[saganite]

Good article but interestingly doesn't mention the most important recent success and that's the launch of Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable module.

[saganite]

ping

[Jaysun]

The shuttle programme began to be wound down, aspirations for the International Space Station were scaled back......

Can someone please tell me the point of that Tom Joad shitwagon? Is it a floating tree house designed to help us hang out with a couple of Russians? I currently live in Huntsville Alabama which is where the Marshall Space Flight Center and the US Space and Rocket Center is located. I have several friends that work in the industry and I can't get a straight answer to my question. I get a lot of BS answers about testing the effects of space on this or that substance, but that's it. Nothing has come of it so far as I can tell.

And I don't know what we've spent all the billions upon billions on. The International Space Station is so low-rent, the only thing missing is a pink flamingo and a clothes dryer on the porch.

[mugs99]

Been in orbit since July 12 and not even a mention?

[burzum]

The Russians were the first to recognise that tourism could be used to fund other space activities and in two weeks they will carry their fourth paying customer to the International Space Station. Anousheh Ansari, who lives in Texas, has paid $20 million for the trip on the Soyuz rocket.

Interesting woman. She emigrated from Iran to the US after the Iranian Revolution because they wouldn't let woman study science and engineering. Eventually with her husband she forms a couple of extremely successful companies. Later she and her husband invest in the X-Prize and other space related companies. It is amazing what a woman can do if you don't put a burka on her!

Oh, and the obligatory photo:

[KevinDavis]

I'm back....

[orionblamblam]

> Lockheed Martin winning a $4 billion (£2.1 billion) contract from Nasa...

Nasa? Who or what the hell is Nasa? Or do they mean *NASA*?

Friggen ignorant Europeans...

[Shuttle Shucker]

Can you believe what the pork-barrelers are doing to the NASA-funded competitive prizes program?

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?&dbname=cp109&sid=cp109s0tv8&refer=&r_n=sr280.109&item=&sel=TOC_385521&

"The Committee does not provide any funding in fiscal year 2007 for the Centennial Challenges program. Funding provided in previous fiscal years for this program is sufficient for NASA to run a prize based competition, as
well as to verify that NASA will see tangential benefits from running such a program. Providing additional funds to a program based on prizes only creates a pot of unused funds while other aspects of NASA's mission are
being cut or delayed due to a lack of funds."

Discussed here:

http://www.spacepolitics.com/archives/001028.html

and indirectly here: http://www.spaceprojects.com/prizes

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

The title is misleading. Odyssey makes it seem as though the article was at least about trips to Mars, if not about generation ships, or other extrasolar exploration.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

How come the article has ESA, but uses Nasa? The British seem to lowercase the nonfirst letters of phonetic acronyms, hence Nasa instead of the proper NASA. But shouldn't ESA be Esa, then. Unless they are using American English in which case it should be ESA and NASA.

[AFreeBird]

Galactic’s space ship is being built by Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder, and Burt Rutan, an aerospace designer.

I certainally hope that the ship is being built by Mr. Rutan. I wouldn't want to ride in a ship built by a guy who's company is known for "Blue Screen of Death", lock-ups, crashes and 5 minute boot times. :-/