] fter years of work behind closed doors, Amazon.com
] founder Jeff Bezos has gone public with a plan to build a
] suborbital space facility on a sprawling ranch under the
] wide open skies of West Texas.
]
] Bezos' Seattle-based Blue Origin suborbital space venture
] is starting the process to build an aerospace testing and
] operations center on a portion of the Corn Ranch, a
] 165,000-acre spread that the 41-year-old billionaire
] purchased north of Van Horn, Texas. Over the next six or
] seven years, the team would use the facility to test
] components for a craft that could take off and land
] vertically, carrying three or more riders to the edge of
] space.

MSNBC - Amazon founder unveils space center plans

This is so cool!

The Periodic Table like you have NEVER seen

] NASA plans to scrap its space shuttle fleet to pay
] for the agency's new plan to return to the moon and
] develop human space exploration systems, senior
] administration officials said.
] The agency intends to return to the moon early
] next decade in preparation for sending crews to explore
] Mars and nearby asteroids, the officials said. Such
] endeavors would require a new generation of spacecraft,
] but in the interim, American astronauts would use
] Europe's Ariane rockets and Russia's Soyuz capsules.

I have mixed feelings about this. Seeing the ISS turned into abandonware in the same way that Apollo and Apollo Applications was gets a little bit under my skin. Plans to replace the shuttle are fine, but "the current timetable leaves a period of several years when NASA would lack manned space capability"? I guess they figure we'll placate the international partners in the Station program by buying hardware off of them for our own use.

NASA plans return to moon - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics

] We believe what the mission team can do is not to give up
] but to do the best until the very last moment toward
] responding the expectation of the people including those
] who kindly left their desires to this spacecraft.

Another surreal press release from a foreign space agency - this time Japan is politely pleading that everyone stop hassling them about Nozomi and whether or not that stricken probe will make an unplanned entry into the Martian atmosphere.

Status of Japan's Mars Explorer

] Illinois groundwater scientists have found microbial
] communities thriving in the slag dumps of the Lake
] Calumet region of southeast Chicago where the water can
] reach extraordinary alkalinity of pH 12.8. That's
] comparable to caustic soda and floor strippers -- far
] beyond known naturally occurring alkaline environments.

World's Most Alkaline Life Forms Found Near Chicago | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference

] Let me reiterate. Merely announcing a bold new plan to
] travel to the Earth's Moon or to Mars is not sufficient.
] If the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia merely results
] in that proposal, we will have failed the memory of our
] brave astronauts who lost their lives aboard both
] Challenger and Columbia. And we will have failed our own
] future.
]
] Unfortunately, our current charge is more difficult. We
] must challenge our assumptions, question our decisions
] and designs, revisit our approaches, and rethink our
] Nation's ambitions and goals for space. We must submit
] ourselves to the discipline to begin anew. The future of
] space and our Nation's reputation that we carry into
] history rests in the balance.

U.S. Senator Ernest F. Hollings' Floor Speech on Introduction of the National Space Commission Act of 2003 | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference

] I am skeptical that the U.S. Government can be counted on
] to make such a "sustained commitment" absent
] unanticipated circumstances comparable to those of the
] late 1950s and early 1960s. Therefore, I have spent much
] of the last decade exploring what it would take for
] private investors to make such a commitment. At least it
] is clear that investors will stick with a project if
] presented to them with a credible business plan and a
] rate of return commensurate with the risk to invested
] capital. My colleagues at the Fusion Technology Institute
] of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the
] Interlune-Intermars Initiative, Inc. believe that such a
] commercially viable project exists in lunar helium-3 used
] as a fuel for fusion electric power plants on Earth.

For those who may not know, the Hon. H. "Jack" Schmitt was the Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 17, one of the last two humans to set foot on the moon, and the only professional geologist to visit the moon.

Some interesting stuff in here.

Testimony of Hon. Harrison H. Schmitt: Senate Hearing on Lunar Exploration

] The Voyager spacecraft is now approaching the edge of the
] solar system. Near the boundary between the solar system
] and the interstellar medium we find that an unstable
] ``jet-sheet'' forms.

Probing the Edge of the Solar System: Formation of an Unstable Jet-Sheet | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference

] Historically, the funding requested for NASA from
] multiple Administrations, and provided to NASA by
] Congress, has not demonstrated an appropriate level of
] commitment to an agency that is so important to the
] future of our nation. According to the report of the
] Columbia Accident Investigation Board, between 1993 and
] 2002, the federal government's discretionary spending
] grew in purchasing power by more than 25 percent. In
] contrast, NASA's budget went from $14.31 billion in
] Fiscal Year 1993, to a low of $13.6 billion in Fiscal
] Year 2000, and increasing to $14.87 billion in Fiscal
] Year 2002. This funding profile represented a loss of 13
] percent in purchasing power over the decade. We
] enthusiastically write to you today to clearly and
] unambiguously express our strong interest in
] reinvigorating NASA and turning this funding trend
] around.

Letter from U.S. House to President Bush Urging Support for NASA | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference

] Kohl, the principal investigator for an instrument aboard
] NASA's sun-watching SOHO spacecraft, said the probability
] of two huge flares aimed directly at Earth coming so
] close together, as they have this week, "unprecedented
] ... so low that it is a statistical anomaly."

HoustonChronicle.com - Second space storm smacks into Earth