Free Talk Live

On April 30, 2012, if everything checks out, SpaceX will send an unmanned Dragon capsule, launched from its own rocket, to dock with the International Space Station. If successful, this would mark the first time a privately-owned spaceship docks with a space station in orbit. And it will pave the way for private, manned space travel.

June 4, 2010: Earth and space are about to come into contact in a way that's new to human history. To make preparations, authorities in Washington DC are holding a meeting: The Space Weather Enterprise Forum at the National Press Club on June 8th.

Now that the last space shuttle has landed back on Earth, a new generation of space entrepreneurs would like to whip up excitement about the prospect of returning to the Moon.

"We aim to show the world that human space flight can be different from the usual expensive and government controlled project," the Copenhagen Suborbitals website states. "We are working fulltime to develop a series of suborbital space vehicles — designed to pave the way for manned space flight on a micro size spacecraft."

From The New York Times: "In New Space Race, Enter the Entrepreneurs": Four years from now, the company plans for real modules to be launched and assembled into the solar system’s first private space station. "Every astronaut we have come in here just says, ‘Wow,’ ” said Robert T. Bigelow, the company founder. “They can’t believe the size of this thing.”

It's actually really easy to think of space as boring. The planets in our own solar system all seem to be empty rocks or balls of gas, and you find a whole lot of nothing before you get to the next star. Meanwhile, Hollywood's most creative minds can't get past populating the place with planets that look a whole lot like Earth (and specifically, parts of California) featuring monsters, rapey aliens or Muppets.
But real space is far, far stranger. You just have to know where to look to find things like ...

In a 1982 speech, President Ronald Reagan declared illicit drugs a threat to America's national security, putting a too-literal gloss on the phrase "war on drugs."

Celebrated astronomer Carl Sagan also was said to have been involved with the secret project, which reportedly was known as "A Study of Lunar Research Flights" or "Project A119." In an excerpt from the study reads, "Nuclear detonations in the vicinity of the moon are considered in this report along with scientific information which might be obtained from such explosions. The military aspect is aided by investigation of space environment, detection of nuclear device testing, and capability of weapons in space.

I’m not saying that people should do drugs, but what I’m saying is that it annoys me that where as the government (funded with my taxes) can buy up ad space on commercial television to propagate that drugs are bad, but can any other organisation buy up ad space on commercial television to put the case against prohibition?