What does the SpaceX flight means for commercial spaceflight in the future?

Sea Launch, Space Systems/Loral at odds over Intelsat-19 failure

John Glenn is the kind of pilot who makes it home. The world held its breath on Feb. 20, 1962, as he reentered the atmosphere after circling the Earth three times. There was an indication that the heat shield on his Mercury capsule Friendship 7 wasn't attached properly, threatening a tragic end to the first U.S. orbital human spaceflight, but he got home safely.

The May 28 editorial misstated the number of flights of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle. To date, there have been three.

Satellite operators relying increasingly on hosted payloads to help share costs

The first commercial spacecraft to reach the International Space Station approaches its berthing site at the end of the Canadarm2 (see pp. 34-37). SpaceX's Dragon cargo carrier is a true trailblazer, built with a combination of private funds from the deep pockets of dot.com entrepreneur Elon Musk and U.S. government seed money supplied by NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program.

Dragon Opens The Door On Commercial Space...............

Sierra Nevada Corp. will attempt the first free flight of its Dream Chaser commercial-crew spacecraft this summer, including an autonomous approach and landing at Edwards AFB, Calif., following this captive-carry test of the flight vehicle. An Erickson Air-Crane heavy-lift helicopter carried the composite 25,000-lb. vehicle through an hour-long test May 30 designed to assess its aerodynamic performance.