Space Madness

There's a lot of space stuff afoot lately, some of it close to home. Spaceport America had its groundbreaking in the middle of June. If you haven't been paying attention, that's the launchpad for us civilians to see the stars close-up. Well, sort of close. For a cool $200K you can go up 62 miles into space. Close enough to kiss the man on the moon? Probably not, but if I had that much money laying around I'd give it a shot. Perhaps a lottery system for hard-working librarians?

Also, NASA has recently shot rockets to the moon. Well, the technical name is the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The mission includes scouting out landing sites for future peopled expeditions, and looking for fabled ice caps at the poles. It's already sending back images and videos, which are definitely worth checking out.

If this has only whetted your appetite for all things celestial, check out our Astronomy links, or browse the 520s in the non-fiction stacks.