Short note today; I am at the Suborbital Research conference in snowy Boulder, CO.
I am surrounded by dreamers who want to fly in space: everybody from Lori Garver and Alan Stern on down to the grad students who is here wants to fly in space. They desperately want to fly in space.
I had the good fortune to be accompanied by a co-worker who was just turned down in her application to NASA”s astronaut office. It is a hard hard thing to pass through the bar into that small fellowship.
These dreamers want everybody to be able to fly in space.
There might even be real science that can be accomplished in 3 to 5 minutes of microgravity.
But the thought of opening up the space frontier to the common person is the real motivation here.
Its a good motivation; and some of these companies are making progress toward that goal.
We wish them luck; offer technical advice and assistance, and (if Congress approves) will have $15 million a year to encourage them.
This, then, appears to be the new world order. Ad astra per dreamers. (somebody help me with the latin!)
But then, all great accomplishments were once dreams.