MarsBlog.net

This looks like it might be worthwhile: Space Frontier Foundation – Space Frontier Conference XII.

Got a dot com? Building your own rocketship? Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Elon Musk of PayPal, and John Carmack of id Software (creator, Quake and Doom) are. Come find out what’s happening in the new space race. Learn about the exciting projects now underway by the hot new space entrepreneurs and aerospace heroes like Burt Rutan, Dennis Tito and Buzz Aldrin.

Access to space is moving from the monopoly of governments and large corporations to the realm of entrepreneurs and small businesses. Learn who is doing what, and learn how you can get involved in new space ventures.

Posted on September 10th, 2003 under Space Commerce. Comments Off

Or seems to, anyway:

At his third Capitol Hill appearance since the Aug. 26 release of a highly critical investigators’ report on NASA’s role in the fatal Columbia accident, O’Keefe told the House of Representatives Science Committee there had been no clear vision for human space flight since the Apollo moon missions of the 1960s and 1970s.
“But we have no goals,” said Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican. “We’re not going to the Moon, we’re not going to Mars. … We have no goals, isn’t that true?”
“I beg to differ, sir,” O’Keefe replied. “The strategic plan … is a stepping-stone approach and will achieve (human missions) beyond low-Earth orbit to achieve any exploration.”
Rep. Nick Lampson, a Texas Democrat, took issue with O’Keefe’s approach: “I happen to have the philosophy that you can achieve more technologically if you have someplace to go.”

Hmm. Nick Lampson is to be expected, but I’m impressed that Joe Barton is coming around, and is no longer demanding that humans be grounded until some mythical “safe” spacecraft can be designed and built.

Posted on September 10th, 2003 under Space Policy. Comments: 6