Greg Olsen, the private sector's number three astronaut gave some remarks to welcome the space investors and entrepreneurs to the Space Investment Summit along with Buzz Aldrin on Monday. He said, "I live in Princeton. Everyone knows everyone in Princeton. I went out to dinner and the owner of the restaurant said, 'You're that astronaut guy.' I said, 'Yes.' He said, 'Let me give you this bottle of wine!' I was feeling pretty good about myself until my girl friend said, 'If you were Buzz Aldrin, he would pay for your whole dinner.'"

Olsen was not there as an investor. His current investment fancies are energy related. We shared a cab after the event broke up. There was a bunch of road construction near the Ritz where Boeing had hosted the welcome. I asked him, "Which is rougher, a Soyuz flight or a New York City cab ride?" His answer: "Both."

I asked him if he got a tax deduction on the flight from doing experiments. "No."

We were both going to different Jean George's, but Olsen tried to convince me that they had only one location in New York. It seems Olsen can still be surprised.

I explained to him that I'd spent more money than the cost a suborbital flight trying to bring space to everyone. And that Space Shot's Latin motto, Astrae Popularetis, means, "You'll see the Stars belong to the People." I got off first and he said, "Don't worry about the cab fare." I said, "After that story you told, you have to let me pay." I gave the cabbie $20 and said, "Driver, I want to treat this man to a cab ride!" If he was Buzz Aldrin, we would have taken a limo.

We can dream of a future in which access to Space is cheaper than John Edwards' haircuts.

If I were Buzz Aldrin, I'd have something more interesting to say in this comment.

"If I were Buzz Aldrin, I'd have something more interesting to say in this comment."

Yeah, and your comment would be 8 pages long and cover every conceivable subject except the one at hand....

My introduction to Buzz Aldrin was Monty Python's Live at the Hollywood Bowl:

from here:

CHILDREN'S HOUR

Storyteller: Once upon a time there was a little house in a dark forest. In this house lived a humble woodcutter and his wife and their pretty daughter, Little Red Riding Hood. And in the middle of this deep, dark forest, there lived a vicious wolf! One day Little Red Riding Hood sent off to take some things to her old grandmother who lived deep in the forest. The vicious wolf saw Little Red Riding Hood and thought: "She looks very good to eat!" "Where are you going my, pretty one?" "Oh, kind sir, to my grandmother's." "Ha, ha, ha, ha!" snirked the wicked wolf and dashed off through the forest to grandmother's house. "Knock, knock, knock" went the wicked wolf. The door opened wide, but it wasn't grandmother who opened it. It was Buzz Aldrin, America's #2 spaceman! But this was not Granny's little house at all, but the headquarter of NASA, the American space research agency. The wicked wolf was shot by security guards. So all was quiet in the forest again. The humble woodcutter and his wife sold the their story to Der Speigel for 40 000 DM. NASA agreed to limit the number of nuclear tests in Granny's little house to two on Thursdays and one on Saturdays after tea.

Sam, what's a Jean George's? Excuse my ignorance of what's commonplace to the 'haute' set.

We in Boston can dream of a future in which cab rides in this area are as cheap as those in Manhattan.

Thanks for the full cab ride story, BTW...

Jean-Georges is here. I didn't know anything about Jean-Georges before being invited there. I met my co-author Charles Silver there who unfortunately couldn't join me here in Chicago for the 13th annual Clifford Symposium. You can see me at the Harold Washington Library Center there Friday late morning presenting our paper "INCENTIVIZING INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS TO SERVE AS LEAD PLAINTIFFS IN SECURITIES FRAUD CLASS ACTIONS".