"Bradford Liedel" wrote in message
...

I find this stuff very interesting. I'm curious to see if (within the
next 30 years) space travel actually becomes a consumer industry
rather than a government only industry. With backstreet boys being
launched into space, towers into the atmosphere, corporations
competing on new shuttle designs, etc...who knows what this will all
bring.



The nearest thing to an initiative for this is the X-prize competiton

http://www.xprize.org/

One of the teams involved, the UK based starchaser group
claims to be building a reusable space vessel for suborbital launch
next year

http://www.starchaser.co.uk/

Another is using an aircraft based approach

http://www.bristolspaceplanes.com/

Keith