Let that sink in for a moment.
When the CIA wanted to get a peak at a Soviet Era sub that sank to 17,000' they paid Howard Hughes to build the Glomar Explorer [1] to go retrieve it. It was a mammoth undertaking which required the financial assistance of a nation state to make it work.
In 1982 when Forbes first started listing the 400 richest people they had 13 billionaires and 75 million made the list [2], which is about 167 million in inflation adjusted dollars [3], and the current lists #400 is is $1.05B so a bit over 6x larger even after inflation is considered.
The interesting bit for me is that the cost of 'getting things done' has not been going up in pace with the 'money people have' so wealth in the private sector is enabling individuals to do what used to take governments. Worse governments are horribly inefficient at doing things that individuals are efficient at (given their fiduciary responsibility to the tax payers)
I talked with some folks at Scaled Composites a bit after their successful X-Prize bid. A common theme was that they could have been successful earlier if it had not been for the red tape put in their way by the government. (some estimated two years earlier but I think that was optimistic).
And you look at the world concerns that arise when North Korea tests 'long range' rockets because building a rocket that can get a meaningful payload into orbit is 98% of the way to being able to drop something out of orbit pretty much anywhere you want.
Its very different world, and I could imagine folks who would sign on for orbital 'work' or excursions knowing that 5 - 10% of them would end up dying horribly. Not something the government can generally tolerate but explorers can.
The risk though is that you end up with a corporation that is has the capability of exploiting space and corporations don't generally sign treaties. That makes for interesting times indeed.
[1] https://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/jennifer.htm
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes_400 (hopefully it is accurate)
[3] http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi
[4] http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/#p_40_s_arank_All%20industr...