Gerhard Van der Leun has some thoughts about why we should go to Mars (which actually apply to leaving the planet in general).

I think…

Thomas James has a good rundown on the composition of the Aldridge Commission to flesh out the president’s new space policy.

I’m again underwhelmed, but not disappointed, because I didn’t really have high expectations. The only name that I see here as perhaps representing the potential for new thinking is Bob Walker (and Paul Spudis), but since I’ve never heard of many of them, it’s probably best to reserve judgement for now.

One year ago today, Columbia broke up on entry.

Anyone new to the site can go back and read some of my thoughts on the day it happened. There are some columns I wrote on the subject in the days and weeks immediately after here, here, here and here. I also ran a little haiku contest.

Most of my analysis and commentary seems to have held up pretty well.

I’m with Tim Carney.

McAuliffe in 2000 played a role in losing the presidency in a time of peace and prosperity. As DNC chairman in 2002 he defied history, losing the Senate and bleeding seats in the House during a midterm election. He’s also handed five southern governorships to the GOP. Now he is trying to beat the Republicans in 2004 running on fiscal discipline and national security.

May Terry McAuliffe have a thousand-year reichgn.

The Challenger was lost, with all aboard.

Hard to believe that it was that long ago. I’ll have some more thoughts up on this a little later, but here are my recollections of the event from a couple years ago. When it was only sixteen years ago, that was only a year more than fifteen, which doesn’t seem so long. Now that it’s eighteen, it’s almost twenty, and in some ways makes me feel old.

…when your whale explodes?

…when your whale explodes?

…when your whale explodes?

Some of you may have noticed that my site was having problems for the past few days. They’re fixed for now, but all comments and trackbacks since last Wednesday or so are lost. They’re not irretrievably gone, but they’re no longer in the data base. This evening, I’ll point to old versions of the posts, with comments, so if anyone wants to reenter them into the data base, they can. I don’t have the time to do so.