NASA And Virgin

NASA is contracting with Virgin Galactic to fly experiments on up to three suborbital SpaceShipTwo flights. The flights will be dedicated strictly to NASA. Up to now, payload positions on spaceflights have been extremely limited, so many worthwhile experiments haven't made the cut. VG wants to change that, starting with those experiments requiring only a few minutes in microgravity.

Given SpaceShipTwo's payload capacity, NASA could fly up to 600 experiments per mission. That would produce lots of happy researchers. If NASA exercises the option to fly all three missions, the contract will be worth $4.5 million. At that price, if only a few of the hundreds of experiments produce significant results, the program could turn out to be a big bargain for everyone.