"Most of this seems like ancient history to those of us who covered MirCorp's rise and fall, but the movie clearly shows that Apollo's orphans have learned their lessons.

"This stuff really is rocket science," Potter said, "and it's not just the physics. It's the business model: How do you handle the risk assessment? How do you handle the insurance? It's really complicated - but it's not as complicated as NASA makes it."

The biggest lesson is that you want to have the government as your customer, not your enemy. "I think the slightly more commercial and realistic and politically savvy entrepreneurs who are now investing in private space understood where Walt went wrong," David Chambers, who was MirCorp's vice president of strategic planning, says in the movie. "And they're prepared to play nice with the various governments that they need to play nice with." "
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/05/21/1939893.aspx

Ah, the good days when Alan Boyle was posting at MSNBC, who remembers then?
Anyways, nice article Alan.
Linked from http://www.transterrestrial.com/