[Moonman62]

Our flight this morning by SpaceShipOne demonstrated that supersonic flight is now the domain of a small company doing privately-funded research, without government help.

Great news.

The flight also represents an important milestone in our efforts to demonstrate that truly low-cost space access is feasible.

Which is what the government should have been doing for the past 20 years.

[Gorjus]

Which is what the government should have been doing for the past 20 years.

Da*n, so close! You almost had it right.

Get the government out of the picture - and your sentence - and you're on the right track. It's certainly what should have been done, just not by the government. That's guaranteed to do only three things. Add cost. Add time. And reduce performance.

[irv]

Which is what the government should have been doing for the past 20 years.

If they did that, how could they get the big budgets and important sounding titles? One of the biggest problems with bureaucracies is they are self-prepetuating.