The Commercial Space Industry

In 1961 the first manned space travel was accomplished by Yuri Gagarin in 1961 as a result of government program research.  For decades after this, few government superpowers have frequented space on pioneering missions.  Flight to space were few and far between due to the high cost, and intense planning that was involved.  Additionally, only a handful of people had been to space, mainly high trained government astronauts from a select few countries.  This trend began to change in 1996 when a group of philanthropists created the Ansari XPRIZE.  This competition attracted teams from all over the world.  The goal was to create a manned spacecraft that was able to carry at least 3 people  into space twice within 2 weeks.  1 team emerged from Mojave Aerospace Ventures, the team was funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and was led by Burt Rutan and his company Scaled Composites.  "On October 4, 2004, SpaceShipOne completed all of the prize requirements and officially won the $10M Ansari XPRIZE.  In doing so, it became the first-ever private vehicle to carry a human being into space, making international headlines and stunning a world that had largely written off commercial human spaceflight as pure science fiction." (VirginGalactic)

The government does not regulate commercial space travel due to the fact that regulations would slow down the growth of commercial space travel and most likely ultimately bring it to an end.  The only actual "regulation" was laid out in a space.com article, it states "The regulations require launch vehicle operators to provide certain safety-related information and identify what an operator must do to conduct a licensed launch with a human on board." (David, 2006)

I do not think that commercial spaceflight will be an accessible option for the general public in my lifetime.  I think it will remain as it currently is, which is basically a one-time bucket list item for the extremely wealthy.  Commercial space operations such as Virgin Galactic and SpaceX have made it possible for the wealthy, but I don't think it will be available to the rest of the general public for a very long time.

In order to land a job at a commercial space company, there are a lot of qualifications that must be met.  For starters, you have to have a commercial multi-engine pilot certificate.  Additionally, you must have an advanced degree in a relevant technical field.  If that wasn't enough, the applicant must also be a graduate of an approved test pilot school with 2 years of test pilot experience under his belt in high-performance jets as well as large multi-engine transport category aircraft.  It is not required to be an astronaut but it is a preferred attribute.

References:

A Brief History of Human Spaceflight - Virgin Galactic. (n.d.). Retrieved October 22, 2016, from http://www.virgingalactic.com/human-spaceflight/history-of-human-spaceflight/

David, L. (n.d.). FAA Sets Guidelines for Space Travel. Retrieved October 22, 2016, from http://www.space.com/3290-faa-sets-guidelines-space-travel.html