« December 2004 | Main | February 2005 »

January 31, 2005

Minnesota Chapter at Marscon '05

We hear from the Minnesota Space Frontier Society that they're organizing the science programming at MarsCon 2005, March 4-6: if you're in the midwest around then, it might be worth a detour to Bloomington, MN! MSFS will be joined by members from Chicago chapters and possibly NSS-Milwaukee (the Lunar Reclamation Society).

Posted by apsmith at 08:43 PM

January 18, 2005

Florida Chapter Energized

We hear that good things are going on down in Florida, with new chapter president David Fox, connecting with the local NASA people and all the other great resources in the Kennedy Space Center area. Check out their web site - the next meeting is planned for Thursday, February 10.

Posted by apsmith at 09:55 PM

Entrepreneurial Space-Faring

This intriguging Wired News story reveals some details on Elon Musk's plans for Space-X - the Merlin engine is almost ready for real use on the first Falcon launch vehicles, and Musk intends to be able to launch 5 people on the 5-engine Falcon-V within 5 years, in order to win America's Space Prize by 2010.


More interesting for space advocates, Musk asserted that he wants to be part of something bigger: "I think it's very important that we become a spacefaring civilization, and that we eventually become multiplanetary."


First commercial launch of the Falcon-I vehicle is scheduled for March, 2005.

Posted by apsmith at 09:45 PM | Comments (1)

January 11, 2005

New US Space Transportation Policy

A long-awaited Space Transportation Policy for the US was released Thursday, January 6th. It seems to have received very little public attention so far though. There's not much surprising in it, but it does seem to have a strong commitment to looking beyond NASA for solutions, which sounds good in principle. Nothing wrong with it, anyway - except for "heavy lift" advocates perhaps, as it doesn't seem to be encouraging the greatly increased spending on new transportation components that would require.

Posted by apsmith at 10:04 PM