Let the New Space Race Begin

With the death of NASA’s shuttle program comes the beginning of a new space race, one between corporations:

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/07/first-private-spacecraft-set-t.html

The annals of science fiction have been littered with not-to-distant futures where corporations rule the world, where businesses wage wars and battle instead of governments. But it seems that we might be on the precipice of that as numerous companies move to fill the void of manned and un-manned space...