Einstein money-spinner is dead, says the Royal Society:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected...ecfgravb28.xml
"Last week, an American probe began an 18-month mission to put
Einstein's prediction to the test, 90 years after he unveiled his
ideas in Berlin. Gravity Probe B was blasted into space from the
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on a Boeing Delta 2 rocket and
will orbit the Earth for more than a year. The $700 million joint
mission between Nasa and Stanford University, conceived in 1958, uses
four of the most perfect spheres ever created inside the world's
largest Thermos flask to detect minute distortions in the fabric of
the universe.....Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, said: "The
project's a technical triumph, and a triumph of the persistence and
lobbying power of Stanford University. But its gestation has been
grotesquely prolonged, and the cost overruns have been equally gross.
I recall hearing a talk about the project from Francis Everitt
(principal investigator) when I was still a student - and it was
already well advanced. "Back in the 1960s the evidence for Einstein's
theory was meagre - just two tests, with 10 per cent precision. But
relativity is now confirmed by several tests, with precision of one
part in 10,000. It's still, in principle, good to have new and
different tests. But the level of confidence in Einstein's theory is
now so high that an announcement of the expected result will 'fork no
lightening'. "Moreover, if there's an unexpected result, I suspect
most people will suspect an error in this very challenging experiment
rather than immediately abandon Einstein: There's now so much evidence
corroborating Einstein, that a high burden of proof is required before
he'll be usurped by any rival theory. "So the most exciting - if un-
alluring - outcome of Gravity Probe B would be a request by Stanford
University for another huge sum of money to repeat it."

Beyond Einstein money-spinner is not dead, says NASA. The Royal
Society agrees for the moment:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-jde090507.php

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp...aspx?key=48716

http://beyondeinstein.nasa.gov/
"But now we need to build on Einstein's work to take the next step -
to study the underlying physics of the very phenomena that came out of
his theories. We must also test them at their extreme limits to see if
there are any circumstances where his theories break down. In other
words, we need to go beyond Einstein."

But Beyond Einstein money-spinner will also die some say, and then
will there be a Beyond Beyond Einstein money-spinner? No. There WILL
be a Beyond Beyond Einstein, but no money will come from it. A French
Einsteinian explains what Beyond Beyond Einstein means:

http://ustl1.univ-lille1.fr/culture/...40/pgs/4_5.pdf
Jean Eisenstaedt: "Il n'y a alors aucune raison theorique a ce que la
vitesse de la lumiere ne depende pas de la vitesse de sa source ainsi
que de celle de l'observateur terrestre ; plus clairement encore, il
n'y a pas de raison, dans le cadre de la logique des Principia de
Newton, pour que la lumiere se comporte autrement - quant a sa
trajectoire - qu'une particule materielle. Il n'y a pas non plus de
raison pour que la lumiere ne soit pas sensible a la gravitation.
Bref, pourquoi ne pas appliquer a la lumiere toute la theorie
newtonienne ? C'est en fait ce que font plusieurs astronomes,
opticiens, philosophes de la nature a la fin du XVIIIeme siecle. Les
resultats sont etonnants... et aujourd'hui nouveaux."

Translation from French: "Therefore there is no theoretical reason why
the speed of light should not depend on the speed of the source and
the speed of the terrestrial observer as well; even more clearly,
there is no reason, in the framework of the logic of Newton's
Principia, why light should behave, as far as its trajectory is
concerned, differently from a material particle. Neither is there any
reason why light should not be sensible to gravitation. Briefly, why
don't we apply the whole Newtonian theory to light? In fact, that is
what many astronomers, opticians, philosophers of nature did by the
end of 18th century. The results are surprising....and new nowadays."

Pentcho Valev