I just checked out the news. Next week looks to be a bad week to be away from my blog. Not only do I miss the VP debate (I'm TiVoing it just in case I miss it in my hotel room) and a possible sequel to the Mt. St. Helens eruption, but it looks like there's a good chance I'll miss the winning of the Ansari X Prize. The Ansari X Prize, for those of you who aren't science news junkies, is a $10,000,000 prize to be given to the first privately-funded team to build a spaceship capable of carrying 3 people to an altitude of 62.5 miles, and launching and landing it twice within two weeks. A team did a successful flight on Thursday, and plans another one for Tuesday.
Read more about the Ansari X Prize here. It really is an interesting concept: encourage private investment in space travel technology, so that one day, the general public might be able to travel to space. The prize is based on the early days of aviation, when cash prizes motivated pilots to reach a lot of the milestones in early air travel, such as Charles Lindberg's transatlantic flight. One of the purposes of the X Prize is to break the monopoly governments have on space travel. Now, I have to drug myself up to take a turboprop from Toledo to Detroit without vomiting, but I admire the principle of mass-market spaceflight nonetheless.
See you next weekend.
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