Over at Volokh’s place. It may not have been as big a kaboom as originally reported. Certainly (on the evidence, thankfully) not an earth-shattering one. Or even a Norway-shattering one.

Mark Whittington has a strange complaint about a Russian space program:

However, like a lot of other Russian schemes, it seems to me to depend on getting a hold of a lot of other peoples’ money.

In what way does that differentiate it from “NASA schemes”?

A meteorite struck Norway a couple days ago, releasing many kilotons of energy–equivalent to the Hiroshima bomb in explosive power.

Fortunately it was out in the boonies. If it had hit a major city it would have killed many thousands of people, and if it had struck in the ocean it could have generated a nasty tsunami. And we continue to do very little to defend ourselves from them.

We were lucky this time, but we shouldn’t continue to count on luck. The sooner we become a truly spacefaring country and planet (and NASA’s current plans do little to advance us in that direction), the sooner we’ll be able to manage these things.

NASA hasn’t completely given up on propellant depots. At least, not all of it.

NASA hasn’t completely given up on propellant depots. At least, not all of it.

NASA hasn’t completely given up on propellant depots. At least, not all of it.

Michael Belfiore reports that winners of COTS contracts will be ineligible for America’s Space Prize.

This makes sense. Bigelow probably wants to encourage as many players as possible, and he wants to encourage commercial space companies, so this spreads the wealth, increasing diversity in space access providers. And COTS winners don’t really need the prize money anyway. It’s the same philosophy that disqualified people from winning the X-Prize using government-developed hardware.

Brian “Rocket Guy” Walker’s latest thrill scheme is to launch himself with a giant crossbow.

Hey, it’s reusable…

Robin Snelson says that you can still form a team for the Lunar Lander Challenge.

I do think that NASA is being overly restrictive with regard to propellants. I mean, it’s not like they’re proposing fluorine. It’s just acid.

Over at The Space Review today, Jeff Foust writes that space enthusiasts have to avoid the Segway problem of overhype. On a related note, Bob Clarebrough says that space entrepreneurs need to be both visionary and customer focused.

[Late morning update]

Clark Lindsey has further thoughts.