NASA may be sending astronauts (in the next few years) to the International Space Station in a new privately-built vehicle, Dragon (built by SpaceX). And some astronauts, and other people at NASA, are not happy about the prospect.
The main gripe: you ride Dragon; you don’t fly it. Its flight to the International Space Station is [...]

When the shuttle is retired, how will NASA astronauts get to the International Space Station?
In the past, when the shuttle suspended operations due to the Columbia disaster, NASA astronauts rode to the ISS via a Russian Soyuz. It was, pretty much, the only way to get there. But soon that might not be true anymore.
Elon [...]

The International Space Station will be re-supplied in the future by a private spacecraft!
SpaceX has won a contract from NASA to use its Falcon 9 booster and its Dragon spacecraft to send supplies to the ISS starting in 2010. Another winner is Orbital Sciences, which will also be re-supplying the ISS.
The 2 smallish startups beat [...]

SpaceX’s press releases have a very interesting sentence in the “About SpaceX” section:
“SpaceX is the only COTS contender with the capability to return cargo and crew to Earth. “
“And CREW?!”
COTS stands for Commercial Orbital Transportation Services; SpaceX won a competition to provide commercial services for NASA.
Three Missions Scheduled
So far, SpaceX has only 3 NASA missions [...]

SpaceX has introduced a new spacecraft, called “DragonLab”. They bill it as “a Free-Flying, Reusable Spacecraft Offering Fast Track to Orbital Flight for Pressurized and Unpressurized Payloads.”
Low Cost SpaceLab
But what can it do? It can be used as an orbital laboratory to conduct experiments in space. Interesting.
But even more interesting is the previously announced “Dragon” [...]