National Space Society

Only 13 nations have ratified it, the biggest being Australia, Belgium and Austria. The others are mostly third-world nations. France and a few others signed, but never ratified it. Most of the major space powers (US, Russia, China, Japan, India) etc. never signed it at all. I'm betting on China to land there by 2020-2030 and to actually do ... Read Moresomething with the resources. I'm doubtful about the US having the political will to follow through. Not to mention, coming up with the funding necessary to do so. I hope that I am wrong though.

Yes, I was afraid we might have signed it during the Clinton administration. Glad we haven't. We need to have an economic impetus to be possible at least for the mining of the moon.

Since the Obama administration seems intent on leaving NASA twisting in the wind, without an infusion of cash necessary to carry out the Constellation program, private space companies may be our only way out. Good luck to SpaceX as they develop these technologies for future use.

Is Lady Lake considered southeast Florida, or are we talking Miami?

Steven: I was thinking Dade/Broward/Palm Beach and all points in between. But I believe you have the Cape and Orlando Metro NSS Chapter in your neck of the woods. In any event, you're more than welcome to help found a SE Florida Chapter.

Rikk my friend, it doesn't make sense. Remember the S&L debacle in the late 80's and early 90's? We wound up bailing that entire industry out and not learning a thing from it. And now we've done it again 20 years later with banks. We now own part of GM and Chrysler. We now own some banks and insurance companies. We bailed out just about the entire ... Read Morefriggin' banking system and their bad loan base. But If you and I fail at a small business, it's chapter 7, 11 or 13 for us. Tough luck fellas. I just goes to show, that if you are big enough, and brash enough, to make MONUMENTALLY STUPID business decisions, the GUV will bail you out. And what do I read today? The FDIC may now have to get bailed out because of all the bank failures. But $3 billion a year extra for NASA won't happen. And that might actually help create industries that would make money.

George Norry interviewed Zurbrin Thursday evening and Zurbrin said that the numbers offered by the Augustine Committee are severely inflated. The cost are nearly a third of what they reported. This makes one wonder what is really going on.

The US National Debt is approximately $12 trillion now (as of 2009) and Congress must vote again to raise the debt cap, which is the 4th time they have done this in the last 2 years. The US will run a FY 2010 deficit of approximately $1.6 trillion. The CBO recently estimated that the National Debt will be $21 trillion in the next 6.5 years, with ... Read Moreanother $9 trillion in red ink added. The entire yearly GDP of the US is about $18 trillion. So, money is very tight. Still, your point about a few billion more dollars points to allocation priorities and I agree with it, if we can do something to cut other Federal spending.

We do these thngs not becuase they are easy but becuase they are hard... lets do this and make sure we spread not just humanity amongst the stars, but allow for the very earth itself, in a very Giaian way, to reproduce... that is our species ultimate goal... thats why the earth made us! sign me up, i want to be a moon miner!!!!

Still very cool, but this has been around for a long time. The current altitude record is 24 miles and almost all ballooning groups include cameras.
http://www.arhab.org/

There have been ballooning conferences for years out in Colorado.