There are a lot of misconceptions about NASA’s decision to launch tomorrow even with another sensor failure like the one that caused the last attempt to be scrubbed almost two weeks ago. They’re on full display by some of Alan Boyle’s readers:

Jeff Foust says that, when it comes to commercial space, NASA may at long last be (in the word of Paul Dietz, a frequent commenter here) bowing to reality.

I suspect he’ll have more tomorrow at The Space Review.

Clark Lindsey also has an interesting wrap-up on the subject from Jim Muncy in Las Vegas:

Getting another “big idea” accepted is also making progress. Large scale space settlement must become the primary goal of the space program. No Antarctica-like outposts on the Moon but Las Vegas-es instead. Griffin, in fact, stated in testimony to Congress that human expansion into the solar system is his long term vision for space policy. However, this big idea is still foreign to many at NASA, in Congress, the press and the general public.

We have to continue to work to change that.

Well, this is annoying. Mark Whittington needs to work on his, apparently.

He claimed that:

…some people…on the one hand, preach libertarian cant and, on the other hand, demand government pay money up front, before the promised hardware is even built, not to mention delivered.

We asked him for an example of such a person.

Bizarrely, he responded with:

Unlike Kistler, t/Space will not try to develop their system with commercial money but will seek a fixed-cost contract, milestone payment approach with NASA.

By what tortured logic does he think that this means that the government would “pay money up front, before the promised hardware is even built, not to mention delivered”?

Apparently he doesn’t understand the meaning of the words “milestone payment approach.” Or else he doesn’t understand the meaning of the words “up front,” or “before hardware is built” or “delivered.” Either way, it’s a head scratcher of a post.

About a year and a half ago, in one of my occasional meandering rantswell-reasoned disquisitions against heavy lifters, I suggested that NASA use the Centennial Challenge prize to develop a better space suit glove. Well, per Alan Boyle, I find out today that they have:

The Astronaut Glove Challenge award will go to the team that can design and manufacture the best performing glove within competition parameters. The $250,000 purse will be awarded at a competition scheduled for November 2006, when competing teams test their glove designs against each other.

Cool.

When I was in California, it was no big deal to drive to Vegas for the Return to the Moon conference, which I live blogged last year (scroll about halfway down–there are a lot of posts around July 16th and 17th). But it’s a little tougher to get there from south Florida. Clark Lindsey is there, though.

I don’t have time to answer this email query, but perhaps some of the other readers do, in comments:

I loved your article about the Hyper X 43 and scramjets in genral, it was amazingly informative. As an amatuer space enthusiast I try to keep up, some of the stuff is completely out of my league. I had some questions, even if a singlestage could be built, would it be able survive re-entry? Second, even though Rutan’s Spaceship one did in fact go to 62k up, didn’t all the x-15’s do the exact same thing? Could the feathering device that Spaceship one uses be applied to a space craft coming in from low-orbit or is that type of system restricted forever to sub-orbital manuevering? if not is the composite material shell of the Spaceship as effective or even in the same league as Shuttle’s tiles? and finally, with the weight of turbofans and some kind of orbital manuevering system and reaction control system, could the design or anything like the design of the Spaceship One work off taking us to the runway to low orbit system that we only dream of in science fiction.

The Christian Science Monitor has a good story on the new private space activities.

The Christian Science Monitor has a good story on the new private space activities.

The Christian Science Monitor has a good story on the new private space activities.

Jim Oberg emails that NASA has made a decision for a launch attempt on Tuesday.

We’ll see. I’ll be on the road, and unable to attend.