Arguably, commercializing space flight will lead to the same innovation that occurred with airplanes, but not without catastrophe. The Space Shuttle is the most complex machine ever built, and private companies may not fully understand the complexity of the challenge, or the amount of resources it takes to get the job done. NASA and Congress have underestimated the necessary resources in the past as well, so it's inevitable the these first generation space companies with dramatically lower budgets are going to encounter the same kind of problems.

With 10% failure rate for space shuttles, the question isn't whether first generation private space ships - seemingly routine, actually experimental - will crash and burn, but what happens when they do.

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Suffering from faulty CO2 scrubbers? Suffer an injury from a defective robot arm during a space walk? Aren't you tired of waiting for your meager settlement? Well Cucinowicz Rhoda & Martin will see that you get your cash payments today. Currently located in orbit above South Africa, we can provide you with extraterrestrial counsel that you can count on.

The whole private vs. government arguments made above are not really true. ULA (formerly Lockheed Martin and Boeing / Titan IV/Atlas II/Atlas V vs. Delta II/IV are 'private' in the same way that Orbital Sciences Corporation and SpaceX are. NASA currently uses OSC, and ULA for launching it's payloads as it has for some time (expendible launch vehicles).

NASA has always relied on the private sector to develop technology dating all the way back to the beginning of the space program.

That said, SpaceX worries me with their arrogance (ahem Tesla Motors as an Elon example) in how 'simple' it is to get to space and how 'dumb' ULA and Orbital Sciences are. There are just some laws of the universe that spaceX will realize it cannot circumvent and still have a reliable launch vehicle (like an Atlas V).

Best of luck.

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I didn't hear that either company had gone beyond LEO, so I'm curious if there's a projected 1st launch date for either side.

In any case, this will very possibly be looked at as the tipping point for a commercial presence in space. When you start having billions on the values of contracts, things are going to get done.

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