April 20-21: The Damon Bankston, a 285-foot workboat that was ferrying equipment to the Deepwater Horizon, reports it had picked up 110 crew members, three of them critically injured.

WSJ: Coast Guard Log Details Early Hours of Spill

Its most striking feature is to delegate the humdrum task of ferrying people and equipment to low-Earth orbit to the private sector.

ECONOMIST: The space shuttle