Free Republic

Apollo 11 on Human Achievement Day By Edward Hudgins ehudgins@objectivistcenter.org There are holidays and days of commemoration stretching from New Year's to Independence Day to Christmas. A new one should be added to the calendar - informally rather than by government decree: Human Achievement Day -- July 20th, the date in 1969 when human beings first landed on the Moon. The most obvious benefit of living in society with others is that we can each specialize in the production of goods and services at which we are best and then trade with others, making us all prosperous. But in society...

Somewhere, up in the night sky, two dots of extremely dim illumination move ever so slowly across the fixed background of stars. Both are so faint even the most powerful telescopes cannot detect them. Both also are unique, because of all the billions and billions of objects shining through the deep black of space, these two were built by human hands. They are Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, probes sent by NASA on a tour of the outer planets beginning in 1977, now passing 10,000 days of continuous operation. Long since breaching the orbit of Pluto, the twin spacecraft are...

Private Space Triumph By Edward Hudgins Washington Director ehudgins@objectivistcenter.org Private Space Triumph! Private entrepreneurs again have triumphed! On September 29 SpaceShipOne, built by Burt Rutan's company, Scaled Composites, and financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, completed its first flight in pursuit of the $10 million Ansari X Prize. The money was secured by private individuals and will be paid to the first private party to put a craft capable of carrying three individuals into space twice in a two-week period. Rutan's rocket had its first test flight over the 100-kilometer limit on June 21 and with the success of the...

LONDON (AFP) - A British adventurer laid claim to being the first to fly around Mount Everest (news - web sites), at 8,848 meters (29,028 feet) the world's highest peak, in a microlight aircraft. Richard Meredith-Hardy, 46, took off from a base camp 25 kilometres (15 miles) away, then braved potentially dangerous downdrafts to reach the summit where he waved to "a shedload of climbers" and snapped photos. "This place is seriously big," he said, according to a statement from his ground crew sent to AFP in London, "and we were lucky to get a break in the weather...