Space Tourism is really here.  Get out your checkbook and let's go!

Now Space Adventures has upped the ante by buying not just one seat aboard one of the expendable Soyuz spacecraft that have been the mainstay of the Russian space program since the 1960s, but an entire flight. A professional Russian cosmonaut will command the flight for two ticket-paying passengers some time in late 2011. - Popular Science Article

That's cool.

But if you go visit the Space Adventures website you will see that their ambitions are much higher than a simple "lob" up to the ISS.  They have on their agenda a launch to the MOON! Lunar Mission

Price - $100 million

By joining the Space Adventures Lunar Mission you will contribute to the dawning of a new era in space exploration and enter the history books alongside the great explorers of our time.

Awesome!

Poster of the Apollo 11 radio transcript.

The red line you see in the middle there?...

Found over here at Baekdal.com.  He's gone through the whole thing and pulled out some interesting tidbits.

I haven't been following the Lunar X-Prize much except as part of the remarkable private space program genesis we are seeing right now.  But it appears from this discussion that the X-Prize Foundation (XPF) is doing a poor job in managing the contest.

But I hadn't counted on the X Prize Foundation, which has done an extremely effective job of administering the contest to make it harder and harder to win.

The XPF has apparently driven out one of the most innovative teams.  And one that had a good chance of winning.  Team Cringely is so confident of its mission plan and technology design that it is continuing full-speed ahead without the carrot of a $20MM prize for winning.

Bureaucracy is as bureaucracy does.  pity.

I don't see the benefits in this plan: Space leaders work to replace lunar base with manned asteroid missions

Well let me re-phrase that, I see the benefits, but I don't think they're compelling enough to make a political argument.  Which is the battle the space program needs to always fight.  And in general they suck at it.  They're engineers, not politicians.

What they need to realize is the the whole man-in-space thing is a tough sell to congress.  And the only things that spark the political will when it comes to the whole man-in-space thing is big mountaintops to summit.

Asteroids are small and pointless.  Small foothills in the landscape of space.

The MOON!

MARS!

Those are marketing messages a politician can sell.

So my space program engineer side says, "duh, the moon doesn't help us get to Mars much."  But my congressional lobbyist side says, "Gimme something I can sell to joe sixpack, 'cause the asteroid belt ain't it."

If it was MY space program I'd be spending way more money than 15 Billion, but it isn't mine, and that is the budget and you can't do everything you want and you HAVE to sell the program.

Sell the moon, sell Mars!

Don't try and sell small rocks with names like numbers...it won't work.

Carnival of Space #31

Cool roundup of space news, go check it out.

So I've read this great book just lately called: A Man On The Moon. It's really cool.  The author, Andrew Chaikin, does a great job. He interviewed a lot of the astronauts and gives a great telling of the adventure.

I highly recommend it.

I got to thinking and I wondered; what sort of videos of the moonlandings might be available out on the web.  I grabbed a few and I encourage you to go look up some more.

And then if you want to explore some more go over here: Nasa - Apollo

An amazing period in the history of the United States and Mankind.  Unbelievable what they achieved.  The longer it's been since the landings the more amazing it becomes.

Apollo 11 liftoff:

Niel on the surface:

Apollo 17 on the surface:

Golf on the moon:

Feather and Hammer