Countdown to Commercial Spaceflight

“A small fleet of privately developed spacecraft will head into orbit in the next few years—assuming that current levels of public and private funding can be sustained. If it happens, this will mark a new chapter in space exploration and research, as NASA comes to rely more on private companies for the technology to put manned and unmanned vehicles in space. Progress reports from several private space companies at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’s Space 2010 conference, in Anaheim, CA, reveal new details of spacecraft design as well as testing and flight schedules.”