River Deep, Mountain High

And that's the way it seems today, altho lacking in the love that Harry Nilsson sang so evocatively of. As the Middle East burns and the police state continues it march to totalitarianism I get news via William Gillis' blog that one truly great leap has been taken that gives me some hope that we can, within a decade or two tell the statists to GFThemselves and leave.

In a story that should have been front page news we see that Bigelow Aerospace, the dreamchild of Robert Bigelow, billionaire founder of Budget Suites of America has successfully launched and deployed their Genesis Inflatable Space Habitat. They even let a NASA experiment go along as payload, (I hope they charged them a bundle!) For those of us who have held onto the dream of getting off this mudball and into orbit here is the first model of new home in space. That's a suburbia I can get behind!


Bigelow Aerospace even has films of their deployment and inflation. This alone gives me some hope, as this is an important step in the right direction and one we freemarket lovers should be supporting. While NASA managed to grab the headlines for not killing another batch of astronauts, Bigelow actually took a truly positive step in freeing us from our gravity well. While the costs are high now we will see them come down, especially as the privately owned space concerns get up and running. Breaking the back of the statist monopolies on space is long overdue and this is a major blow for them. As William stated so succinctly...."Capitalism, f**k yeah!". Indeed!

Other reports on the subject:
MSNBC
Space.com
WaPo

Technorati Tags:
Bigelow Aerospace, Libertarian, Space, Genesis 1