Another Commercial Space disaster, this one manned

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

I guess suborbital flight still counts as space flight.

It's a gradual process.
Gone are the times when America and Russia built a huge single use rocket and blasted things directly into space.
Virgin Galactic is developing a ''space plane'' that can fly up there, not ride a booster rocket like the shuttle. To eventually move things into orbit with half the fuel of a shuttle or Soyuz needed.