That was Korolev’s quote from sixty-five years ago, when Sputnik launched.

[Afternoon update]

It’s also the eighteenth anniversary of the flight that won the X-Prize. I missed this at the time, but I’m greatly saddened to learn that my friend (and office mate at Rotary Rocket in the 90s), Brian Binnie, died a couple weeks ago.

I hadn’t realized that he finally published his book. I read and offered to publish a draft of it years ago, but at that time, he wasn’t able to publish it due to constraints from Northrop Grumman. I wonder what changed?