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A number of private spaceflight firms mentioned in the article are looking for people to hire. These companies are looking for folks with expertise in a variety of areas, from web design, to aerospace/mechanical engineering, to programming. Here's a few links (courtesy of RLV News, listed roughly in order of available resources), with descriptions of what the company does:
 
* Bigelow Aerospace: Inflatable space station modules for orbital research and tourism. Despite being inflatable, their modules are better at withstanding space debris than the ISS, as they're made of a material twice as strong as kevlar. Out of all the private spaceflight firms, they probably have the most resources.
* SpaceX: Orbital rockets which are drastically cheaper than the competition, with plans for building manned orbital rockets. They should be launching their first rocket next month.
* Scaled Composites: Burt Rutan's company and winner of the X Prize. They're currently working on building SpaceShipTwo for Virgin Galactic.
* SpaceDev: They build microsatellites and propulsion systems.
* Blue Origin: Suborbital vehicle company started by Amazon.com's CEO, Jeff Bezos. Author Neal Stephenson also works for them, hoping for the "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become a minor character in a Robert Heinlein novel."
* Rocketplane Limited: Suborbital spaceplanes
* Masten Space Systems: Suborbital launch vehicles.
* TGV Rockets: Suborbital launch

A number of private spaceflight firms which are periodically posted about on slashdot are looking for students to hire as summer interns, as well as full-time jobs. These companies are looking for folks with expertise in a variety of areas, from web design, to aerospace/mechanical engineering, to programming. Here's a few links (courtesy of RLV News), with descriptions of what the company does:

* SpaceX: Orbital rockets which are drastically cheaper than the competition, with plans for building manned orbital rockets. They should be launching their first rocket next month.
* Blue Origin: Suborbital vehicle company started by Amazon.com's CEO, Jeff Bezos.
* Masten Space Systems: Suborbital launch vehicles.
* Rocketplane Limited: Suborbital spaceplanes

Also, a few more hiring only for full-time jobs:
* Bigelow Aerospace: Inflatable space station modules for orbital research and tourism. Out of all the private spaceflight firms, they probably have the most resources.
* Scaled Composites: Burt Rutan's company and winner of the X Prize. They're currently working on building SpaceShipTwo for Virgin Galactic.
* SpaceDev: They build microsatellites and propulsion systems.
* TGV Rockets: Suborbital launch

Its good to see progress from some of the small launch vehicle companies, especially after the failure of Rotary Rocket.

The actual success here, though, is perhaps not as revolutionary as it first appears. The DC-X had a similarly reusable and relightable rocket even though it was in a more conventional vertical 'rocket ship' design.

Getting cheaper access to space is the key to broader space tourism and proper space industires. Other companies trying this include Pioneer Rocketplane, Armadillo Aerospace, JP Areospace and TGV Rockets to name but a few. There's even a UK outfit, Bristol Spaceplanes,
and the European Space Agency is beginning to think in this direction too, according to CNN.
All the companies are small and desperately in need of money if anyone wants to invest. Its probably less risky than Worldcom!

Another useful resource is the Space Access Society. Indeed they've argued that the whole X-33 mess was in fact Lockheed-Martin protecting their lucrative disposable launcher market by messing up the project. Sadly, NASA seems to have been complicit in this.

If the "downrange" - horizontal distance travelled - is reasonable, there may be much better money-making opportunities. London (or Moscow) to New York or LA to Tokoyo express package deliveries - see The Suborbital Road to Space and this by Rick Kolker

Kolker suggests at $500 a pound, transplant organs are about the only thing with the economics, but at $50, legal documents will pay the freight.

If we assume the $100,000 a seat means a payload of 500 pounds, then they're starting around $200 a pound. But if you can rip the life support system out and have 2500 pounds payload, then we're talking high-end document delivery. And documents don't need to breathe.

The HyShot home page has lots of cool stuff, such as pictures. The thing is launched on a suborbital rocket which goes to 300km altitude and Mach 7.6 (with some help from gravity on the way down). Compare with Mach 25 for orbit - many rocketplane companies are aiming for suborbital instead of going straight to orbit.

Anyway, back to HyShot, the home page contains lots of details about what happens in what order and all that good stuff.

The article describes an air breaking system similar to the one TGV Rockets designed for their re-useable rocket.

All that cool stuff that NASA proposes is 20 years away. That's what NASA does. It captures the American fascination with gadgets and then gets Congress to fund our collective technology jones.

If you want to see what can be done in 2 years instead of 20, take a look at what we're doing at TGV Rockets. When we're fully funded, our reusable, suborbital rockets will open the door to cheap access to space. I'm talking about $1000 per kilogram instead of the $20000 per kilogram you pay today.

G. Harry Stine wrote about Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) rockets taking us half way to anywere. Making reusable, suborbital rockets first is the baby step we absolutely must take before we can achieve SSTO and then the stars.