That's one small step backwards for NASA, one giant leap for private industry

President Obama put the brakes on NASA's ambition to return to the Moon when he unveiled a new budget last week, which instead focuses $ 6 billion into promoting private space flight.

Instead of using NASA's space shuttles to move astronauts back and forth in space, the government plans to contract private firms for this type of transportation.

The goal is for the US to maintain its space presence even while it injected badly-needed funds into the country's growing space tourism industry.  

NASA executives fly on planes built by private industry, they drive cars built by private industry and use computers built by private industry.

And now NASA astronauts will climb on board spacecraft designed and built by private industry.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, built by Scaled Composites, is expected to carry paying passengers on sub-orbital flights - the equivalent of a joyride around the block, sometime this year. But this is several years behind schedule and falls a long way short of getting to low Earth orbit.

Another frontline contender is SpaceX, which last year successfully launched its Falcon 1 rocket into space.