[Servant of the 9]

And just imagine how it would be without more than $2 trillion going to the government.

Yeah, just like it is now, with people unwilling to make investments, because the possible rate of return is too low to make it worth the risk.

So9

[anobjectivist]

Would you invest the money if someone wasn't holding a gun to your head?

I don't want to, but i guess some scientists will grab my money to build a particle accelerator so that they can revel in their scientific journals.

Hopefully, by the time I graduate with an aerospace engineering degree, the private space market will be somewhere because of the X-Prize.

However, with the new mars/moon initiative, it seems the government will have a political monopoly on all space funds, no matter how unprofitable their usage may be.

How long ago would you have said that the private industry would never support an investment in a space program? Looks like times are a'changin'.