Professor Reynolds helpfully points to an article in the National Review Online by someone named Eli Lehrer, of whom I had previously never heard. There’s little new here for those who’ve been reading my rants on the subject of government vs private space for the last few months, but it’s nice to see these themes being picked up by the general media, particularly in a conservative journal, because space has been one of those policy areas in which many conservatives tend to check their brains at the door, often defending this particular government program even as they assail others.

Also, there is one blooper in it (with a confusing, and probably mistaken, link). He states that there is a company in Virginia offering orbital flight for $98,000 dollars, but simply points to the home page for the X-Prize Foundation, which makes no such mention of such a project. I suspect that he meant to refer to Space Adventures, who I believe are taking deposits for sub-hundred K$ trips, but for a suborbital flight, not an orbital one (i.e., a ride that goes up a to a hundred kilometers or more, spends several minutes in weightlessness, and then returns to earth, but does not make a full orbit). I believe that we will eventually be able to offer orbital flight for this amount of money or less, but not in the next few years, and anyone who is actually offering it for that price is a fool or a charlatan, or both.

His X-Prize Foundation link is screwed up as well, because it points to a NASA press release from December 26, 2001 that seems to have nothing to do with the point of his article, particularly in the context of the link.