Jeff Foust has a good roundup of the current state of play in industry/congressional skepticism about the ability of the new players to do the job.
And Tom Frieling describes an appallingly bad book on space history. This kind of thing is really inexcusable, and may feed ignorance for years. When I do my pieces for The New Atlantis, I circulate drafts among a lot of knowledgeable people, to make sure that I get it right. If I write a book, I’ll do the same thing. But I guess that kind of thing isn’t very important to some authors and publishers.
Stephen Smith has a post on NASA’s charter, and what it is and isn’t. It got waylaid by Apollo, but it’s time to restore things to what was originally envisioned. Though as I note in comments over there, space exploration wasn’t given to a civilian agency because of concerns over the military being a hide-bound bureaucracy.
…but a lot later than we wanted, due to hellacious traffic getting out of LA. Things didn’t really start to move until we got halfway up the Cajon Pass. So, later dinner at Mandalay Bay, and then on to Colorado in the morning. But Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. I’ll leave you with a video from another Christmas eve, forty-one years ago.
I had a piece on this story last year, on the fortieth anniversary. Hard to believe it’s been a year since I wrote that.