Well, it depends on what you want to define as useless...I can think of a lot of things in today's society that are really actually useless but because of the demand for them they go for high prices. Let's say low rider jeans for example...they're jeans just like any other pair on the market but because there is a demand for them they can be expensive. There's a demand to make cheap affordable trips to space available for the general public so although you may term the independent space projects useless...there is a demand and as such they are developing a means to satisfy this desire. If one of these private vessels can put a man in orbit at a fraction of the Shuttles cost I would say that is not a useless endeavour because Tito was willing to pay 35 million to go to space whereas these craft don't cost nearly that much...they could put several people in space for far less. The CEO of Virgin wants to do it for as cheap as $115,000 per person...now that's still a lot and all he's planning on doing is sending them up to like 65 miles or so but if one of these others make an effective and comparatively cheap vessel that can make orbit...the price may drop to soemthing affordable to the average person and thereby opening a huge market. I don't know, I'm just excited that some positive focus has been on the space outreach and it's doubly good that it comes from the private sector since if we leave it to the government and NASA (and this is NOT a knock on them it's just a statement) the "colonization" of space would take a great deal longer then if many of our massive corporations got involved. Private sector development has spurred growth in so many fields, look at the automobile industry look at how far we've come, the airplanes industry just barely over a 100 years old. I'm disappointed that although man has been to space closing in on 50 years how little we've come from our first expriments. I mean, we put a man on the moon but we still haven't developed beyond 1980ish space shuttles...let's get the private sector involved with some good old fashion capitalist competition involved and open this thing wide open. If the market was there we could have already had a station on the moon I feel...let's not wait for the government to do all the work for us, let's get these companies in there spurring growth. Just some random thoughts there.