Speaking of a new space age, this is a real coup for XCOR. It’s been a long slog since the EZ-Rocket first flew, four years ago, but they may now be able to raise the money they need to build a vehicle, and not just engines. In fact, in rereading that old post, it’s remarkable how prescient it was:

While EZ-Rocket doesn’t fly high, or fast–unlike NASA’s reusable rocket programs–it actually flies. And in fact, though it doesn’t fly particularly high, or fast, it is a testament to the neglect of this field that, had XCOR bothered to call the appropriate French certification agency to have them witness today’s flight, they would have simultaneously awarded it the new world’s records for height, speed, and time to climb for a rocket plane.

It not only flies, but it can, given small amounts of money (equivalent to just a fraction of the overruns on programs like X-34 and X-33), fly every day, or twice a day, for mere hundreds of dollars per flight. And the experience developed from it can lead to bigger, faster rocket planes, that can also fly every day, or twice or thrice a day, and teach us how to fly rocket planes, and by selling experiment time, or even (heaven forfend!) rides to wealthy people who want a thrill, make a little money while doing it. We may have rocket racing competitions, sponsored by ESPN, or the Xtreme Sports Channel, or Pratt & Whitney.

Now, let’s hope this prediction works out as well:

And the records will get faster, and higher, and the revenues will grow, until we are offering rides to orbit, and people (with fortunes less than Bill Gates and Larry Ellison) are buying. And then some crazy fool will develop a space suit, and haul up enough parts to build a space hotel, and we’ll offer week-long stays, instead of barn-storming joy rides. And someone else will actually rent space in the hotel and perhaps do some research, or figure out how to build something bigger, like a Mars mission vehicle, that can be afforded by the Planetary Society, or the Mars Society, or even the (renamed?) National Geographic Society.

Jon Goff has similar thoughts, and congratulations to XCOR.

[Update at 10 AM EDT]

Michael Belfiore has more:

Initially XCOR will build 10 rocket racers. My editor tells me that these babies will cost $1 million each, so that will be a nice boost to XCOR’s finances.

It will indeed, assuming that they can build them for less than that (and I think that’s a pretty good assumption).

Belfiore also has a story in Wired about John Carmack and Armadillo.

Two years from today, it will have been half a century since the launch of Sputnik and the beginning of the old space age. Sadly, rather than initiate a new one, NASA seems determined to prolong the old one.

Clark Lindsey points out that, while there may be many good arguments against NASA’s human spaceflight program, the notion that we can’t afford it is ludicrous.

It’s really tragic that the debate is so simple minded. There seems little point in debating whether or not NASA should continue to spend money on manned spaceflight–that seems to be inevitable, for reasons of inertia, perceived prestige, and (most importantly) pork. So, as Clark points out, if we could accept that as a given, it would be nice to have an intelligent discussion about how NASA spends the money that they seem inevitably to be given. Unfortunately, that debate is driven largely by pork as well.

[Update at 8:50 AM EDT]

Jeff Foust has an article about media reaction over at The Space Review this morning.

[Late afternoon update]

There’s an interesting discussion in comments at this post by Jeff Foust at Space Politics, including comments on the existence of lunar water by Paul Spudis.

The Washington Post has an editorial against the Vision for Space Exploration in general, and Mike Griffin’s implementation plans in particular. As usual, there are unstated assumptions built in:

…we believe that the needs of NASA — and the country — can, at this point, be better served by continuing and expanding robotic exploration.

But what are those needs? They don’t say. They think they know what they are, and assume that everyone agrees with them. But I can’t think of any needs of mine that are met by sending robots to other planets. NASA obviously has some need to do so, because they do so, but clearly that doesn’t satisfy the sum total of their needs either.

Once again, we have clueless pundits making policy pronouncements when we haven’t had a national discussion or debate about what the purpose is of having a national space program and policy. Until that happens, it will continue to be driven by the needs for pork in certain congressional districts.