Nick Denton has some suggestions about our problem with space. I'm not as pessimistic as he is about the prospects for private enterprise, but I don't intrinsically object to his recommendation to increase the militarization of it. Every little bit that makes space more like just another place, and less like a blessed sanctuary for scientists, will help.

The only problem with militarizing space is that generally speaking the military doesn?t share very well with others. They?re not going to want the rest of us up there cluttering up they?re fields of fire. Given the relative short window of time in which SDI has to identify, acquire a target lock and launch. They?re not going to be real happy with the idea of allot of private RLVs joy riding in they?re firing range.

The military doesn't seem to have problems sharing the seas with us. There are many military bases on American soil, and it doesn't impede us from doing what we wish. Why would space be different?

Yes, civilian and military vessels do share the seas, but the civilian ships don?t rely on any recently developed military hardware. If the DoD develops and RLV you can be sure most of the critical systems will be classified. Just look at the trouble Boeing got into because of technology transfers to China. It?s not that the DoD won?t allow private RLV to enter space or could even stop them but their not going to openly share their technology or sell space available tickets on any of their launches. The benefits would be indirect. If the DoD built an RLV which was reliable an operated at a substantially lower cost than the shuttle (not hard) then civilian entrepreneurs could point to it in their business plans when they went looking for investors to them that it could be done.

There's no need to share their technology. Technology isn't the problem.

The problem is market, and the perception that it's not possible to build affordable space transports. If there's an existence proof of a low-cost vehicle created by the military, then it will become much easier for entrepreneurs to raise the money to build private ones, which is all that's really lacking.

I could be wrong, but a spaceplane is going to look very different than a rocket on the military sensors, they are unlikely to be mistaken. Any rocket launches to supply stations should be registered ahead of time to avoid mistakes. Not a difficult task.