Jim Muncy says that the biggest breakthroughs last year, in a spectacular year for space activities both public and private, were not technological, but political.

A few years ago, under commission from the Sophron Foundation, headed by Tom Rogers, who was (and I hope still is, given his time on this earth) a noted proponent of space tourism, I wrote a long essay on the near-term prospects for space tourism. It was printed, but just a few copies only for the use of the foundation as a printout of a Microsoft Word file. To the degree it was published at all, it was on the web, at one of my own websites, and at Space Future.

Subsequently, somehow, Amazon has decided that it’s actually a book, out of print.

I’ve already received notification from an emailer that they’ve backordered a copy, whenever Amazon gets some in st0ck.

How did this happen? Does anyone have enough insight into the workings of Amazon to know?

Clark Lindsey has helpfully put one together for the significant events in space actitivities over the past very eventful (and probably historic) year.

I know that many of you are tapped out from the successful disaster relief fundraising, but we have to think about the future as well. The X-Prize Foundation has some matching grants up that expire at midnight, if you want to make a contribution to keeping the effort going for space prizes. I think that this is one of the most effective ways that a private citizen can contribute to opening up the frontier for all of us.

Here’s a study that says people derive more happiness from life experiences than from material possessions. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s not obviously wrong, and it buttresses my long-held belief that public space travel is the largest near-term market for space products.

Clark Lindsey has an interesting roundup of links, and some plausible speculation about the potential development path for orbital passenger vehicles.

Jay Manifold has some personal memories of a Christmas thirty six years ago.

JPL has started maintaining a status page on potential earth impactors.

I still think that we need to get the Corp of Engineers working on this.

[via emailer Paul Breed]

I missed the Delta 4 Heavy Launch yesterday–couldn’t justify driving up to the Cape on a weekday. But I’m bemused by the reporting. To read this story, it was spectacular success, but SpaceFlightNow says that it underperfomed significantly, something you’d never know from the space.com piece, which reads like a Boeing press release.

I missed the Delta 4 Heavy Launch yesterday–couldn’t justify driving up to the Cape on a weekday. But I’m bemused by the reporting. To read this story, it was spectacular success, but SpaceFlightNow says that it underperfomed significantly, something you’d never know from the space.com piece, which reads like a Boeing press release.