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What would be more important to Ardbeg Distilleries than the ageing of a single malt scotch whiskey? Why should NanoRacks care what a company sends to space as long as they pay their bill and don't jeopardise other payload?

The Russians have sent tourists to the ISS, so why not Virgin Galactic?

The company to look at is Bigelow Aerospace. FYI, this company is partnering with Boeing to build a spacecraft that will carry passengers at a fraction of the price that Space Adventures is currently charging for that opportunity.

As for a microgravity lab, note that NanoRacks already provides this service. They are literally open to anybody willing to use their checkbook to purchase a flight spot. This is no longer the time for theoretical rants, but a time to act and do something as the opportunity is here. At best, all you can do now is to find cheaper ways to get these things to happen or simply take advantage of the opportunities that exist.

Couldn't NASA list the experiments, what they are trying to find out and if they have been successful?

NASA does list the experiments. They are sorted in multiple directions too (by date, mission, researchers, and alphabetically). None the less, your point that media outlets don't really pay attention to this list is a good one and something that should be done to smack some of these journalists into reality.

Another really interesting company who is currently sending experiments up to the ISS is Nanoracks, a for-profit company partnering with NASA on the ISS who is willing to put literally anybody's experiment onto the ISS in a standard enclosure. Results can be either transmitted by telemetry or physically returned to the Earth after completion, exposed to the vacuum of LEO space or kept inside depending on your experimental variables. Thanks to some cooperation Nanoracks has even been able to offer 4 inch cubesats (aka about four inches on each side of the cube) that can be launched from the ISS. If you have some spare bucks, one company even allows you to operate your own satellite through a web browser. It only costs $1k per week where you can develop your own software to use the devices on that satellite. That is a price that a mere mortal like myself or even a college student could put together if they cared.... and that company is even interested in high school groups doing experiments in space.

None of this stuff I've mentioned would be possible without the ISS. Admittedly another space station could be built to do the same thing, but that would require simialr capital outlays to get such a station built in the first place. The ISS is currently open and doing this sort of thing, so it seems a shame to waste this opportunity. Companies like Nanoracks are not being subsidized at least for the astronaut's time and expendible supplies (that is part of the cost of sending those experiments to space), so I do think it would be a shame to destroy a perfectly good research lab now that it is built even if you may think it was far too expensive to build in the first place.

To be fair, there is the Dragon Lab that is going to be conducting microgravity experiments being done by both European and American companies and a few governments.

The problem is that at the moment (besides a few companies who are getting into the experiment aggregator business and offering much smaller prices for small experiments) any research laboratory who wants to conduct this kind of research must pay for the whole launch and build things to fit into the time scales and process of traditional orbital spaceflight systems. Those are extremely expensive, requiring all of the testing and environmental conditioning that you need for operating as an independent spacecraft.

NanoRacks has a business model that seems to be making them a whole bunch of money to provide this "hole in our knowledge", particularly for commercial research that may end up making a profit in the future. Their manifest seems to indicate at least some people are interested in that kind of research and they have a backlog of customers waiting for the next flight.

It's all PR. I'll call it Commercial when they launch from their facility and have a paypal for me to pay for each KG of payload I want to send up in LEO.

Ask, and ye shall receive

Seriously, this has been happening already. I'm sure Nanoracks will accept most major credit cards and PayPal if you insist. They charge about $25,000 for a "1 unit" or "1 U" rack mount system with a few variables depending on the mass of the system and a few other factors that you can negotiate on the website. At the moment their customers are all going to the International Space Station, and included in the contract allows you to have an astronaut perform in-orbit servicing of your device if necessary. Telemetry is a part of the package and you can have the racks returned to you after being in space for awhile (for an additional cost).

Several of these racks have gone up to the International Space Station already, and a few of them are even on this particular flight of the Falcon 9 with the COTS 2+ mission. If you want to open up your bank account and send them some money, I'm sure they'll take it. I just hope you have something useful to do with that space.

SpaceX also has a program called "Dragon Lab" which offers a similar kind of service where a Dragon capsule can stay up for nearly a year with pressurized cargo in the interior. SpaceX has two schedule flights at the moment on their manifest, and is currently selling space on them to anybody who wants to put something into that vehicle. If you want to put something on there (even just a single kilogram package) I'm sure that Gwynne Shotwell will take your e-mail (gwynne at spacex dot com) and offer you a price to put a package on there. PayPal payments for this service are certainly accepted as well.

Just look at who founded PayPal BTW.... you would hope that Elon would take payments from that company :)