"As NASA Administrator, I already own a Heavy Lifter (in) the Space Shuttle stack. I will not give that up lightly and, in fact, can't responsibly do so because.... any other solution for getting 100 tons into orbit is going to be more expensive than efficiently utilizing what we already own."

-Dr. Michael D. Griffin, NASA Administrator, May 2005

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 11/19/09

While I'm no fan of Senator William Proxmire's constant kvetching about NASA's budget, I do have to admit I find it disheartening that our nation's space agency can't seem to design a roll of toilet paper without it weighing 40,000 pounds and costing a cool billion. It's not so much that I object to the money - I really don't, space is an expensive business, after all, which is why only 13 countries have ever even attempted it - but how little ambition they seem to have with the money.

It's been a conspicuously loooooooooooong time since we've heard anything substantial out of Virgin Galactic, but as the footage below the jump shows, the development of SpaceShipTwo is not only continuing, but has actually gotten pretty darn far.

Saturn has sixty-three (known) moons. Actually, since the rings are made up of tiny solid objects, the planet *technically* has quadrillions of moons, but for our purposes it's got sixty three that you can point at and say, "Hey, that's not a ring!" These range from small ones a half-mile across all the way up to Titan, the second-largest moon in the solar system (Larger than the planet Mercury). Most of them are pretty dinky, though. Only 13 are larger than thirty miles across, and only seven of these have enough mass for their own gravity to pull them into a ball shape.