Lotta space stuff goin' on...

[alexpgp]

Today marks the 47th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik. It is also the day that Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper died. And also the day the SpaceShipOne made the flight that -- once certified -- will win the US$10 million X Prize for Scaled Composites, a non-government entity.

It is tempting to say something dramatic, along the lines of "the age of civilian space travel has begun," but we're still a long way from that point, even though a company (Virgin Galactic) has already been founded to promote space tourism and Scaled Composites will be working to provide vehicles to that company.

In more mundane news, Galina called today from Houston, so at least that concern is taken care of. I didn't get as much done today as I had hoped, and there are six days left before I leave for Toronto. My to-do list runneth over.

Cheers...

Comments

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

I probably shouldn't admit this, but I remember Sputnik. I was a freshman in college, and one of my EE profs, Von Russell Eschleman, ran the radio telescope project at Stanford. At that time, it was a narrow-beam fixed array designed to look at the sun. He invited a bunch of us out there on the off chance that Sputnik would fly through the beam, which as it turns out, it didn't - at least not while we were there. But the communications receiver was on during the visit, giving us a constant background of "Beep....Beep....Beep...."

[love337.livejournal.com]

Hardly mundane news, Dad....