The Year in Space: 2004

Time now for the year in space awards. I've been struggling with some
of these categories so, in the spirit of wussing out, I have decided to
divide them into public and private space. It is, in any case,
appropriate for the new age we find ourselves in.

Winner in the private space category goes to Burt Rutan and his team at
Scaled Composites. Before SpaceShipOne made its series of flight, the
idea of private space flight seemed, to most, to be fanciful. But there
is nothing like actually doing a thing to make prove that the thing is
possible. The coming age of sub orbital barnstorming, cruises in low
Earth orbit and, in the fullness of time, tourist hotels in Earth orbit
and on the Moon owes its prospect to Rutan and his people.

Winner for public space goes to President George W. Bush for announcing
the Moon, Mars, and Beyond Vision and, more importantly, for proving
that he meant it. The Vision will take NASA out of low Earth orbit,
leaving it to the activities of the new space commercial sector, and
transform the space agency from a high tech, space taxi service to a
modern day Corps of Discovery. A lot of people, including some of the
President's friends, didn't think he was serious. During the fight
to fund the Vision, the President and his true allies proved the
skeptics wrong.

Loser in the private space category goes to the Canadian Da Vinci Team
in the X Prize race who, for a time, looked like was going to give
Rutan a race. They did not.

Loser for public space goes to Lori Garver, the erstwhile NSS Executive
Director and NASA Associate Administrator who discovered that the price
of being considered for John Kerry's NASA Administrator would be to
turn on the President's Moon, Mars, and Beyond Initiative which she
had initially supported. To paraphrase the playwright Robert Bolt (who
was paraphrasing God), "It profits not a person to sell her soul even
for the whole world, but Lori, for NASA Administrator?" Turns out she
did not get even that.

Best pictures from space. Saturn and her Moons from the Cassini probe.

Best pictures from space runner up. The surface of Mars from Spirit and
Opportunity.

Most hopeful development in space. Transition Space's free market
proposals for fulfilling the President's Moon, Mars, and Beyond
Initiative.

Runner up. The passage of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act.

Most fun development in space. Sir Richard Branson's announcement of
Virgin Galactic and sub orbital jaunts on two ships that will have
familiar names: VSS Enterprise and VSS Voyager. I hear that Captain
Kirk and Flight Officer Ripley have already signed up.

Best space opera movie (by default, I think, for being the only one
released this past year.) The Chronicles of Riddick, which was not half
bad given its poor box office.

Best space book (that I have actually read). Moonrush by Dennis Wingo,
for presenting an intriguing rationale for going back to the Moon,
though an insider tells me that the idea has been percolating in
certain quarters for years.

Best space book runner up. New Moon Rising by Frank Sietzen and Keith
Cowing for the inside look at the development of the President's
Moon, Mars, and Beyond Vision.

Best space reporter. James Oberg, for actually knowing of what he
writes and talks about, which is not necessarily true for all reporters
on the space beat.

Award for most idiotic statement on space policy. Sherwood Boehlert for
suggesting that the President's Moon, Mars, and Beyond Vision was the
right way to go, but that Congress should not fund it adequately.

Space hero in the private space category. Mike Melvill for flying
SpaceShipOne not just once, but twice

And, finally, space hero in the public space category. House Majority
Leader Tom Delay for standing like a stone wall against the House
Appropriators' attempts to gut the President's Moon, Mars, and
Beyond Vision.