As Clark notes, a lot of Mojave space workers live up in the mountains west of town, including Jeff Greason, head of XCOR. Here’s hoping that they, and their families and belongings stay safe.

Here’s a good article on some of what’s going on in Wyoming on the space front, from the Laramie paper (which is unaccountably called the Boomerang). Articles like this, and the recent Popular Science piece on space diving, are more signs that the giggle factor is gone, and that the media is starting to take personal spaceflight seriously.

Genesis II apparently had a successful launch.

I just scored a review copy of Michael Belfiore’s new book. Unfortunately, part of the deal is that the review won’t be published until August, so you’ll have to wait until after the book (on August 1st) comes out to read it.

Here’s a pretty good article about what’s going on in that area, with a lot of discussion of NewSpace players.

Clark Lindsey points out this “new” book, but it’s not clear whether it’s really new, or just an update on the old one. SpacePac, the political action committee affiliated with the National Space Society, used to publish a book by this title back in the eighties and early nineties. I know this because I edited (and wrote parts of) it for a few years back then (I think that 1990 was the last year I was involved). So I’m curious if the current author simply picked up that ball, or if it’s a new, unrelated work.

Clark Lindsey has some useful thoughts on the pace of technology development. What I find frustrating is that from a technical standpoint, there’s no reason that all of the current progress in NewSpace couldn’t have all been happening fifteen years ago. I recall talking about rocket racing with Bevin McKinney and Jim Bennett back in the late eighties and early nineties. But apparently society itself wasn’t ready for it.

A private space passenger conference in, of all places, France.

Looking at the description provided by Jack Kennedy, it doesn’t look much different than many similar ones that have been held here over the past few years. The difference, of course, is the location. I think that if this doesn’t show that the “giggle factor” is gone, nothing does.

Looks like NASA has given up on landing at the Cape. I wish we could get some of the rain that was keeping them from landing there today, but it’s pretty dry down here. And hot. Definitely summer time.