The era of government funded space programs are over. New private sector companies such as Space X, Lockheed Martin, Virgin Galactic, Bigelow aerospace. These companies are replacing the old and slow and expensive government agencies such as NASA and CNSA. These companies are revolutionizing the space industry by thinking bolder and cheaper. Private sector companies are no longer building rockets just to show off to communists, but instead they are building rockets and rovers to explore science and build the economy. Companies like Virgin Galactic and Space X are both working to bring tourism into space, making space flight relatively cheap and safe. Hopefully in the near future an average person could take a flight into space, whether to see the world from up above or to get from Houston to Beijing in an hour. And with this drive to make spaceflight cheaper and reliable comes the new era of science and business. New discovery’s will be far more likely, the colonization of other planets and moons may no longer be a sci-fi movie, and the mining of asteroids will also be possible allowing us to tap into sources of minerals that are very rare on earth.
Overall the direction that the space industry is moving is a a very positive and bright one so far filled with much success, and hopefully the next ten years will show an exponential growth of these companies and there accomplishments.
Jimbos Physics Blog 