CNET is reporting that Ultima creator and private astronaut Richard Garriott, during his presentation at South by Southwest (SXSW), that “there are unprecedented business opportunities in space, many that will benefit NASA and many others that could become highly lucrative for the companies that understand how to work today’s booming public/private partnerships.”

To begin with, explained Garriott–who was the subject of a documentary on his trip to space, and who is part of the company Space Adventures, as well as a member of the NASA Civilian Oversight Council–the advent of a number of companies able to produce rockets means that NASA may now buy from a company like Boeing once and then turn to a competitor next time if its price is lower. And because of that, these companies are being forced to bring their costs down in order to have a chance at government business.

Another advance is that companies like SpaceX have developed boosters that can be recovered and reused after launch–unlike traditional space missions which required new boosters each time NASA sent one up. That is yet another factor in the rapid and dramatic drop in the cost of a launch. Garriott said that it should be possible to launch rockets into space for just fractions of what today’s space vehicles, with their disposable boosters, cost.

And this may become even cheaper, Garriott said, if next-generation boosters are capable of landing themselves under their own power rather than having to be recovered far from the launch site. “The costs go from the hundreds of millions down to the ones of millions,” he said. “That would have made [my trip to space] profitable.”

Do click through and check out the rest of the article; it goes into some detail on things like biological research in space, spaceborne solar collectors that could be used as temporary power sources for frontline military operations, and…well…cool things like that.