The New York Times)

Talking point: NASA believes the future of space is chartered flights on private spacecraft, with the emergence of players like Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Boeing’s Starliner, which SpaceX beat in the race to the launch pad. Countless companies were hoping today would be a watershed moment for the future of space exploration, moving it from a government enterprise to a commercial industry that could be worth US$1 trillion by 2040. Prior to the postponement, Dylan Taylor, CEO of Voyager Space Holdings, which is gunning to compete with SpaceX, told Protocol that the launch’s failure “would call into question everything about private enterprise, commercial crew, all of that stuff.” Onlookers noted there were no technical failures in the lead-up to today’s launch. If successful could accelerate ambitions touted by Silicon Valley billionaires of building lunar bases or sending people to Mars. Actor Tom Cruise has even expressed interest in using the International Space Station for a film.