I’m not sure what to say at this point. Walt Anderson, bankroller of several emerging space companies (some of which I’ve worked for and with), has been arrested for tax evasion:

IRS Commissioner Mark Everson said the allegations mark the largest criminal tax case against an individual.

Anderson, 51, earned millions by dealing in telecommunications companies after the AT&T breakup and became a global figure about five years ago when he embarked on a mission to try to rescue the ailing Russian Mir space station.

I hadn’t talked to him since last June, at the first SS1 flight into space, in Mojave.

Without speaking to the merits of the case, it’s safe to say that this will put a severe crimp into the capability of the first dotcom millionaire who was putting his money where his mouth was to continue to support space entrepreneurs.

[Via NASA Watch]

[Update on Tuesday morning]

Here’s more from the New York Times:

The Justice Department said that Mr. Anderson was involved in starting long-distance telecommunications businesses as the industry was being deregulated, and that he realized in the early 1990’s that the merger of his first successful company, Mid-Atlantic Telecom, with another company would result in substantial taxable earnings.

To avoid paying those taxes, the department said, he formed an offshore corporation called Gold & Appel Transfer in the British Virgin Islands and hired a trust company to serve as Gold & Appel’s registered agent and sold director. Gold & Appel was owned by another British Virgin Islands company previously formed by Mr. Anderson, the department said.

Mr. Anderson structured his dealings so that he had complete, albeit hidden, control of the corporations, prosecutors said. They said he further obscured his holdings by forming another offshore corporation in Panama, transferring Gold & Appel shares to that entity and having the shares sent to a mail drop in Amsterdam that he had rented under an alias.

The indictment said Mr. Anderson concealed his illegal dealings from his accountants, repeatedly tried to thwart I.R.S. inquiries, sometimes used the alias “Mark Roth” and falsely proclaimed himself a citizen of the Dominican Republic when he opened accounts with a New Jersey bank.

Gold & Appel (prounounced “Golden Apple”) was the investment source for many of his investments, including Rotary Rocket, Mircorp, and others. I don’t know, but suspect that it also provided the seed funding and endowment for the FINDS fund.

Well, can’t have that money funding projects that could get us off the planet. Much better to sink it in that vast black hole known as the federal budget, of course.

[Update at 9:45 PM EST]

Here’s more (though for some unaccountable reason the NYT reporter consistently misspells Gold & Appel as “Gold and Appeal”):

Mr. Anderson has long attracted a certain level of public attention, especially when he tried to arrange a rescue of the Mir space station five years ago. He frequently flew in a private jet and made deals involving millions of dollars. At conferences on space travel he often spoke of his hatred of government…

…Gary Hudson of Redwood City, Calif., said that Mr. Anderson invested $30 million in his Rotary Rocket, the primary backing for a private rocket launching and recovery firm that ultimately failed.

“One condition of his investment was that we could not take any government money,” Mr. Hudson said in a telephone interview on Monday.

I guess that occasionally it’s possible to be a little too libertarian.

[Update at 11:20 AM EST]

Here’s one more, the longest piece on the story yet, from the WaPo.

Speaking of international space programs, here’s a news story claiming that Japan is going to establish a lunar base.

I don’t know how seriously to take it. It could just be a trial balloon by an agency official. But they don’t seem to be in any big rush about it.

Japan’s space agency, JAXA, is drawing up plans to develop a robot to conduct probes on the moon by 2015, then begin constructing a solar-powered manned research base on the planet and design a reusable manned space vessel like the U.S. space shuttle by 2025.

This was interesting too:

Long Asia’s leading spacefaring nation, Japan has been struggling to get out from under the shadow of China, which put its first astronaut into orbit in October 2003. Beijing has since announced it is aiming for the moon.

Some people think that China’s sending a man into space has kicked off a new space race with us. It may have kicked off a new space race, but the competitors will be Japan and India. And perhaps South Korea (if they can afford in the face of what’s almost certain to be a messy collapse north of their border).

The Japanese program has always been a derivative of NASA’s–the H2 is a knockoff of the Delta, and this talk about their own “Space Shuttle” is just more of that. I’ll take all of these countries seriously when I see significant creativity, and private space activity, and not just government chest thumping.

Speaking of international space programs, here’s a news story claiming that Japan is going to establish a lunar base.

I don’t know how seriously to take it. It could just be a trial balloon by an agency official. But they don’t seem to be in any big rush about it.

Japan’s space agency, JAXA, is drawing up plans to develop a robot to conduct probes on the moon by 2015, then begin constructing a solar-powered manned research base on the planet and design a reusable manned space vessel like the U.S. space shuttle by 2025.

This was interesting too:

Long Asia’s leading spacefaring nation, Japan has been struggling to get out from under the shadow of China, which put its first astronaut into orbit in October 2003. Beijing has since announced it is aiming for the moon.

Some people think that China’s sending a man into space has kicked off a new space race with us. It may have kicked off a new space race, but the competitors will be Japan and India. And perhaps South Korea (if they can afford in the face of what’s almost certain to be a messy collapse north of their border).

The Japanese program has always been a derivative of NASA’s–the H2 is a knockoff of the Delta, and this talk about their own “Space Shuttle” is just more of that. I’ll take all of these countries seriously when I see significant creativity, and private space activity, and not just government chest thumping.

Speaking of international space programs, here’s a news story claiming that Japan is going to establish a lunar base.

I don’t know how seriously to take it. It could just be a trial balloon by an agency official. But they don’t seem to be in any big rush about it.

Japan’s space agency, JAXA, is drawing up plans to develop a robot to conduct probes on the moon by 2015, then begin constructing a solar-powered manned research base on the planet and design a reusable manned space vessel like the U.S. space shuttle by 2025.

This was interesting too:

Long Asia’s leading spacefaring nation, Japan has been struggling to get out from under the shadow of China, which put its first astronaut into orbit in October 2003. Beijing has since announced it is aiming for the moon.

Some people think that China’s sending a man into space has kicked off a new space race with us. It may have kicked off a new space race, but the competitors will be Japan and India. And perhaps South Korea (if they can afford in the face of what’s almost certain to be a messy collapse north of their border).

The Japanese program has always been a derivative of NASA’s–the H2 is a knockoff of the Delta, and this talk about their own “Space Shuttle” is just more of that. I’ll take all of these countries seriously when I see significant creativity, and private space activity, and not just government chest thumping.

I was forwarded this email today by Mark Reiff:

My name is xxxxxx and I am a journalism student at xxxxxxxxxxx. I am currently writing a story about international collaboration in space exploration, with a focus on newer agencies and their impact on exploration overall. I was hoping you could answer a few questions for me or put me in touch with a policy analyst or expert who could. I couldn’t find a number for you, so I’m including my questions at the end of this e-mail. But if you’d rather chat on the phone, you can reach me at xxxxxxxx or on my cell at xxxxxxxxxx. My deadline for this is Friday, March 4, so any help before then would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks so much!

1. What motivates countries to join the space race?
2. How do new entrants impact foreign relations?
3. How do foreign relations impact scientific exploration?
4. How does scientific exploration impact foreign relations?
5. What political impacts does joining the space race have on a country?
6. How does president Bush

This looks like an interesting event, but at almost fifteen hundred dollars to attend, it’s way out of my price range.

And this is simply false:

Flight School is new for us – and new for space and aviation, which doesn’t yet have a single gathering where pioneers and entrepreneurs can talk strategy, tactics…and experience, whether in space and aviation or in the Internet computing industry.

Actually, there has been an annual event (and arguably two, if you count the Space Frontier Foundation meeting) that does exactly that for years, and it only costs a hundred dollars to attend.

In fact, it’s just a couple months from now, and I’ll be planning to attend. I’d encourage anyone else interested in alt-space to do so as well. If I had unlimited time and funds, I’d love to attend Esther Dyson’s event, but I suspect that Space Access will continue to be the best such conference, and certainly the best value, for some time to come.

Thomas James has a brief post that describes what’s really holding us back from space settlement.

He also joyfully points out that moonbat extraordinaire Bruce Gagnon now has a blog. I expect that Thomas will be a regular visitor, and commentator.

Eric Soskin writes about a sighting of some interesting public outreach for the new space exploration activities.

Clark Lindsey points out another boneheaded move by Congress in the name of “national security”:

Congress, in its collective ham-fisted oafishness, dictated after 9/11 that the government place restrictions on access to spacecraft tracking information. Apparently, this will keep terrorists from shooting down comsats with RPGs…

… Congress once again shows that it is incapable of making sensible policies with respect to space that carefully and effectively targets the particular problem without causing devastating collateral damage to nearby legitimate activity.

If you haven’t been paying attention to the current state of play in the regulation of suborbital vehicles over the past few months, Jeff Foust has a good, up-to-date summary today.

And yes, I am very busy, with some consulting on the Vision for Space Exploration. And I don’t get President’s Day (which I think is an atrocity to the memory of Lincoln and Washington) off.