Glenn has a piece at his MSNBC site wrapping up last week’s arguments over safety and the coincidental passage of the new launch regulation legislation by the House. It’s a good roundup, but when he writes:

That’s how we took aviation from an expensive and risky activity, mostly the province of governments, to a safe and reliable means of transport.

He’s mistaken. Actually (and fortunately), aviation has never been mostly the province of governments, starting from the beginning with the Wrights. Had it been, we’d probably still be arguing about whether to build National Air Transportation System II (after the necessary technology had been proven out), or whether to just increase the fleet size of the current, dangerous “Air Shuttle” from three to five…

He also says that the legislation passed on Friday afternoon. Actually, it didn’t happen until Saturday.