NASA Taps 7 Commercial Firms For Suborbital Flights

coondoggie writes "NASA this week picked seven commercial space companies to fly a manner of experiments on their suborbital aircraft. According to NASA the companies will split $10 million and get a two-year contract that will let NASA set up a pool of reusable suborbital systems that could help it test applications in everything from astrobiology to measuring the impact of a solar storm."

Re:what a joke....

[Gravatron]

You don't always need to get to orbit to do research. For example, take a look at sounding rockets and the science they do.

Re:what a joke....

[downix]

NASA does plenty of suborbital work for research purposes. You can read about it here:

http://rscience.gsfc.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov]