The Dragon spacecraft is the first vehicle which has been built primarily with private funds, where the "ownership" of the vehicle does not belong to a government agency. When this vehicle returns to the Earth, while NASA will get all of the stuff that is inside of the vehicle, it doesn't "belong" to NASA. In fact SpaceX has even hinted that this particular vehicle might see a 2nd or 3rd flight in the future (in terms of the capsule itself). NASA's COTS contract requires a new vehicle for every flight, so those subsequent flights will likely go to paying commercial (read non-government) customers, but the spacecraft doesn't "belong" to NASA.

The comparison here is more like how commercial airlines can lease their aircraft and crews to other people, including government agencies.

In the case of most of those "privately built spacecraft", there is a huge difference between them and the Dragon. For things like the Space Shuttle, the Apollo spacecraft, or even things like the probes to other planets, they were designed by NASA engineers where all of the specifications and design requirements were decided upon by NASA management and had NASA personnel at nearly all levels of production. Any "private" companies were really contractors and sub-contractors who followed the lead of NASA supervision.

Also it is important to point out that the other spacecraft that have flown to the ISS by American companies have also all been "owned" by NASA. If you tried to buy a Space Shuttle from North American-Rockwell International (yes, I know those companies are now owned by Boeing), you would have been politely told you simply can't buy them at any price. There were some people who tried to buy a Shuttle in the 1980's and simply couldn't. In the case of the Dragon, SpaceX will gladly sell you one and even help you out with the government paperwork needed to be able to use it and help schedule a launch for you as well. They will even help you through the process if you aren't an American (which does add paperwork and some hassles, but it can be arranged).

I'll admit that commercial companies have been involved with the construction of spacecraft in the past, but this is something new. How different it can be will be seen with other projects that SpaceX is doing that will be completely private for-profit ventures not involving NASA at all.

I dunno. I know it's not popular around here to like anything that smells like "social," but I find I like using Facebook far more than I ever liked using MySpace. Even if you assume they're both serving the same market with all of the exact same features (which isn't really true), one piece of software is not identical to everything else in its category. It may be that Facebook succeeds simply because it's better.

Believe it or not, there are laws about that, at least if you plan to sell your product through the U.S. Post.

I think it depends. If you're talking about the old-model, "throw one onto every porch" daily newspaper, then perhaps advertising is the only way it can survive (if it can at all). But I'm pretty sure The Economist, for example, makes a decent chunk of its money from subscriptions.

True to an extent, but if you have a cute local restaurant you're not going to want to put an ad for it right next to a write-up of a recent child murder. Around here, that kind of advertising goes into the weekly papers, along with the live music listings and the coupons for discount spa treatments. None of that stuff is underwriting the actual news reporting.

What's wrong with Warren Buffett? He's made a lot of money for himself, true, but he's made a lot of money for other people besides. And as for his own wealth, he's in the process of donating it all to charity, to the tune of billions going toward important causes that governments are too broke or shortsighted to fund. He was instrumental in convincing Bill Gates to do the same. If you're going to demonize some successful, wealthy American, I can think of a lot of better targets.

"I hate it... every time I come home, my roommate is always playing one of those first-person shooter games."

"You mean like Duke Nukem?"

"No, the other kind."

Damn, that is one of the funniest posts I've seen on Slashdot for a long time. I'm going to need to use it elsewhere at some point.

The U.S.A. may not have legal authority or jurisdiction over the moon directly (assuming that the U.S. Congress doesn't simply withdraw from the Outer Space Treaty and claim the land in a blatant land grab), but under the terms of the Outer Space Treaty the physical objects on the Moon are claimed by the U.S. government, where permission of the "owner" of that object is needed before it can be used, moved, or even touched (without violating the terms of that treaty). There is a presumption that laws in the country of origin of the object can deal with their own citizens through their own legal process, but it becomes an international incident potentially becoming casus belli if somebody from another country messes with those items.

As far as how long something needs to be "inactive" for it to be considered abandoned, I don't think there is any sort of standard that can apply in space. Most spacecraft are usually unmanned, virtually by definition (manned spacecraft are clearly a very small minority of spacecraft that have been sent into space). There is also very legitimate scientific research that can happen when these older vehicles are recovered, including investigations on how the environment of space has stressed various materials. This can be demonstrated with no less than the Apollo 12 flight, which recovered pieces of the earlier Surveyor mission to the same site and yielded some very interesting results. I can only imagine that they would want to do that again... which is sort of the point of the guidelines as well.

The guidelines explicitly skirt around the issue of Russian vehicles on the Moon, and in particular leave the issue of what to do with Richard Garriott's lunar rover alone entirely as that is owned by a private individual. I presume he could grant or deny permission for that separately.

Regardless, other than trying to stir up a war between nuclear powers, I don't know what could realistically be done to stop somebody outside of America from confiscating all of the Apollo artifacts on the Moon and bringing them back to the Earth or even selling them.

You can come to your own conclusions on the matter. Here is the official "guideline" for NASA equipment on the Moon (it can't be rules because that would be a claim of sovereignty on the Moon):

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/617743main_NASA-USG_LUNAR_HISTORIC_SITES_RevA-508.pdf

The only way these rules could be enforced is for the U.S. government to claim these hunks of lunar real estate and establish them with National Monument status under the Antiquities Act of 1906 (16 USC 431–433). I've love to see National Park Service rangers go up to the Moon to enforce such laws.

Actually I would love to see the day come where there is a NPS ranger on the Moon in some sort of interpretive center near the Apollo 11 landing site, but I don't think that will happen in my lifetime. I certainly would love to bring some of these conspiracy nut cases up to the Moon and show them the sites myself, but then they would still claim it was some sort of NASA conspiracy that dressed up the landing site in the 21st Century in some sort of movie reenactment by James Cameron to falsify the record. Even bringing these idiots to the Moon won't convince them that people from the 1960's could achieve such a technological feat.