Private ride to orbit

The first privately-funded spacecraft reached space today. Scaled Composite's SpaceShip One reached 100 km earlier today. Some people have asked me what I and my coworkers think about such endeavors. For myself, I am excited about it and hope that they have great success. If any of these ventures ever gets to the point where it can begin to take over access to low Earth orbit (LEO in space vernacular), that should free the government up to persue more cutting edge exploration goals. That is my hope, anyway. I've been trying to read the news as today goes on, but it is hard to get the web sites to load. I always find it encouraging when big space events overload the servers for news providers.

I forgot to close the gate to the backyard yesterday. Gavin thought to ask at lunch, and we called the neighbors to ask if the dogs were out. Apparently, they were sitting right at the gate looking out. Halley distracted them and Jim shut the gate. I guess we should be glad that the dogs are good about protecting the property, but I'd be a bit happier if they didn't scare the neighbors so badly. Roxy acts like she's going to eat little kids that run by the front of the house. This is funny because she is actually kind of scared of little kids. I wish she didn't scare them so much because of it, though.