Gerry Williams has a report from a space awards ceremony in San Diego, featuring Peter Diamandis and Burt Rutan.

Pet peeve–I wish that people would learn the difference between “risk averse” (correct) and “risk adverse” (incorrect).

Jon Goff has an interesting post on deciding when to quit, a critical ability for success.

Is it always right to keep going and see any difficult task through to completion, no matter the difficulty? Or is it best sometimes to reevaluate and change course when the going gets tough? How do you know which situation is which?

One of the things I got hammered into me growing up was the power of determination. If you set your mind to it, the saying goes, there is almost nothing you can’t accomplish. Unfortunately, I’ve ran into several situations in the past which have made me wonder when it really is best to keep slogging through a tough problem, and when it truly is wisest not to keep slogging away at it, but to completely change courses.

In a sense, this is a trap into which NASA has fallen many times (Shuttle and ISS both being excellent examples, and Ares may be as well), but they are often forced by politics to forge ahead with bad ideas. This is one of the many reasons that we will have to privatize space in order to make much progress.

There’s probably a lesson here for the administration vis a vis Iraq as well–clearly, we’ll have to do something different. The problem is that now the different thing that the people in charge want to do is give up and claim defeat, instead of coming up with a way to win.

Here’s an interesting story in the Gray Lady this morning:

Most astronomers doubt that any large comets or asteroids have crashed into the Earth in the last 10,000 years. But the self-described

Brian Berger has a roundup of political impacts on NASA from the new Congress.

I think that there are some additional nuances here, but it’s a good start on understanding the implications. Bottom line–when it comes to space, there’s only one party–the Pork Party.

Alan Boyle has an interesting scoop on progress from Blue Origin.

That’s a dedicated space reporter.

Over at The Space Review today, Dwayne Day brings some clarity to the “debate” over the administration’s new space policy, and Jim Oberg demonstrates the cluelessness of many commentators on space weaponry.

Also, Jeff Foust reviews a recent attempt at space commentary by the Utne Reader. It shows that “progressives” are as out to lunch on this topic as most are.

Just as a side note, this is my eight thousandth post here, and I neglected to note my fifth bloggiversary last month.

The Indian President seems serious:

He said that he visualized India launching a manned space mission with two astronauts into low earth orbit and recovered after planned orbits in the Bay of Bengal in 2014.

I’m back from Wyoming, but busy painting the house. But Clark has a lot a lot of good stuff over at his site. Just keep scrolling.

Jon Goff has a good overview of the alternatives to ESAS, with commentary. Read the comments, also, particularly regarding propellant delivery. I am getting more and more intrigued by Lockheed Martin’s approach, and starting to think they’re really serious.

So, I was flying from Dallas to Denver this morning, reading the WSJ, and looking over the new committee assignments, and I noticed that Rep. James Oberstar (he who would have us overregulate the fledgling space passenger business, perhaps fatally) will be taking over the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. I wondered if he was planning to take another run at that, now that he’s in the majority, instead of minority.

Now that I have Internet access again, I see that Jeff Foust already indicates that he just might have such plans.

If it happens, the main effect, I think, will be to chase people overseas, perhaps to Australia. We’ll still get there, but it won’t happen in the US.

The other issues that aren’t mentioned in Jeff’s post are the fate of Centennial Challenges and COTS under a Democrat Congress. I can see them preserving VSE/ESAS because of the jobs in Houston et al, but it’s not obvious that prizes and commercial activities will continue to be supported by the Dems. They were by the Republicans due to White House pressure (at least in the case of COTS), but the White House won’t have as much influence (to put it mildly) over the new budgetary sheriff in town, barring veto threats.