Do we need NASA?

Space, by contrast, until recently has remained the domain of NASA. Burt Rutan, the aerospace engineer famous for building a suborbital rocket plane that won the Ansari X Prize, believes NASA is crowding out private efforts. "Taxpayer-funded NASA should only fund research and not development," Rutan said during a recent panel discussion at the California Institute of Technology. "When you spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build a manned spacecraft, you're...dumbing down a generation of new, young engineers (by saying), 'No, you can't take new approaches, you have to use this old technology.'"

Rutan and his fellow pilots, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs have undertaken a formidable task: To demonstrate to the public that space travel need not be synonymous with government programs. In fact, many of them say NASA has become more of a hindrance than a help.

Read more.