A long piece on personal space travel, over at New York Magazine. I found this interesting:

Wincer is frequently asked if customers can bring children. Several parents have attempted to give flights as sweet-sixteen birthday gifts; one customer, she said, “at the moment is desperate to let her 12-year-old fly.” The FAA had yet to address such questions, and Wincer sees it as a matter of informed consent, of which she thinks a 12-year-old is not capable. Many customers have their own private pilot’s license, and many others are scared of flying or small spaces. She had just read a profile of one client who is terrified of roller coasters: “Jesus,” she said.

One of those things is not like the other. I’m not much of a fan of roller coasters, but that wouldn’t affect my desire for (or enjoyment of) a parabolic flight at all. I’m also acrophobic, but I have no problem with flying. Being high on a structure is a completely different experience than flight, at least for me.

Of course, this isn’t really true, or at least it’s quite misleading:

The primary goal of the shuttle program was simple: to create a reusable space vehicle that could transport materials to and from the International Space Station.

There was no “International Space Station” when the Shuttle was being developed, and wouldn’t be until 1993, though it was meant to be a precursor program to some sort of space station, which was undefined at the time. Of course, ironically, the fact that they built into it the capability to be a short-term space station probably reduced the incentive to actually build one, which is why the first bit of hardware for ISS wasn’t launched until almost twenty years after the Shuttle started flying.

The current state of play. This is disturbing:

Bolden has acknowledged in congressional testimony, most recently in an April 25 hearing of the Senate Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee, that without a fully funded Commercial Crew Program, the agency may have to pick only one aspiring provider to fund.

That could happen as soon as next summer, when NASA plans to award the next round of Commercial Crew funding.

They make it sound like he’s issuing a threat when that’s exactly what Congress wants them to do. If I were Bolden (or rather, if I were administrator — obviously if I were Bolden I’d do what Bolden would do), I’d be figuring out a way to avoid the down select with a smaller budget. But if I were administrator, a lot of things would be done differently.