Glenn Reynolds offers appropriate congratulations to the X-Prize winners for their so-far successful privatization of space exploration:
NASA got us to the moon in an amazingly short time. But its subsequent history demonstrates that command-style economics is a little like steroids in athletics: You get a burst of rapid growth when the drugs first take hold, but after a while you realize that your national testicles are shrinking. […]
I heard someone on one of the cable channels (it might even have been MSNBC!) predicting that more people will travel into space in the next decade than in all of human history to date. That’s probably right — and if it is, it will be because the forces of capitalism have done what they always do, making things cheaper, better, and more widely available.
Reynolds’s full article will be enjoyable reading for any advocate of limited government in space.