Dateline Feb 9, 2006, News from the Internet

• Space.Com has more information on the new Centennial Challenges released as drafts yesterday. The prizes range from $500,000 to $5 million. So NASA is finally putting some real money into this prize thing


• The new Ad Astral, the monthly magazine from the NSS, has an article on mining asteroids for various products, such as platinum group metals and water. The author, Mark Sonter, is a "consultant working in the Australian mining and metallurgical industries, providing advice on radiation protection, industrial hygiene, safety, and remediation of radioactively contaminated sites", so he might know something about mining...


• The U.S. military is looking to increase their presence and organization in space. The are setting policy to decide exactly who is responsible for responding to commercial and military satellite attacks. Of course Reuters jumps all over the weapons in space angle.
  
• More comments on NASA's 2007 budget with respect to the increase in the exploration budget


• According to AVweb, Sir Richard Branson was quoted on UTV Online (whose web site I can't get to load) on Monday,

  Virgin Galactic is on track for taking passengers into space by the end of 2008, Richard Branson said on Monday. "It is going very well, we have 100 engineers working on it and we have had about 50,000 people who have put their names down to fly," he was quoted by UTV online. Branson was in Florida this week for the launch of the GlobalFlyer, and said that NASA has offered Virgin Galactic a base at the Kennedy Space Center. The offer is interesting, he said, but discussions are still preliminary. "I think we would find that it would bring a lot of people to the area who would watch the flight as well as those who were flying," he said. Test flights are expected to begin late next year for the fleet of five spaceships being built at Scaled Composites in Mojave, Calif. Tourist flights are expected to begin in late 2008.



• According to the Albuquerque Journal, the New Mexico House and Senate has passed a measure allowing local governments to impose a gross receipts tax to help finance the new spaceport. Not co complain, but the AP only interviews a state lawmaker who doesn't like the plan. What about he 42 who did?


• Here's an article on the new space entrepreneurs, like Elon Musk, who's Falcon 1 should lift off tomorrow.


• Kimbal Musk blog on SpaceX at Kwajalein is back up. Cool pictures. Enjoy.