Put your own stuff into space for $8K

Now this is pretty cool! For only $8,000 you can get a 1/2 pound payload into a low earth orbit that will last for several weeks. This is not something that everybody will take advantage of but for the serious hobbyist and/or collage/university this is a big deal! A relatively inexpensive way to get small experiments into space. I would like to see a lot more of this. Anything that gets space more exciting and/or cheap is "a very good thing".