More Far-Out Space Nuts

Riffing off of Jeff Taylor's mental trip to Titan below, a couple of other recent space clips worthy of note:

*The Christian Science Monitor reports on some geeky pioneers at Atlanta's SpaceWorks Engineering, representing

a new model, trading bureaucracy for entrepreneurship in an enterprise where scientists do everything from propulsion calculations to making copies at Kinko's, and find time to attend Star Trek conventions, too.
…..
To date, they've worked on everything from a military space fighter to a Martian telecom grid that would bounce off the tails of comets—imagining the practical use of space for everything from tourism to burials. While the work is mostly conceptual, it hews to the physical laws of the universe.

Figuring out ways to save Earth from killer asteroids–ways that evade reliance on Bruce Willis–is one of their major concerns. They are partially on the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts dole–I blogged about that program a week or so ago.

*And for those who like their government and space to have a vacuum a universe wide between them, Wired–shaping up to be the Omni of the 21st century lately with an increasing focus on crazy and visionary science outside a more blinkered view of "digital culture"–provides in its January issue a nifty profile of Richard Branson and his plans for commercial space travel (using X-Prize-winner Burt Rutan's designs). How Branson's schemes will play out remains to be seen, as they say, but the wrap-up of this story made me grin in anticipation. Branson:

"I hope we'll get to the moon in my lifetime. The first baby born there—what country will it be a citizen of? Maybe we can put a Virgin bank in space, or maybe a Virgin tax haven. We could pay for all our people to go up there just by depositing their money."…..

The simple fact is that going into space gives Branson a chance to do what a lot of massively successful guys wish they could do: grab the wheel of history and tug. Opening the final frontier to private citizens will ensure Branson's place in the human saga. And if that means fleets of Virgin spaceships soaring through the inky void, serving sip-packs of Virgin Cola on the way to the latest Virgin Clubhouse, so be it. "Space is virgin territory," Branson says, trying out a prospective marketing line and shooting another grin. "Is that 21st-century enough for you?"