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Rush Limbaugh points out that some Republicans become weak kneed when confronted with the media scandal:We just heard from the office of Florida Senator Mel Martinez. The American Spectator is reporting today in their Prowler column the following story. With...

An Ohio State linebacker said that the Buckeye goal was to make sure that Texas QB Vince Young didn't leave as a Heisman candidate. Whoops. Heisman candidacy status: Intact. At any rate, it certainly wasn't Young's best night. 2 INT's,...

From Pat Buchanan: For the U.S. House minority leader to say the president of the United States is off his rocker and a danger is a rare insult. But it reveals that the Democrats no longer fear retaliation by this...

Labor Day weekend is always a busy one for me. Saturday was my birthday, so I usually take an extra day off and make it a four day bonanza of non-work. So needless to say, I'm not going to spend...

Many would like you to believe that George Bush and our Congress were content with throwing the city of New Orleans to the wolves by cutting funding for flood control. Or maybe Congress was just listening to the New York...

Start-up Firm Building New Space Capsule System

No links to this YET - but the October issue of Popular Science reports on a firm called T/Space which is developing, with NASA backing, and some project collaboration with Rutan's Scaled Composites, a capsule system called the CXV or Crew Transfer Vehicle capable of carrying three or four astronauts to low Earth orbit, and returning for a wet landing, like the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo had.

The launcher is an aircraft launched propane & liquid oxygen rocket. The whole emphasis has been on economy and simplicity of design - and seems to be making some real progress - possibly having things ready to go b\y '08 or '09 - an unheard of timeline for NASA projects.

Best of all, this will be privately owned/operated, flying as contractors to NASA, or whoever else wants/needs to get to orbit. Meanwhile, NASA is proceeding with its plans for vehicles to replace the shuttles also apparently based on a larger, more advanced capsule design for personnel, and a heavy lift cargo launcher, for well, cargo. NASA doesn;t plan to be ready to fly before 2012 at best, so the T/Space CVX could fill a gap to help keep the International Space Station in business until then.

The folks at T/Space emphasize that they are NOT building a shuttle replacement - but perhaps a modern replacement for the truly antiquated Soyuz technology.

This is truly good news - the US must maintain an effective capability for space, if for no other reason, to prevent a default ceding of the ultimate high ground to China, Russia, or whoever else goes after it.

Oh, that liberal media. You'd think that the oh-so-earnest Reuters could do a bit better than this: At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency...

Time for a Sheriff's Relief Fund update. Today I wrote a check and took it to the bank for deposit. Y'all donated $55 so far. The deposit slip is available for the donors to look at. If you wish to...

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