airaze.com: "I'm not really qualified to write this post and give you a full breakdown of the history of our space program. My only qualifications are a few hours in zero g and a handful of missions on Mir." I can't speak for anyone else, but as far as I am concerned, the real reason why there aren't more private missions is because the people who could really benefit from them are wealthy and influential enough to get on a government one or start their own. I see two main categories of reasons for the lack of private flights: They have either been banned outright or they haven't been approved. We have seen, from a recent article, what kind of "review" these would-be astronauts get. A complete waste of time at best, but then I believe the purpose of NASA, now, is "to keep America on top". With the amount of money involved with these missions, I don't think anyone with influence would let them go to waste. If they want to risk the lives of others, they would try to find a way to do it for themselves, no? We do have some options. It would take an interesting kind of person to try it without any backup...if you lose your backup for some reason, you're probably not going to reach orbit. To the best of my knowledge, though, I don't know of any missions to space being completed by lone individuals. I am of the opinion that if it is possible, the people who could afford the necessary costs will be the ones willing to do it. And with their money, they could provide the backup funds for those who can't afford it for themselves. This is why I was so saddened to see that the NASA Administrator, Sean O'Keefe, had been reprimanded for talking to the media about space travel. ( http://mashable.com/2011/06/03/okeefe-reprimanded/ ) One would think that the current administration would want to encourage private astronauts if that would better things. You know, make the money available...give us the support, provide the opportunity. Now, I believe that, if it were possible, we would be hearing about a lot more going on that would be making all of the media right now. Some space programs can't be revealed, so I suppose a lot of this is left out of the stories. I'd say there is still a lot going on, even if not being reported. The way it works is that only people with influential friends will be able to afford private spaceflight. And they won't get press or political support, because they are not of great importance. Thats right...a whole lot of people who might fly to space will still never get there because no one is willing to back them. It would be quite expensive to get into space, so you would probably have to bring quite a few rich people into the game in order to make any kind of space flight viable. Then again, if you were really able to afford to make a space flight, you would probably just use it to study the earth and try to solve our space program problems. Space flight research would probably be the best kind, I think. I'm kind of thinking that the private astronauts will be people who already own companies and are not afraid of making things like that more public. Like with Boeing's CST-100 project...that seems to be a major contender for human spaceflight in the next decade. I'm not really qualified to write this post and give you a full breakdown of the history of our space program. My only qualifications are a few hours in zero g and a handful of missions on Mir. My post was more the nature of something "off-topic", i.e. the history of what and why NASA is doing in the first place (since your question wasn't about that). My knowledge of the American spaceflight program started from the beginning (Apollo) with one quick stop into the 1970's and I still had the opportunity to follow the shuttles to ISS on my own terms (because I worked at a school that funded a program to help with student grants). That said, my knowledge of these histories was mostly self-taught and had no formal education to back it up. Most of what has happened in US spaceflight was only partially known in the 1970's, but is becoming very well known now. NASA is working very hard at making the information available (the Internet has proven incredibly successful in doing this). What has been released as well is how much space flight is funded (less than 2% of the Federal budget, less than 1% of the gross budget), which means it's not possible for governments to spend any more on space flight. Some of this is because of how the space program came about and was funded (that part of the space program got cut from the 1960's and early 1970's so NASA could focus on the Apollo program). There are just too many things on the ISS (and in Earth orbit) with the space shuttle to make the funding for any further exploration missions make any sense (i.e. it would just be a waste of money). You'd have to say that NASA is being as frugal as possible to where they don't get in trouble by the politicians... it's a tight budget, and it's not like NASA is the only one feeling the pinch (the rest of the military is looking at being cut significantly and in many cases will be cut, in fact they've already gone down several times). At this point in time, there is nothing for NASA to look forward to that would make them any kind of viable alternative or competitor to the current American spaceflight program (except to the extent that many Americans would want something from NASA which is beyond the budget cap... most of which would probably be what most countries want: access to space for satellites, for weather monitoring, and for weather modeling). With less than 2% of the budget being spent on space flight, it's not going to happen and with only a few people involved in the research, it's not going to be possible to do much (this is where I think the US public is wrong... they say we have the technology to go to the Moon, when it comes down to it, the government has no money to back it up). I think it's likely that the private spaceflight program (which would be run by people with resources) will be something that is built around a space station, though some space stations (or orbiting stations) will probably exist in other places (even if the Russians are gone). However, these people would not be like how we view astronauts, at all... they would be very wealthy people, who would be getting paid by NASA to do their job... they would also be very smart people, so they would know what to build, how to build it, and what to do with it. (If NASA can come up with the money, I'd expect most of the hardware would be left over from some space program already). The way it works is that only people with influential friends will be able to afford private spaceflight. And they won't get press or political support, because they are not of great importance. Thats right...a whole lot of people who might fly to space will still never get there because no one is willing to back them. It would be quite expensive to get into space, so you would probably have to bring quite a few rich people into the game in order to make any kind of space flight viable. Then again, if you were really able to afford to make a space flight, you would probably just use it to study the earth and try to solve our space program problems. Space flight research would probably be the best kind, I think. I'm kind of thinking that the private astronauts will be people who already own companies and are not afraid of making things like that more public. Like with Boeing's CST-100 project...that seems to be a major contender for human spaceflight in the next decade. That's exactly what I think is going to happen. The more money that comes in and out of that budget cap, the more risk that it will come out of the NASA budget. I think this is the reason there hasn't been any talk about making NASA get a more modern space station. I think the people responsible for planning and buying a space station have already been replaced and, due to the budget, they haven't been replaced with any new people. No one's getting any promotion from this, either... I don't think that will happen until the budget cap is lifted, and then I think it will just go up in smoke and everyone will figure out that there's no way to make it happen. In this budget, it would not be possible