October 4th is the 5th anniversary of the day SpaceShipOne and Burt Rutan successfully launched a privately built space craft into low orbit, and then did it again 2 weeks later with the same ship.

I'm a self-admitted freak for science fiction and 'to go where no one has gone before.' I, like many others, have fought sadness when watching as the remnants of a hobbled NASA program slowly bit the dust. The space shuttles are long overdue to be retired, and there hasn't been much publicity on any alternatives.

The sad part, is that people are asking questions like, "Why do we even want to go to space?" and "Who cares? Space is boring." There isn't much I can say to that, except that these questions are asked by people who don't have much imagination.

Now, to the XPrize.



Dr. Diamandis is one passionate guy. He straddles the fine line between crazy and inspired genius, but whatever he is, I believe him. Also, since this talk was given, much of the stuff he said has come true. Just take a look at their website (link below) and see all of the prizes they've created.

Here are some recent Huffington Post articles he has to commemorate the 5th anniversary.

Launching Commercial Space Flight: Part One

Launching Commercial Space Flight: Part Two

The road to space is coming quickly--and there are a lot of people trying to get us there.

Good god people... can't you see how COOL all of this is!?!?!? If they pull this off, it will affect every single one of us.

Some links:

Virgin Galactic
-- Link isn't working as of this post... hmmmmmmm. It's a really cool website. I swear!

The XPrize Foundation

Space Adventures -- This company was created by Elon Musk, who is also doing Tesla Motors

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