Source Cosmic Log by Alan Boyle

Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute who is helping suborbital science get off the ground. During today’s sesson of the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in Las Cruces, N.M., Stern figured that private-sector spaceships could accommodate 1,000 small-scale research missions annually at $100,000 each.

The resulting total – $100 million a year – is roughly equivalent to the fares that would be paid out by 500 high-rolling passengers on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane. Those potential profits have led Stern to assert that research could be more of a “killer app” for suborbital space ventures than tourism.

Full article here.