As a demonstration that the web is a conversation rather than a lecture, Dwayne Day has inadvertently written a couple of interesting essays on military space in the comments section of this post.

I wholeheartedly agree with Peter Diamandis here:

Diamandis said that the wealth of individuals is rapidly increasing thanks to the evolving power of the Internet, and very shortly through breakthroughs in nanotechnology. Billionaires and multi-billionaires are making their own future happen, he said.

I wholeheartedly agree with Peter Diamandis here:

Diamandis said that the wealth of individuals is rapidly increasing thanks to the evolving power of the Internet, and very shortly through breakthroughs in nanotechnology. Billionaires and multi-billionaires are making their own future happen, he said.

I wholeheartedly agree with Peter Diamandis here:

Diamandis said that the wealth of individuals is rapidly increasing thanks to the evolving power of the Internet, and very shortly through breakthroughs in nanotechnology. Billionaires and multi-billionaires are making their own future happen, he said.

I’m still getting ready for a last-minute trip across the Atlantic, but Thomas James has a restorative tonic for Helen Caldicott’s ongoing idiocy about “militarizing space,” and Clark Lindsey has a lot of good stuff on the recent International Space Development Conference in Washington, DC.

Clark Lindsey has a good rundown of yesterday’s meeting in Washington on space policy.

A couple of strong impressions came through. Firstly, the end of the Shuttle in 2010 is now taken for granted by everyone. Weldon wants NASA to assign a manager full-time to monitor the transition so that the community disruptions as happened after the end of the Apollo program don’t hit the KSC area again.

I also noticed a widespread awareness of the existence of an entrepreneurial space industry and that it is becoming a force to reckon with.

That’s the title of my piece over at TechCentralStation today on big changes at NASA per its new administrator.

Taylor Dinerman says that the administration has to start getting serious about space weapons. I agree.

[Update late afternoon]

There are several good critiques of the piece in comments, that I don’t necessarily disagree with. My only point was that I agree with his bottom line.

Lots of good stuff over at Clark Lindsey’s site yesterday, including a tribute to the failed space entrepreneurs of the past that laid so much of the groundwork for today’s burgeoning industry. He also has some parting thoughts on last weekend’s Space Access Conference, with a link-rich summary of many of the talks.

Over at The Space Review, Jeff Foust takes my “hangover” metaphor and runs with it in describing the state of the industry as represented by the conference (first of two parts–presumably the second will be next Monday).

In response to my previous post citing Orson Scott Card’s Star Trek critique, Tobias Buckell takes issue with my comment (and Jim Oberg’s concurrence) about Trekkers’ interest in space:

Boy, I’d have to quibble with that. I recall ST folk being excited enough to beg NASA to rename the first shuttle Enterprise. That hardly smacks of ‘not being interested in space activities.’

This little episode, dating back to the late 1970s, actually makes my point, not his. OV-101, the test article for the Approach and Landing Tests (ALT), was originally supposed to be called the Constitution, but the Star Trek fans were mobilized to rename it the Enterprise, despite the fact that it would never actually fly in space. Many (including me) attempted to make them aware of this, but they didn’t seem to care, and pressed on regardless.

It was kind of a drive-by interest, and whether or not the vehicle they were attempting to rename would actually be a space vehicle seemed to be of much less importance to them than that it be named after the Enterprise. If they thought that they could have pulled it off, they’d have probably signed a petition and sent in letters demanding that the astronaut uniforms be bell bottoms with boots, a la STTOS. If Mr. Buckell has any other data to indicate interest by Trekkers in space, or reality, I’d be interested to hear it, because this sure isn’t it.