Its so beautiful, so simple. For an engineer, designing something like this is as close as it gets to art.

I'm talking about Space Ship One. This morning, it made history as the first privately designed and flown MANNED vehicle to go into space.

Its so exciting! For roughly $20 million dollars, a shoestring budget, and less than 100 people, this little design house full of brilliant people in the middle of the desert put together its own a space program in a few years. No, its nothing compared the capability of the space shuttle. But, its pretty impressive none-the-less. And its advanced -- its only suborbital, but its fast, cheap, quick turnaround time, non-toxic propellants, and flies like an airplane -- its seems like this design could incrementally evolve into really cheap civilian access to low earth orbit. Particularly interesting, considering NASA is currently favoring taking a giant leap backwards to capsules.

Sometimes its appalling to me that most of the general public isn't even aware of this groundbreaking event. But its also appalling to me that most people don't realize we have two men (an astronaut and a cosmonaut) living aboard the International Space Station right now. And most people don't know that the Chinese launced their first man in space last October. This is exciting stuff! Yet so much apathy...

Its also kind of bittersweet in a way, considering NASA isn't going to be getting anything off the ground for another year. Its seems government programs are ridiculously and needlessly complicated. All I want to do is be part of flying something! Fly fly fly fly!!

...

The rest of the weekend was fun and relaxing. Went to movies, ate out, vegged with Irwin. That's about all I have to say there.