A Pivotal Moment in the Birth of the Space Industry?

According to VentureBeat, pretty exciting if true:

The commercial space industry has seen some interesting developments over the past weeks. Statements last week by members of President Obama’s human spaceflight review committee (The Augustine Commission) suggest that commercial providers may be taking a significant role in how NASA accesses low Earth orbit and how missions beyond low Earth orbit use orbiting “gas stations”. At the same time, two commercial space companies, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX, have received significant investments from well known funds (more on that below), suggesting that capital markets see a fundable new industry developing.

I'm going to guess that private businesses are going to make space travel and exploration considerably cheaper. You can even now send up a half pound satellite into space for a rock bottom price of $8,000 USD (Slashdot via Instapundit). Personally, I'm hoping for space elevators with the recent developments in nanotubes (ScienceDaily).