Dateline April 4, 2006, News from the Internet

• Luo Ge, vice administrator of the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA?), gave at talk in downtown Washington, D.C. yesterday. He dismissed any manned moon missions, but he did talk about the Chinese space-lab planned for 2015. Jeff Foust has more. Reuters also has an article, although they seem more impressed with China's plans of a Delta IV class rocket for 2010.
• Virgin Galactic just makes me feel good. Read Hotels in Space. It is full of useful information. For example:
  

  SIR Richard Branson is taking a giant leap for mankind by drawing up plans to build the worlds first space hotels
  

  [Virgin] has held talks with US hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow about the project
  

  Branson last week announced that the Spaceship Company, the 70:30 joint venture between Virgin Galactic and Rutan's Scaled Composites, was set to begin construction of its first space craft, SpaceShipTwo, within six weeks.
  

  Whitehorn said the Spaceship Company would not start work on SpaceShipThree until after 2010. It is intended to be the worlds first commercial orbital spacecraft with potential to dock with space hotels. He said: SpaceShipTwo will be the testbed for a future spaceship which will be capable of orbital flight.
  

  
  Yes, yes, yes. Just get to working on the moon and I will be in heaven.
• In related news, Virgin and Space Adventures are both trying to woo Ras Al-Khaimah in the UAE as a base for launching suborbital flights. Space Adventures is already building a spaceport there. Now Virgin Galactic is in discussions with the emirate about launching from there.
• New Scientist has an article on the science we could do no the moon. Sorry, not free, so go by a copy at your local bookstore. Ken Murphy talks about it for you cheapskates and college students.
• KFox TV in Las Cruces, NM has a piece on the New Mexico spaceport.