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.
I don’t know how Greg Gutfeld perseveres at the HuffPo, but I’m glad he does. It surely stirs up the moonbat belfry over there.
Amidst media hysteria from Al Gore’s latest propaganda, Iain Murray has some suggestions for the most sensible approach to the problem if it is a problem–adaptation.
I’m sorry (though, on reconsideration, there’s no obvious reason to be), but I thought that the latest issue of bloggingheads TV was hilarious. It starts out with Bob Wright dissing Ann Coulter’s ignorant screed on evolution. But I really like their letters to the editor.
Brian “Rocket Guy” Walker’s latest thrill scheme is to launch himself with a giant crossbow.
Hey, it’s reusable…
Al Qaeda has actually won a battle in the war, something that rarely happens on the actual battlefied. Unfortunately, it happens every day, in the western press…
[Wednesday morning update]
Jonah Goldberg has further thoughts.
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.
Everyone seems to think that the big story of the day is the number of the beast, but I think that it’s much more important to remember what happened sixty two years ago. The Donovan does, in pictures. Black Five does as well, with a link roundup.
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.
Arnold Kling has an interesting essay on libertarianism and poverty, in which he notes:
If the tendency of government were to expand on its successes and cut back on its failures, then I probably would not remain a libertarian.
Much of his thesis is, of course, applicable to government versus non-government space programs as well.