Pejorian's Journal: Optimisim

I have been an avid science fiction reader for the last 28 years. Before that, I was more of an avid Dr Suess reader. As a child, I was so excited by the possibilities of space and space travel. I saw myself living in an asteroid, or going for a vacation to Mars.

For the last 15 years, I have become increasingly pessimistic. What little remained of the American space program seemed to either be concentrated on military applications, plagued by problems, or both. And there seemed to be little interest in getting into space anywhere else in the world.

This year is the first time in a long dark earthbound decade that I have felt my optimism stirring again. No, we still don't have hyperspace (Zefram Cochrane, where are you?), so everything is still really, really far away, but at least we're getting out and staying out. Two events in the past week have really gotten me excited:

X-Prize

The $10 million Ansari X Prize, which has been offered since 1996 by a group of private donors, will go to the first team to build a spacecraft without government help, launch three people or their weight equivalent into space and then repeat the feat with the same craft within two weeks.

Preliminary data from Edwards Air Force Base indicated SpaceShipOne had comfortably surpassed the 62-mile altitude required by contest rules.

The stubby, short-winged craft returned to its hangar with no damage and, with a change of engine, could be ready to fly again on Oct. 4, the date tentatively set for the second X Prize flight, said aircraft designer Burt Rutan.

Virgin Group founder Richard Branson announced in London this week that his Virgin Group planned to offer passenger space flights aboard rockets based on SpaceShipOne by 2007.

Mars

"Mars Global Surveyor has been productive longer than any other spacecraft ever sent to Mars, since it surpassed Viking Lander 1's longevity earlier this year and has returned more images than all past Mars missions combined," said Tom Thorpe, project manager for Mars Global Surveyor at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The mission will complete its 25,000th mapping orbit on Oct. 11.