It looked like miserable weather in Kitty Hawk–a cold rain, as the president spoke. I doubt if they got off the reenactment of the flight.

Though some were hoping for a major space policy announcement, most of the indications were that it would come later. I suspect that the policy is still being worked out, and they didn’t want to rush it just for an anniversary.

He did get in a nice dig at the Gray Lady, pointing out their editorial after Langley’s disastrous first flight into the Potomac, in which they declared that one to ten million years would be required to develop an airplane. The Wrights flew a few weeks later. It was as dumb an editorial as their one a few years later, in which they said that Goddard was ignorant of physics.

Maybe my last Wright piece will be about risk, and risk aversion.

My next Wright essay is now up at National Review Online.

Lawrence Reed has a piece that also contrasts the Wrights to Langley.

Phil Fraering is putting together an FQQ on Iraq, and seeking inputs.

The first of my Wright essays is up, at TechCentralStation.

[Update at 10 PM PST]

While I’m at it, I’ll scoop the professor and note that his latest TechCentralStation column, on the regulation of nanotech, is up as well.

Sorry, but I’m working on three Wright essays today.

But meanwhile, go over to RLV News, (which I think should have the name changed to “Space Transport News”) and check out the latest news on the X-Prize.

[Update at 5:26 PM]

According to the same source, Clark Lindsey, there’s a rumor that there may be “special test flight activity on Wednesday morning” at Mojave Airport…

Will Burt Rutan be lighting the engine on SpaceShipOne on the Wright anniversary?

MoveOn.org has decided that they’re tired of these jingoistic, unilateral cowboy national elections–they want to build a coalition and involve the international community.

…before a lot of the people who were castigating Bush as a “miserable failure” because he couldn’t find Saddam start saying that catching Saddam isn’t that big a deal?

I suspect it’s already happening.

By the way, I wonder how effective a commercial showing Dick Gephardt repeating the words “this president is a miserable failure” over and over would be for the Republicans ten months from now?

It might be a better income than writing plays.

Living in New York, actress Carmen Pel

…or a dead end?

Clark Lindsey has a good survey of opinions on the utility of suborbital vehicles, in terms of their applicability to orbital space transports. Regular readers will know that I concur with Dan DeLong and Henry Spencer, and that I have little respect for the opinion of John Pike.

We’re slowly recapitulating manned spaceflight the way it should have been done in the first place, had we not been derailed by Apollo.

Maybe they’ll allow him to continue to blog from prison.