In mid-January, NASA received a small budget increase for 2014, and the administration decided the International Space Station (ISS) will get support to stay in orbit four more years, until 2024. This is good news for the commercial operators launching cargo spacecraft to resupply the ISS. It means NASA will be able to continue to issue contracts to private, for-profit companies such as SpaceX and Orbital Sciences to send up food and supplies to the ISS. Those contracts will give these companies and others that supply them the time and funding to further develop spacecraft for routinely reaching low Earth orbit.
The commitment from Congress to continue and slightly increase NASA funding is encouraging to the nascent commercial spaceflight industry. According to Michael Lopez-Alegria, a former astronaut and president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, commercializing space will increase demand, which will lower the cost barriers and actually get more people into space. Virgin Galactic, XCOR, Sierra Nevada, and others are working diligently on the next phase: developing human-carrying reusable space planes to take passengers to the upper reaches of the atmosphere for a weightless experience. Space tourism is still a dream, but a dream moving closer to reality month by month.