Hughes Space and Communications Company had built the satellite for AsiaSat, an Asian telecommunications corporation. Engineers were understandably dismayed that their still-functional product was now a high-priced piece of space junk, so they came up with a solution: bounce it off the moon. By carefully firing the satellite’s thrusters, they would nudge it into a lunar orbit, then slingshot it back toward Earth.

Tricky stuff, but Hughes was so confident in its plan, it cut a deal with the 27 insurance companies that took title to the satellite after the disaster over Kazakhstan. Under the agreement, Hughes assumed ownership of the satellite. If engineers could establish a workable Earth orbit—and then find customers for the satellite—Hughes would share any profits from the venture with the insurers.

Complex as it was, the plan worked. In June, what a Hughes press release called "the first known lunar mission involving a communications satellite and the first mission financed by a non-government entity" came to a successful end—after two trips around the moon, the satellite fell into a geosynchronous orbit over the Pacific Ocean.

This unprecedented salvage operation went all but unnoticed by the dominant media, but it highlights a snowballing trend NASA has yet to cope with: the entry of for-profit firms into space.

Thirty years after man first walked on the moon, the commercial promise of space—satellite launches, tourism, manufacturing and even mining—is close to realization. Whereas governments once controlled all activity in the heavens, the private sector now regularly intrudes on NASA’s domain.

And there’s a role for Nevada to play in this movement toward markets in the final frontier. Kistler Aerospace, maker of the K-1 reusable rocket, plans to set up shop in the Southern Nevada desert. Kistler is just one of several companies that plan to turn a profit laying the foundation for mankind’s future in space.

Keith Cowing, a NASA gadfly who publishes the online NASA Watch, spoke about the agency’s troubles before the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics in October: "NASA’s core problem today is that it has no clear compelling vision to guide it. Nor has NASA had such a vision for decades."

Certainly the space shuttles no longer inspire awe. Perhaps they never should have in the first place—as Space Frontier Foundation (SFF) President Rick N. Tumlinson told the subcommittee, the shuttle program was the product of "the old government contracting system" and "endless compromises … between NASA’s perceived needs and that of the military." The shuttle fleet, Tumlinson contended, "lost its original pedigree as a low cost space transportation system before it ever left the drawing board." Economist Ed Hudgins, in the Cato Handbook for Congress, refers to the shuttle as "a costly white elephant."

As for the International Space Station (ISS)—the other big item in NASA’s current budget—cost overruns and delays are the norm. In the 1980s, President Reagan proposed an all-American, $8 billion station named Freedom. In time the stripped-down project morphed into an international behemoth, with a current price tag of almost $100 billion. American taxpayers have already contributed $17 billion to the ISS, a joint venture with Russia, European nations, Canada and Japan. But the crisis in Russia has caused its space agency to miss countless ISS deadlines. The launch of the station’s U.S.-funded, Russian-built service module has been delayed three times since 1997. Without that key component, no further space-based work on the ISS can proceed.

Simply getting up into orbit—regardless of the reason for doing so—has always been the greatest obstacle to extraterrestrial human activity. Presently it costs aerospace companies about $10,000 to put a one-pound payload beyond Earth’s gravitational pull. The shuttle may deliver payloads for as little as $6,000 a pound, but independent accountants have found NASA’s bookkeeping to be dizzyingly byzantine. One analyst, after factoring in the capital and developments costs of the shuttle, concluded NASA spends around $35,000 per pound of payload. (During the heyday of America’s space program, Apollo launches cost only around $3,800.)

With a budget determined by congressional appropriations—not market forces—NASA has had little incentive to make space travel cheaper. That’s the belief of John S. Lewis, a planetary science professor at the University of Arizona-Tucson. "Sadly, the domination of space activities by governments has caused the price of space travel to remain very high," he wrote in his mind-blowing book Mining the Sky. "Governments," Lewis added, "do not need to show a profit, and they have strong institutional incentives to keep costs (and therefore budgets) as high as possible."

Forty years after America’s initial investment in space technology, the aspirations of space explorers and entrepreneurs alike continue to be squashed by the astronomical cost of reaching orbit. "Here we are more than a quarter century after the first and last moon landings, and Americans still can’t enter the frontier they paid to have explored," laments the SFF.

Charles "Pete" Conrad—a veteran of the Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab programs—made note of this disappointing reality during October’s subcommittee hearing: "In 1903, people aboard an airplane were called ‘aeronauts.’ Forty years later, they were called ‘passengers.’ Where are the passenger tickets to space available for purchase today?"

"Cheap access to space" (CATS) is fast becoming the rallying cry for those who believe in a galaxy-wide Manifest Destiny. Last year, SFF announced The CATS Prize, a $250,000 reward for the first private firm to launch a 2 kilogram payload 200 kilometers or higher. The stakes are much greater for the first successful private effort to put a three-man team into orbit—the X Prize Foundation has raised $1.5 million of an announced $10 million reward for that accomplishment.

But an ambitious aerospace firm has plans to bring a few jobs back to the NTS—and its workers won’t be public employees.

Kistler Aerospace, based in Kirtland, Washington, has big plans for an 800-acre lot at the NTS. Located in Area 18, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, the site is to be the spaceport for Kistler’s American operations.

While many Southern Nevada business leaders and politicians mistakenly see "public-private partnerships" and renewed federal involvement as the NTS’s salvation, Kistler is strong evidence that the site is ripe for full-scale privatization. It’s also living proof—or at least, it soon will be—that NASA shouldn’t be in the launch business.

Kistler is one of a handful of companies known as "The Four Musketeers." The phrase was coined by a musketeer executive, Geoffrey Z. Hughes of Rotary Rocket. His company, Kistler, Kelly Space & Technology and Pioneer Rocketplane are all developing ways to lift satellites into orbit using reusable vehicles.

Since the launch of Sputnik in 1957, single-use, expendable rockets have been used to put satellites in orbit. Making just one addition to the global communications system costs between $10 million and $140 million—and the tool used to place that satellite in space can never be used again. As Fortune writer Erick Schonfeld observed, "That’s like flying a Boeing 777 once—and then throwing it into the ocean."

Reusable rockets—or rocketplanes—can dramatically lower the cost of payloads. Some experts believe reusable vehicles will cause payload prices to drop to around $1,000 per pound. Still pretty steep, but nonetheless a major improvement.

Kistler’s K-1 reusable vehicle is a two-stage rocket. Using engines that generate 1.02 million pounds of thrust, the K-1 soars to an altitude of 135,000 feet. There the first stage is jettisoned. It deploys its parachutes at 10,000 feet, and then drifts back to the launch site, where its fall is cushioned by airbags. Meanwhile, the second stage climbs to a low Earth orbit (400 to 1,000 miles), where it releases its payload. Then the second stage heads back to the launch site, landing with parachutes and airbags as well. A ground crew reassembles the K-1, and within days it’s ready for another launch.

Kistler has put together what Wired contributing editor Stewart Taggart calls "the finest collection of post-Apollo space engineering talent ever assembled" to test, build and operate the K-1. George Mueller, an 80-year-old who once headed the Apollo program and several other high-profile NASA projects, came out of retirement to serve as Kistler’s CEO. A comment Mueller made to Taggart about the difference between working at NASA and working at Kistler succinctly captures the difference between public and private space work: "Now, while the schedule is just as intense, you also have shareholders to worry about."

Its technical team isn’t the only thing Kistler can brag about—its market research is just as impressive. The company has identified a long list of potential customers. Although estimates vary, around 2,000 satellites will be placed in orbit in the next decade alone. (In 1997, commercial satellite launches outnumbered government launches for the first time.) The best prospect is Teledesic, a massive communications network whose primary investors are Bill Gates and Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdul Aziz Alsaud of Saudi Arabia. Teledesic’s system will have 288 satellites in its "communications constellation." Space Systems/Loral has already signed a $100 contract with Kistler, and Motorola, GE and TRW could also become customers.

In other words, the Four Musketeers can get permission to launch their vehicles over American skies, but if they bring them back to earth, they’ll be breaking the law.

The SCLRA’s passage is iffy, but many existing space pork programs refuse to die. Lockheed Martin, for example, is currently receiving $1 billion from NASA to build the VentureStar, the space shuttle’s replacement. (Ironically, the Nevada Test Site is one possible location for a VentureStar base.)

That sort of taxpayer-funded giveaway makes Rotary Rocket’s CEO go, well, ballistic. On Capitol Hill last spring, Gary C. Hudson denounced the sweetheart deal: "Lockheed Martin did not have to say it would actually deliver an orbital vehicle to get this cash. It merely promised to dabble in sub-scale sub-orbital work that might some day be of use in getting us into orbit."

Given Kistler’s position as the de facto leader of the Four Musketeers, Southern Nevada is well positioned to reap the benefits of mankind’s overdue space enterprise. The question is whether NASA and its longtime corporate companions will facilitate a thriving commercial space community, or stand in its way.

If the Four Musketeers and their inevitable descendants can overcome both technical and governmental obstacles, and make access to space cheap at last, mankind may make it to the stars faster than most people think. And with a state-of-the-art spaceport within its borders, the Silver State could become a major hub for extraterrestrial commerce.