Oh yeah... and not the stupid Flash7 player or FlashLite 2 that Adobe and Microsoft swear they'll honestly really get working someday... nope, Real Full Flash 9. 

Get your SkyFire browser, and you'll get an experience very close to the old Picsell (which did back in 2003 pretty much what the iPhone Safari does only now), but also FULL Flash 9, not some youtube-only silliness. 

Think iPhone Safari or Opera is still the king?  Well, I'm convinced otherwise

September 28th 2008... a day for the Human Race History books... twice

China is now the 3rd government to create an infrastructure for human space transport.

And... Elon Musk and SpaceX made ever greater history, because number 3 of something is nice but #1 of something is far nicer. SpaceX's Falcon1 is The First non-governmental liquid fueled orbital delivery system. On a small budget with a small team and without the Boeing/Lockheed/NASA bloat. less than 10 million bucks per launch (and less if they get first stage recycles)
 

Last November, about the same time as Lockheeds "secret" P-791 was first seen in the air, there was a mini announcement  that wasn't picked up by many news orgs. 

DARPA allegedly bought into Aeros for a dynamic buoyancy LTA system; a ballast-free system for handling extremely large 100+ ton cargo lifts and unloads. 

Among the few who noticed it there was some snickering because ...

Several years ago "CIA, inc" a.k.a. "the red book" [ironic, that color] came out.  It was a declassified handbook of sorts for helping ex-Intelligence workers find jobs in the private sector and private sector companies learn what to look for in hiring ex-intel folks.  I recall there being a lot of little 'as we all know' tidbits sprinkled in concerning being very careful around any Air France transports and just plain lots of French companies to watch out for because of how there is no real distinction between the French government and their "private" companies.  Much like the well known Israeli practice of govt intel being immediately shared with their companies... but for the French it was far more two-way and even back then it was starting to look at LOT worse.

I was just skimming around for information on Washington State Aerospace information and I found this...

Late last year Senator Obama released his plan on federally funding the Education Industry.  He will throw more money at the 50+ Billion dollar Education budget.. by taking money from the 16 Bilion dollar budget of the "Wasteful" NASA.  He would "postpone" the NASA Space projects "for five years". 

"Five years".  In other words, for a Four Year political office, he would kill it. 

"Education"  in other words Tools for the Education Industry.  At the expense of Inspiration that would actually make kids Want to learn anything.

When McCain got the nomination some Spaceniks cheered it as a way against Obama.  But when the emotion ended there was the fact that Senator McCain has been in office a long time and in that time there has been no clear and important movement towards Space from him either. 

Continuing day two of the convention, I chose the Political Outreach/Volunteerism sessions. 

I honestly figured that these would be the most important sessions of the whole weekend and that they would be considered mandatory for all members, if the real goal was to get The Case For Mars presented to power-masters and the steps begun. To my surprise, these sessions were held way up on the third floor in the smallest room of the center ... and there were seats to spare.

Day two of the convention is over and tonight I have a better feeling about this organization... not a great feeling but a better one.  The reason for the slight shift is likely due to getting actual questions answered. 

First off, in the morning I asked Patt Czarnik, the Society's Membership Director, what exactly the MS membership numbers were.  Knowing that the NSS is considered the big guy and also knowing that their American membership is only allegedly 12,000 gave me some concerns about the Mars Society. 

And the number is

 Day one of the 11th Annual Mars Society convention in Boulder is now over.

So... I came here to find out a couple of things but mostly I wanted to see if the Mars Society was a "for real" group with a plan or if instead the excellent Robert Zubrin book The Case For Mars had simply grown a fan club of anything-spacey folks.

If you're planning a trip to Seattle the Museum is great - for kids and adults - and, take my advice, make part of your day at least one of the short rides in the Old Tyme Aviation biplanes.

Why?  If you have flash installed, just look below.  Getting ready for the convention I noticed that I still had the videos on my cameras and because I couldn't sleep I fast-edited them down and made a quick Flash client for my Wowza back end; Nothin' fancy, in time I'll make the player prettier (maybe), but I hope you like the vid.