News From Around The Internet: Dateline Feb 1, 2006

Sorry about missing yesterday. I was locked away in a lab with no access to the outside world. Might happen again Thursday.

• President Bush's original vision is apparently not going to change. I do have to wonder at Griffin's comment

  "Our best guess at this point is that the shuttle will . . . execute something like 17, 18 flights between now and retirement," Griffin said while at KSC last month for the launch of a probe to Pluto.

  Doesn't this mean 3 to 4 launches a year? They will be lucky to launch one this year.


• Today is the anniversary of the Columbia accident.


• This is a little late, but I didn't get a chance to blog on it earlier. The Rocket Racing League has its first team. Two retired F-16 fighter pilots, Robert "Bobaloo" Rickard and Don "Dagger" Grantham, owners of Leading Edge Rocket Racing. There are nine more team slots open for about $1.2 million or if you are broke (like me) you can help name the racers.


• According to Keith Cowling at NASAWatch.org, Jon Logsdon has been contracted by NASA to go around the world, trying to gain partners in the Vision.


• Clark Lindsey muses at why the space crowd hasn't jumped on the Rocket Racing League bandwagon yet. Don't ask me, I am ready to start buying t-shirts and I don't even like NASCAR.


• US Space News reports that NASA may be asking (i.e. paying) the ESA to develop an ATV to carry ISS components. This would ease the load on the Shuttle. Works for me.


• A new space activist organization has been formed with Walter Koenig of Star Trek fame. The World Space Center wants to "connect the general public with the imminent beginning of the second space age". They have a timeline of what they call "newspace".