Let us sing praises to those who still have the nerve and talent to organize such ventures as the recent flights into space by a privately built ship, the Space Ship One.

Here's an excerpt fromt he VOA Radio program on it:

"Businessman Paul Allen was among those in the large crowd who watched the flight on Monday. He is one of the founders of the Microsoft Company. Mister Allen helped pay for the Space Ship One project. Mister Allen says he spent more than twenty million dollars on the project. He says he has wanted to be part of space research since he was a small boy.

Richard Branson, who owns Virgin Airlines, was also there. He says he will buy several larger spacecraft from Mister Rutan. Mister Branson wants to start a business to take passengers into space. He says more than five thousand people have offered to pay for a seat on the first flights to space.

News of the flight of Space Ship One was also sent to the International Space Station. Astronaut Mike Fincke and Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka welcomed Astronaut Binnie into space. The International Space Station team said it was great to learn that for a while on Monday they were not the only people off the planet Earth."

For all that we get hauled back a step now and again, we are, as a species, still bound for a destiny larger than our past. I have this somewhere deep inside me as an article of faith -- the human race is charting a future. One which transcends anything we have known hitherto. SS1 is just a small step in that direction, but a brilliant example of the genre.

Here's to Space Ship One, and her men and women and all like them on Earth.

A