Eyes on the lunar lander prize

For the past few years, the entrepreneurial space industry has struggled to find ways to demonstrate the progress that it is making, particularly in the development of suborbital vehicles. There are always conference presentations and press releases and the like, but there’s nothing quite as effective in capturing the public’s attention as actually building and flying hardware, as the flights of SpaceShipOne in 2004 so clearly demonstrated. With none of the leading suborbital vehicle developers planning to make test flights of their vehicles before next year, there would seem to be few near-term opportunities to see what various companies are capable of.