That’s what this article says.

Iran’s defence minister said the Islamic republic would launch its own satellite into space with an Iranian-made launch system, the official news agency IRNA reported.

“Within 18 months, Iran will launch its own satellite. Iran will be the first Islamic country to enter the stratosphere with its own satellite and its own, indigenous launch system,” Defence Minister Ali Shamkhani was quoted as saying.

I don’t know how much of this is due to bad translation, but it doesn’t make any sense as written. Something that’s only launched into the stratosphere is neither in space, nor a satellite.

It doesn’t say what kind of satellite they plan to launch, for what purpose. I also wonder if they’re planning on launching from Iran, and if so, how they’ll handle the overflight issues. Looking at a globe, there’s no ocean corridor east, so they’d have a hard time launching to low inclination without overflying Pakistan and India. If they want a high inclination (e.g., for a surveillance satellite) they’d have to do it from the south coast near the Pakistan border over the Arabian Sea, just missing Oman. If they were to skirt the Indian coastline, it looks like the lowest inclination they could get would be forty degrees or so, which would make for an expensive trip to GEO, considering the plane change.

Anyway, color me skeptical. Sounds more like bluster to me, especially considering the source.

The Army Reserve troops in Iraq have come up with specialized vehicles for detecting and removing roadside explosives.

Anyone who’s ever dealt with the Pentagon procurement bureaucracy knows that it can be a nightmare, but when we’re actually in a fighting war and people are dying, it’s surprising how fast red tape can be cut:

The operation caught the attention of top brass, said Lt. Col. Kent Savre, commander of the Fort Lewis Wash.-based 864th Engineer Battalion, the team?s higher headquarters.

Savre, 43, of Edina, Minn., recommended that the Army supply one system to each division in Iraq. Three weeks after filing the request, a half-dozen more sets were shipped out, Savre said.

?I?ve never seen anything like this in my 19 years in the Army,? Savre said. ?The senior leaders saw the threat and immediately bought more [systems].?

Blue Origin has expanded the information on their home page.

We are currently working to develop a crewed, suborbital launch system that emphasizes safety and low cost of operations.

[Via Clark Lindsey]

Jeff Foust has a year-end roundup similar to mine over at The Space Review, but longer, with additional points.

I’d read it.

Zell Miller zings his political party some more in today’s Opinion Journal:

I’m not sure what Al Gore will contribute. Is he going to advise Mr. Dean to roll down his shirtsleeves and put on a coat, preferably in earth tones? Will he teach him to speak in that stilted highfalutin way? Maybe he’ll teach him how to win a Southern state. Like Tennessee.

Ouch.

I flew back to California on Friday evening, but decided to take a blogbreak for the weekend, because we had a lot of things to do to recover from Christmas and prepare for a possible move in the next couple months. However, Keith Cowing apparently decided that I didn’t deserve any time off, and berated me in comments to this post for not congratulating JPL for their successful Mars landing this weekend.

As I said in the comments section, no one should expect to come here for the latest in space science, even when I am in full posting mode, let alone when I’m on break. It’s not an area in which I’m anywhere near as interested or knowledgable as some other people, particularly when it comes to Mars. My focus is, and will remain, space policy, particularly with regard to manned spaceflight.

But congratulations to JPL anyway, for a job well done. Mars has been a tough nut to crack, as the apparent recent loss of Beagle shows, and the US has, so far, been the only space power with any notable success.

Iowahawk explains.

He also has the lowdown (and I do mean low) on Dean’s southern strategy.

Cover your data-entry device with something sputum impermeable before reading, and don’t say that I didn’t warn you.

The idiotarians over at TomPaine.com think that we have to make a choice between “the children” and the moon. Thomas James, thinks…errr…otherwise.