Via email, Clark Lindsey points out a column by Philip Ball at Nature, citing (but not deigning to actually link) yours truly, that is both amusing and sad:

There is no point in being coy about the role of military incentives in the advancement of science and technology. After all, it has a history far older than that of aviation and space science. But this does not suit the narrative the X prize needs, and so the foundation has transformed the story into one of private (yet populist) enterprise battling public (yet elitist) prevarication.

As an example of where this reasoning leads, aerospace engineer Rand Simberg suggests in The New Atlantis that the commercial space age would be further accelerated if the United States were to withdraw from the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, because it “bans declarations of national sovereignty off-planet, and makes the defense of private property rights in space problematic”.

How otherwise can McDonalds colonize the Moon (or should that be the Moon