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

A few months back I remember reading a flamewar on a space forum about how the Chinese were trying to pull their first spacewalk in time for the opening of the Olympics.  The naysayers were strongly in the feeling that there was still years to go before they were ready for such a "real" endeavor. Well, they did miss the mark by a few weeks... but not a few years.  China is now the 3rd government to create an infrastructure for human space transport.

http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20080067038

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/Government bloat. less than 10 million bucks per launch (and ever less if they get first stage recycles)

http://www.spacex.com/webcast.php