Above our beloved water globe, on the shores of the cosmic ocean, a winged spacecraft approaches a gigantic space station pirouetting in the vast darkness. The pilots of this ship use flat-screen computer monitors to match their rotation with that of the massive orbital outpost. As the shuttle spins, the logo of the world's largest airline appears on the side. It's not the present, but it must have been the past. A scene from Stanley Kubrick's 2001 sci-fi epic A Space Odyssey from 1968, it was praised at the time for its realistic depiction of the human future in space (*1). Today, ten years after that future failed to manifest, spaceflight is still a privilege reserved only for the most powerful governments on Earth. There have been no successful attempts to change this fact; To date, no human hitchhiking with a national space organization has ever circumnavigated the planet. There's a list of dirty reasons why this is so, but it all comes down to cost. The monetary price associated with spaceflight is so high that for decades the only organizations willing to take the plunge were powerful governments with money to spend and political balloons to blow (*2). In fact, only three governments in the world have ever launched a man into space and only two of them, Russia and China, still retain this capability. However, in early 2006, for the first time, with the announcement of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, the private sector turned its attention to space. Working hand in hand, the U.S. government and private enterprise have worked to dramatically reduce the cost of putting a human into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and beyond... middle of paper. ... .Lcsun-news.com. Las Cruces Sunshine. Internet. October 24, 2011.(9) “Second Bigelow orbital module launches into space. » Espace.com. Espace.com. Web.June 28, 2008.(10) “Space Taxi Delays Spur Bigelow Aerospace Layoffs.” Reuters.com. Reuters. Web.October 20, 2011.(11)“NASA Budget Plan Saves Telescope, Cuts Space Taxis. » Reuters.com. Reuters. Web.November 16, 2011(12) “Doubts displayed in Washington; Will Congress abandon private space? Popularmechanics.com. Popular mechanics. Internet. October 26, 2011.(13) “Space Transportation Costs: Trends in Price per Pound in Orbit 1990-2000.” » Futron.com. FUTRON Company. Internet. September 6, 2001.(14) "Serious Errors in Cost Estimates for the Development and Operation of Heavy Transport Systems Directly Derived from the Shuttle." NASA.gov. NASA. Internet. September 2. 2009.