Last week's Space News Profile was on Elon Musk.  In case you don't read Space News, the Profile is the last page of the edition where a bunch of one-liner questions are fired at the target. 

SpaceX is the golden company and the olden companies (and thus the major money to Space News) are not very happy.  There was snide in the questions... but the angle was clear to readers in the very first intro sentence. 

It being a Profile segment, it had restrictions on the "guest".

I was wondering though, well before the end of the piece, when Musk would take the next correct step.  This evening it came to all SpaceX email subscribers...

[This is the 1st Amazon Review for the Nov 2010 book "Reopening the Space Frontier" by John Hickman]

If you personally have emotions over Space, specifically *Human* Spaceflight, then read this and take some time off to let it sink in before you do the next assault on Washington.

It will slap you directly in the face. The slaps will hurt.

The book takes every single positive that has ever been used as a bulletpoint for Human Spaceflight and rips each one apart.

Still looking for detailed information on the results of the MARIE experiment, called recently in BIS Spaceflight the "first experiment sent to Mars specifically to prepare for human missions".

The other night I finished reading the 2002 NRC "Assessment of Mars Science and Mission Priorities", 105 pages with 12 chapters detailing in our standard "turning gold into lead" style all of the things we have done and all of the things we will do in our "Mars Exploration Program".

In all of that, there was one (1, O-N-E) sentence on Odyssey's MARIE.  And if you think that was a low number... guess the count in the entire text of the word "Human".  I'll give you a hint:...

This morning in DC Elon Musk, CEO Space Exploration Technologies, officially announced the Falcon  9 Heavy.

"Its more payload capability than any vehicle in history apart from the Saturn V"

"Although the Space Shuttle is going to be retired this year, this is something that America can be really proud of - the fact that this is gong to be a vehicle with twice the capability of the Space Shuttle"

Go see the full video of the press conference. Here.  Or go to SpaceX.com

Hermann Oberth.  A Rocketry pioneer (one of the "Three Pillars" of the science).   He designed the Rocket for use in WW1 to stop the war by shock & awing England (the Berlin Crown Council sent his crazy papers back unread, in the next war the same designs were called the V2).

Although he felt alligiance to Germany as a Transylvanian Saxon he wasn't German.

He was Werner von Braun's teacher.  von Braun held him in the utmost regard and when things got difficult he sent his people to go look for answers in Oberth's books.

In his last book, Oberth wrote "Dispense with Nuclear Power Plants.  You should continue with atomic research, for God wants you to enjoy learning and discovering new things. But in addition build space stations at the 60-degree libration points between earth and the sun.  Such research belongs in space, not on a flourishing planet.  The danger is greater than you think."

>>Update April 8th 2011:

After seeing a number of hits coming into this page from all around Huntville,  I checked and the Careers page at the Al-Razaq "Computing Services" site no longer returns an immediate PHP server error.  Now, that menu option is linked to the address "http://192.168.100.95/hrapplicant", which fails to load.  Is it me or does 192.168.... look a lot like in internal router address?  If so then the folks inside the Al-Razaq network think that they have fixed the issue while anyoone testing from the outside is still getting a failure.

<<

If we save billions in launch and space hardware costs thanks to COTS, does it add up to a real savings in total NASA costs?

What is your story of today?

My son had the day off from school so we killed the day at Disney.  Just as the SpaceX Dragon was successfully splashing down we were starting down the internal "space station" stairs in Space Mountain.  I was streaming the news and got about 20 messages all at once.

I squatted down and looked the six year old in the eye and said "When I was your age I was sure that when I grew up places like this - in Space - would be real.  You remember this moment, Zaner, because right now a few hundred miles from here that Elon Musk guy did what the big fat slow companies couldn't do in 40 years with billions and billions of dollars.  When you are my age, your world will be different.  Real Space for regular people is finally happening."

A few days ago SpaceX became the first ever commercial company allowed by the FAA to return a craft from space.

A few minutes ago came the tweet: "Beautiful launch! Dragon is in orbit"

COTS... may the old guard be guarded from creating any odd "accidents" for this important program.

SpaceX sent out the word in July and normal folks took it seriously - HR5781 was postponed.  Tonight I received a mail from The Space Frontier Foundation that the House bil is on deck for tomorrow.  I sent this email to my congressman... will you please contact your representative?  Trust me, it is painless and you don't have to go into the details you see here... just tell them NO on HR 5781.

...

You may have noticed one of our rotating quotes which states that 'in 1974 the US had 100% of space transportation market share, but by 1995 it was down to 30%'  (and now it's reported a bit over 20%).

So what?  The 250 Billion dollar global market is what.

So... this report from South Korea shows that along with the Brits starting their new space trans agency last month, more and more countries are out to get what our country just doesn't care about any more... and THEY are the ones willing to try stuff while the US only cares about regulating for some impossible "perfect safety" pipe dream.