And speaking of our socialist space program, USNWR has a bit more conventional "wisdom" about NASA and manned spaceflight. I guess, considering what year it is, and how little even technically-savvy reporters really understand about space costs and policy, we should expect to see a plethora of stories like this. It just costs too much folks, forget about any of that science fictiony stuff like lunar bases and space colonies. NASA can't do it cheaply, so clearly it can't be done cheaply. It might be 2001, but we aren't even going to get flying cars and robosexuals, so don't count on any spinning orbital hotels.

In the meantime, XCOR continues flight testing...

[Update]

On the same subject, Fredrik Norman has found a nice interview in Wired with Ed Hudgins of Cato. Ed put together the conference that I referenced in the previous post. He provides much better insight into what's going on, and our prospects for national progress in space, than the USNWR article.