It’s amazing how something so terrible can be so beautiful.

I obviously didn’t take the picture, stolen from Steve Earley and the Virginian-Pilot, but you get the idea. An article on the launch is here, and a local resident, who got up early with her kids to see it, has a blog post about it here, complete with video and a few more pictures.

Interesting notes about the launch:

• From the NASA Flight Facility on Wallops Island, VA; first launch ever there.
• 69 foot, 4 stage, Air Force Minotaur I rocket
• Launched at 7 a.m. EST, December 16th, 2006.
• Payload was an Air Force recon satellite, code named TacSat-2.

It was amazing to watch, even if at the time I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. I knew it wasn’t a plane from the angle and look of the contrail, but didn’t occur to me at the time that it was a rocket.

Regardless, really cool.

Also, Firefox 2 is out. Go. Download it.

Excerpt below.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut — but was told that I’d never be a pilot because back then, astronauts were Navy pilots first, and I’d never be a pilot because I had bad eyesight. Besides, as a girl, I’d have “other things” to worry about.

Later, in July, 1969, I camped with some friends on a mesa in New Mexico that overlooked a small site of Anasazi ruins. I remember one night in particular: I watched the seductive moon glowing against the night sky while a crackling voice over the radio talked about “a giant step for mankind … ” I remember thinking “Well, I’m earthbound, but maybe my kids can colonize Mars.”

From the LiftPort Staff Blog, and also posted at RedState, DailyKos, RightWingNews, and of course Space For Commerce.

Thanks Brian.

FYI, disclaimer.  I work for LiftPort.

Somehow I find that I have now slipped into an alternate future, one where it takes the combined resources of our world’s industrial nations and ten years to build but one space station… and its crew will only be 6, not 250.

20 years ago, 25 years ago, there were people who would say, “If we can send a man – to – the – Moon, why can’t we” [insert favorite cause here]? Those people no longer say that; they have gotten their way. Not that we have solved any of the problems – of – the – world, but ‘at least’ we no longer have the technology to send anyone beyond low Earth orbit.

I do not like this future.

Yes, I will beat the drum for our tiny 6-person space station, but it isn’t enough. Yes, I enjoy a ripping tale presented with the latest digital effects …a brief escape into fantasy… but that isn’t enough either. I want Mars Direct, hollowed-out asteroids, solar power satellites & L5 settlements. I want to battle the industrialists for the right to keep the far side of the moon as a quiet refuge for radio astronomy. I want to join the debate over whether we will terraform Mars — even though I don’t know yet if I will be a ‘red’ or a ‘green’. I’ll work to get others to see what I see, and want it as much as I do.

And someday, when ‘they’ aren’t watching, I just might slip back into my future.

It’s not about money.  It’s not about prestige. It’s about this.

And it’s why I work for LiftPort.

The space elevator will change the world. Space tourism will no longer be the realm of ultra-rich daredevils, but rather the equivalent of today’s Caribbean cruise (right down to the ass hickeys). The cost of satellite TV, radio, internet, phones, etc., will all plummet. Exploration of deep space will double, triple. Solar panels will beam down enough energy to shut down half the world’s coal power plants. Someone will send up a huge array of rockets, and get unimaginably rich by hauling back an asteroid with 10,000 tons of platinum in it. Within a generation after the space elevator goes operational, we will colonize the solar system. Polluting industry can be moved off-planet. Nuclear waste can be safely chucked on the far side of the moon, and safe nuclear power will join the orbital solar plants in providing humanity with an unending supply of clean energy, as we drive hydrogen-powered cars made of space platinum and wear diamonds forged in space by the first ignition of the sun.

That, my friends, is one hell of a business plan.

Even I think some of this is a little far fetched, but the basic idea is right. One of the ‘many’ reasons I work for LiftPort Group.

Stolen from Brian.