Criticizing the Space Shuttle is like punching America in the face. After all, it’s been a symbol of national pride for thirty years. But many of my friends and I are celebrating yesterday’s piggy-backed final flight of the Space Shuttle Discovery to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum…because a museum is where the shuttle belongs.

Sam Coniglio, contributing editor of the Space Future Journal (and the vice president of the Space Tourism Society), told the Journal that the Falcon 1 mission failed.

According to an article in The China Post Roskosmos chairman Anatoly Perminov says Russia will be halting their space tourism programme after 2010. Because of the expansion of the International Space Station ( ISS), the seats available for tourists will go to permanent crew.

by Carol Pinchefsky

Three people were killed and three injured during a test of a propulsion system for Scaled Composites, the makers of SpaceShipOne and the work-in-progress, SpaceShipTwo.

by Carol Pinchefsky

MSNBC reports that the SpaceX launch of the Falcon 1 rocket scheduled for March 19, 2007, was scrubbed 62 seconds before launch. The article cited a telemetry problem, occurring perhaps when data transmission was switched from land line to radio.

by Carol Pinchefsky

by Carol Pinchefsky

According to a BBC article Daisuke Enomoto, the Japanese businessman who had planned to travel to the International Space Station, has failed his medical test.