Leonard David of Space.com on Shaping the shuttle’s successor:
A DEBATE NOW swirls around the space agency’s latest effort to shuttle people to and from the International Space Station (ISS) — without a space shuttle. NASA and industry teams have begun sketching out what they collectively feel is a safe, sane, arguably simple, and less-costly way to put people into Earth orbit.
The focus of NASA’s Orbital Space Plane (OSP) program is to provide crew rescue capability from the ISS by 2010 and crew transfer capability to and from the orbiting outpost no later than 2012.
I think the real question here is how quickly we can get the gubmint out of the way so that the market can solve these issues more efficiently.