I'm back from Scottsdale, and will try to report on it today (or more likely tomorrow--lots to catch up on on the home front). But here's something that happened while I was gone that wasn't part of the program, but may be the most exciting news yet.

Jeff Bezos, founder and owner of Amazon, has finally started to show his space cards.

I'm so excited! This is how I envisioned things happening, long ago. When I was in my late teens I wanted nothing more than to get into the private space industry, creating a launch company or joining one. I had notions of how to raise money, etc. and was highly amused when I read Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold The Moon" and saw some of it there (though mainly the tone and avidness I had then), as imagined decades before. My phase of wanting to be in the business so bad I could taste it was circa 1977-1979.

Later I decided that'd never happen, but I could write, incorporating the ideas. I imagined an entrepreneur who was in various businesses, some of which might be proving grounds for technologies needed for space flight, duration flight, and terraforming. He then reaches a point where the money and credibility exists, and undertakes the new venture. I'd pictured having to fly out of another country due to excessive red tape in the U.S., and part of the process being to help some small country set itself up as a free market beacon of hope and space launch central. This was in the late eighties.

More recently, I have been expecting someone would come out of the woodwork, perhaps a dotcom fortunate or software magnate, to back or embark on a space business. After all, I figured, someone out there with money had to be interested. Looks like it's actually heading that way. Woohoo!

The most disappointing thing about Bill Gates is how mundane and safe his charitable contributions have been. Sure, funding medical research or scholarshipsneeds to be done, it's not like these things don't already have many patrons. The same goes for the big foundations like MacArthur, Ford, etc. No creativity there, "genius" grants notwithstanding.

Sometimes it takes someone with a spare billion or two to get something worthwile and interesting going. Good to see someone who's made the big bucks can see beyond the next balance statement, or maintaining his spot on the Forbes list.

This is incredibly exciting and encouraging. While in Britain we contemplate the retirement of the Concorde passenger jet, it looks as if cheap and reliable sub-orbital flight may be within our grasp. After decades of taking the Statist route, at last it appears that some of the world's top entrepreneurs are making an impact. Godspeed, gentlemen.

A reusable sub-orbital vehicle that can carry seven tourists. This is great, I think we're witnessing the start of a golden age of spacecraft design.