I can see my house from here...

The X Prize has been awarded!



I'm so excited to be where this is happening! I'm from Houston, a.k.a., Space City, so anything and everything to do with space exploration is awesome to me. I drive past the Mojave Spaceport regularly, and the valley has a wonderful view of these history making moments.

Of course, I should be working...but dude, they made it!

This will definitely increase the efforts of Boeing and others to further develop the reusable spacecraft projects they're currently sitting on. There are also 3 other major groups working on developing private space travel for profit. Capitalism at its finest, Virgin airlines announced last week that they plan to work with the SpaceShipOne creators to develop such a...well, what do you call it...

...a Spaceline? It's not an Airline. Hmm...I dunno?

Either way, my kids are going to grow up in a world where they can grab a flight to London and land in under 3 Hours. They're going to live in an age where they've never known anything BUT private spacecraft flying around the earth. Sure, it's not like we're going to have orbital traffic jams anytime soon, but private spacecraft will be in the skies. My grandchildren could possibly pilot one.

This is an exciting time. Even Google.com marked the event:



I do think it's really damn funny though, that technically the spacecraft went into space burning rubber and blowing a Nos tank. Apparently, they used a solid fuel made from recycled tire rubber, ignited by a nitrous oxide tank. That's just plain funny. Maybe SpaceShipOne should have looked like this: