Well, Rand suggested we introduce ourselves, so here it is…

I’m a physicist doing a postdoc on the Maryland Centrifugal Experiment. I’m a space geek and member of the board of the SubOrbital Institute. I’m also building a small bipropellant rocket engine igniter, in part to educate myself about the nitty-gritty of building rockets and in part because I have a long term contingency plan to build an X-Prize class vehicle. I argued that this is within reach for the dedicated amateur in a piece I wrote for the Space Review (though to my undying shame I neglected to mention the SpaceCub -D’Oh.). If I can’t afford a ticket to space in about ten years I’ll start building something so I can launch myself. I also help out Clark Lindsey with his Advanced Rocketry page. Incidentally, Clark’s RLV News is a must-read.

I’m a firm believer in incrementalism in technology development and pragmatism in space policy. My politics are hard to pin down. As a crude approximation, imagine a straight line in N-dimensional political space between the staff of Reason and Joe Leiberman: I’m about halfway between them.

I’m preparing something on the prospects for commercial lunar He3 mining for fusion. I’ll post when I get it finished. As Rand mentioned I’m in the middle of a family emergency, so I’ll be in Botswana (where the rest of my family is) for the next week or so. Once things settle down I’ll post on various topics, with an emphasis on building a spacefaring civilization with the materials at hand.