In my last post lamenting the state of government activity in the space program, I mentioned SpaceX. Little did I know that shortly after I wrote that post, SpaceX made the first successful launch into orbit by a privately-funded company. WOW!
This is a landmark achievement, and I look forward to seeing more successes [...]

I personally don’t believe a recent news story has received nearly enough attention: on Saturday, 27 September 2008 a Chinese astronaut made a successful spacewalk from a Chinese craft.
HOLY ****!
Why do I say this?
In less than two years the Space Shuttles are scheduled to be retired, leaving the United States without the capability to get [...]

This last week was an incredibly busy, invigorating, slightly frustrating but incredibly enjoyable week. I’m guessing that it’s pretty much par for the course for a typical MBA program, but it was still great to experience.
First impressions? LOTS and LOTS of information; stacks and stacks of forms, papers, passwords, cards and the like. [...]

I promise that I’ll post more on my first few days at Cambridge shortly. Suffice it to say that it’s been busy, fascinating, invigorating, but with hints of a typical English paperwork hell.
I just saw this video via the Times Online (the F1 blog) and had to share it. It’s a hilarious parody [...]

Pushing the envelope can be a very dangerous business. This is even more true in the aerospace industry.
There is a company in California that I have always admired: Scaled Composites. Burt Rutan and his team have built some of the most interesting aircraft ever. (My favorite being the Boomerang.)
Their most high profile [...]

Richard Wright, the keyboardist for Pink Floyd, died today of cancer.
While I wasn’t part of the generation that grew up with Pink Floyd, I certainly grew up listening to them. (The only album I bought when it first came out was The Division Bell.)
My first honest-to-goodness rock concert was seeing them in the Minneapolis/St. [...]

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’ve been reading and re-reading Meditations, the diary/book written by Marcus Aurelius.
Lately I’ve gone back to keeping it in my bag more often and reading bits of it on the Tube/train each day. Every time I read it I’m reminded of things that I want to do [...]

I’m very happy to announce that I’m off to Cambridge to get my MBA, starting in just a few short weeks. And not Cambridge, Massachusetts; I’m off to the original Cambridge, in the UK.
As a bit of background, the University of Cambridge is the second-oldest English speaking university in the world, having been founded [...]