Space News Roundup January 10, 2011

• The Las Cruces Sun-News things Virigin Galatic, Spaceport America, and private space in New Mexico in general is a good thing for everyone.
• Three travel agencies in Florida have been authorized to sell seats on Virigin Galatic. WSFL has the story with cool shots of VSS Enterprise.
• NASA Administrator Charles Bolden is a moron. He says that in order to survive political wrangling, they must be affordable, sustainable and realistic. In other words they must be things we have done. To survive politics space travel must be new and exciting and commercial.
• Rick Homans, former director of Spaceport America, says that the new Governor, Susana Martinez, must declare her support or the project may slow or stop in its tracks.
  
• It only took 40 years, but NASA proved the Moon has a core using data from Apollo.
• NASA is currently stuck in bureaucratic hell, waiting on the congress and the president to figure out the budget. They have found $40 million more for the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program since the beginning of the fiscal year (October).
• It is an odd felling, but I am proud that commercial space tourism has become mainstream enough to be actively attacked my environmentalists.