[Space X] already won the re-supply contract (pending some litigation) and their capsule is designed to carry people to space. We should cancel government funded efforts and instead contract it all out.

You are contradicting yourself.

Government funded efforts are already contracted out. NASA doesn't actually build rockets. They contract it out to Boeing, or Lockmart, or both (United Space Alliance), or now, Space X.

"Go private" really means that the government stops supplying space money altogether, and allows the free market to decide if space is worth it. Is that what you want?

"Microgravity" is the correct term for the background acceleration levels present on the International Space Station, and is commonly used by researchers who care about the exact levels of disturbance on their experiments (even researchers on the Vomit Comet).

Gravity gradients and small disturbances (hard drive motors, astronauts bumping the walls, etc.) make the broad spectrum acceleration noise floor on the ISS about 10 micro-Gs. Peaks caused by refrigerator pumps, maneuvering jets, Soyuz and Shuttle dockings, etc. are much higher.

More information is at NASA Principal Investigator Microgravity Services: http://microgravity.grc.nasa.gov/MSD/MSD_htmls/pims_products.html

MS might have decided they're not interested in this kind of market. It does not push any sales of any other products of their line.

Traditionally, it has pushed DirectX, and their operating systems. It doesn't work well under Wine or in a virtual machine, so you need a "real" Windows install to run it.

Like some other people here have said, without MSFS, I have no longer have any need to boot into Windows.

Having the capsule mounted on top of the fuel tanks also tends to add extra safety. And because of the relatively low weight of these capsules, you can afford to stick extra safety equipment on them.

Yes, the capsule designs have a Launch Abort System. It's the thing that looks like a tower at the top of the stack. It is a rocket motor that can yank the capsule away from the rest of the system if something goes terribly wrong.

The problem is that despite of decades of effort, they still haven't figured out how to get nonzero thrust out of solid-state rocket engines.

We have, but thrust is currently too low for manned missions, For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoplasmadynamic_thruster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_specific_impulse_magnetoplasma_rocket