This is bigger than you realize, yes nasa did it in 1964 in what is essentially a lewis & clark type exploration project, the mercury / gemini / apollo series of flights. This is different than 1964 its akin to the opening up of the railway systems in the east that eventually lead to the transcontinental railway. Spacex is just the first company to get there under their own steam. Yes they have government contract, but they developed their own medium lift vehicle powerful enough to launch a man rated space craft into orbit. that is the Dragon space capsule. They did it all in house at a fraction of the cost of the defunct Aries & constellation projects. The dragon now needs to go through a full vetting process to get it man rated but even then it will take 3 years, that will still beat the first full up test flight of the Aries by 3 years[nasa's best guess]. The best part of this is it was done privately for a fraction of what the public sectors failed attempts cost. The Republicans, well, they are just upset the Democrats killed Aries thats why they are kvetching on this, I say if Elon wants to win this hands down, press to get the dragon man rated in 18 months. As there are plans to get the Constellation project restarted already afoot

By the time Ares I/Orion program was cancelled earlier this year, the schedule had already slipped five years to 2017 & a full development would have cost another $50 billion. Further, the cost per flight, with estimated overhead, was figured to be at least $1.5 billion each this compared to the $1 billion each for a Shuttle flight, this while lifting only four people to Shuttle's seven & little or no cargo. Cancellation was therefore a matter of time & thankfully the president had the political guts to do the right thing for once. The problem that you see in the media is the claim there is no immediate replacement. The reality is there is a civilian alternative being pushed & it is the same replacement the president looked at when he went to pad 41 at Cape Canaveral launch station & looked at the flight ready vehicle from Spacex, owned by Elon Musk. According to the media the replacement is years away, the reality is the media missing this story. The replacement, is the first flight ready articles of 2 pieces of equipment the Spacex Falcon 9 medium Launch vehicle which on its maiden flight, is already mated to the Dragon Spacecraft. The two items are already at the Cape awaiting the final sign off by the Air Force range safety office & by NASA. That's all that is keeping it on the ground, not a pie in the sky development program that hasn't started yet, this one is 75% complete at this point, that means we have the hardware development mostly complete, all that is needed is permission to launch to prove its viability. Then obviously it will need a series of flights to work off the knee cards if you will & get it man rated, yes that will take years. But not that many years. if you don't believe me, go here & research it yourself; http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

this needs to be refiled under thank you mister obvious: the cause of this malady is the blood rushing out of the big head to the little head Duh, come on people!

This is like "FW Snort" except it is deployed to communicate to peers world wide where FW Snort only works on the LAN, but it is similar, maybe it would be a good place to start with this idea

What did he just say??

You're correct, they aren't responsible, if, it's a proper credit card, the point is the credit card company's are on the hook for these charges and yes they will pass these expenses back to you and me some how.