Welcome to the 21st Century: Are We All Going to Space?

If you've paid a little attention to space travel in the last few years, you might have noticed a space craft called SpaceShip One.  A civilian made spacecraft, it's assisted by an aircraft to take it above 30,000 feet to launch the next millionaire off into the nether-worlds of space.  Basically, this:

Just in case, SpaceShipOne is docked under the mother ship, White Knight; the plane behind it, although being a tight Beechcraft Starship, has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.  With that said, this aeronautical contraption won the X Prize of $10 million for successfully making it to space.  And, to be honest, there's little I personally have to complain about this.  Man made another step forward, I'll clap and cheer like the next guy.  That was until I recently found this on BBC news:

To me, this says, "We did it!  We found the resources to take over space flight as we know it!"  Is this bad?  Nah.  But, this does mean that we have some potentially competitive opportunities in the near future for space flight.  Personally, like any business venture, I'm slightly worried.  Affordable opportunities may mean bad service or potentially dangerous situations.  In other words, look forward to space travel ten years down the line... if you can afford it.

So, does this mean we will soon be able to travel in space as civilians?  Yup!  But, does this mean that space travel will always be expensive?  Well, for now, I sure hope it will be!  We have a lot to learn and the more money put into this venture, the more we as a society will be able to take it seriously.  Until then, it will be interesting to see how big our imaginations will get as time goes on.  I mean, this friggen thing will be the biggest plane in the world, who's sole purpose is to launch whole rockets into space.  Watch your butt, Jetsons.