Last weeks announcement of the proposed NASA budget, dropping human spaceflight as one of NASA's responsibilities, has caused some to doubt that we Americans can keep up, that we will step up to the challenge of commercializing human spaceflight. First of all, dispite perceptions to the contrary, all American spaceflight has always been carried out by commercial companies. NASA has never built a single man-rated spacecraft. All this strange talk about private industry not being able to build certified man-rated rockets is part of that strange perception that NASA built our man-rated spacecraft. They did not, private companies built every one of them, from the Mercury capsules to the space shuttles.

Last year the Space Frontiers Foundation co- sponsored a contest, asking the question, What Should the Future of American Human Spaceflight Be? Our team entered three video responses to this contest. This was one of the prize winners: