I don’t normally watch Sixty Minutes, but apparently they’re going to have a segment tonight (starting in about twenty minutes, Eastern Time) on Burt Rutan and similar efforts.

[Update at 8:55 PM EST]

Clark Lindsey thinks it’s a repeat from last year. Having seen it tonight, that seems right to me (particularly considering that it’s a holiday, and they’re probably just doing redos). But this year or last year, it’s a good sign.

I should note that anyone who is familiar with the story won’t get anything new out of it, but it’s nice to see it being played to the Geritol set. I doubt if it will result in much, but if even one new investor is brought into the game because of it, it’s worthwhile.

I’d also compare and contrast it with the segment they did on Aubrey de Grey, in which they found it necessary to “balance” his prognostications about thousand-year lifetimes with cautionary words from Jay Olshansky. Apparently, Sixty Minutes found the Rutan story sufficiently uncontroversial that they didn’t have a need to “balance” it with quotes from some NASA official or John Pike. That’s a great sign for the acceptance of this new meme.

FAA-AST has (as expected for the past few months) issued a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) on public space passenger travel. This is the next step in the process by which the useful enabling legislation passed by Congress a year ago gets translated into actual regulations. The public has sixty days to provide input to it, and as a potential spaceline operator, I’ll have to sit down and read the 123-page document when I get a chance and comment on it, to both them and my readers.

Unfortunately, that’s not likely to happen in the next week or so. Jesse Londin, over at Space Law Probe, has similar immediate constraints, but I expect some useful commentary from that quarter over the next few weeks, and will link to it when it happens.

[Update at 11 AM Central]

Jeff Foust (who has some other interesting space policy items) points out an AP article on it. While I obviously have to read the NPRM itself, just glancing through the article and looking at the reporter’s summary of it, all the rules seem reasonable to me, and consonant with the intent of the legislation (though I remain concerned now, as I did then, that the time period before FAA can regulate safety more stringently remains too short). But in any event, the devil, as always, dwells in the details.

[Another update at noon Central]

Liz at Regolith has a summary of the proposed regs.

Professor Reynolds has some thoughts, with which I obviously agree:

Space enthusiasts, God knows, have seen plenty of disappointment in the past few decades, as the brief false dawn of Apollo led to years of failed promises and no visible momentum. But we’re now seeing signs of new technologies — and, just as important, new systems of organization — that make a takeoff into sustained growth much more likely for the space sector. Prizes to develop technology, space tourism to develop markets and help us move up the learning curve, and people with the money and vision to provide the seed capital for both: The essentials now look to be in place. It’s about time.

And other than the potential prizes, much of what NASA is doing seems increasingly irrelevant.

There’s a little discussion over at the Motley Fool web site about Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos (registration required). I thought that this little bit raised more questions than it answered:

…entrepreneurs such as Bezos, Branson, and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) co-founder Paul Allen — who funded the winning SpaceShipOne in the X-Prize competition — appear ready to provide the capital. That’s good news for dozens of companies, from Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) and Ball Aerospace (NYSE: BLL) to Orbital Sciences (NYSE: ORB) and SpaceDev. They’re all likely to have a hand in our latest quest for the heavens.

Well, as the old test question goes, one of these things is not like the other three. Why Lockmart, Ball and Orbital? Why not Boeing? Or Northrop-Grumman?

How does the success of low-cost entrants benefit the stock of people operating at high costs, under the old paradigms? Maybe it does, but they certainly don’t explain it. Simply saying that “they’re all likely to have a hand” hardly makes for a useful (or credible) explanation. This kind of thing makes me question the wisdom of any of their other stock advice.

[Via Clark Lindsey]

Clark Lindsey notes an encouraging trend in discussion about space:

…both Bezos and Musk (in other articles) cite the long term goal of space settlement as one of the primary motivations for their projects. In the past year I’ve seen a rise in the visibility and credibility of space settlement as a motivation for human spaceflight rather than simply exploration and science.

About time.

Alan Boyle has a useful wrapup. It would have been hard to top 2004 for an exciting year for private space, but things are moving slowly but steadily toward the day that we open up the frontier, with or without government help.

Maybe last year? All I know is that, historically, it’s unusual for Congress to pass a NASA authorization bill. Usually the thing dies, in committee or because it never makes it through conference, and NASA ends up just working off the appropriation. Traditionally, there has never been much pressure to pass one, because it’s largely viewed as symbolic anyway, and the appropriations bill (which actually funds the programs) is the only one that really counts. But with the new authorization for larger prizes, it’s a great symbol this year.

[Via Space Politics]

Maybe last year? All I know is that, historically, it’s unusual for Congress to pass a NASA authorization bill. Usually the thing dies, in committee or because it never makes it through conference, and NASA ends up just working off the appropriation. Traditionally, there has never been much pressure to pass one, because it’s largely viewed as symbolic anyway, and the appropriations bill (which actually funds the programs) is the only one that really counts. But with the new authorization for larger prizes, it’s a great symbol this year.

[Via Space Politics]

Maybe last year? All I know is that, historically, it’s unusual for Congress to pass a NASA authorization bill. Usually the thing dies, in committee or because it never makes it through conference, and NASA ends up just working off the appropriation. Traditionally, there has never been much pressure to pass one, because it’s largely viewed as symbolic anyway, and the appropriations bill (which actually funds the programs) is the only one that really counts. But with the new authorization for larger prizes, it’s a great symbol this year.

[Via Space Politics]

Out Of The Cradle notes a new program to look for errant objects:

When fully operational, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) project will deeply scan most of the night sky several times a month. About three-quarters of the sky are visible from the Hawaiian Islands, and Pan-STARRS will use four linked telescopes connected to its enormous cameras to take broad pictures of unprecedented detail. Objects as dim as 24th magnitude