by Michael Belfiore | May 5, 2006 | Blog, Uncategorized
Greetings from the International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles, where X Prize founder Peter Diamandis and NASA second in command Shana Dale have just opened the Lunar Lander Challenge. This is the first of NASA’s X-Prize-inspired prizes to crack a...
by Michael Belfiore | May 4, 2006 | Blog, Uncategorized
Check out Alan Boyle’s excellent writeup of a tour of SpaceX he took with other ISDC attendees yesterday.While the tour was going on, I got a briefing from SpaceX propulsion chief Tom Mueller for my book. After the tour I also caught up with CEO Elon Musk at his...
by Michael Belfiore | Apr 28, 2006 | Blog, Uncategorized
Last night in Mojave I saw SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan give a talk to high school students who’d made 4.0 grade averages. Rutan told them what to expect as they came out into the workforce.”When you get back from four or five years of college,...
by Michael Belfiore | Apr 27, 2006 | Blog, Uncategorized
If you want to find out what’s going on in Mojave, California, birthplace of the commercial space age, stop in at the Radio Shack on Highway 14 and ask for Jim.Jim Balentine, the warm, big-hearted owner, grew up in Mojave, and with little prompting, he’ll...
by Michael Belfiore | Apr 26, 2006 | Blog, Uncategorized
One of the things I’d like to do in my book is show how the emerging commercial spaceflight industry is changing a dusty little frontier town in California.Mojave has been a crossroads all its life, a stopping place on the way to someplace else. Mule teams,...
