Wednesday Roundup

I want to start writing about the propositions on the California ballot this November and hope to do so starting next week. It will help me understand the issues and hopefully amuse and or inform you on what is happening in the land of fruits and nuts.

First thing on the roundup is something I've NEVER written about and could cause the Sports writer and the boss to have a heart attack. BASEBALL.

The Montreal Expos are now owned by the MLB owners and they are moving. It looks like Washington DC is going to get a baseball team of their own for the first time since the Nixon Administration. Of course the citizens of Washington DC (and the rest of us since DC receives a good chunk of their budget from the US Government) will have to build a new stadium for the team but hey, what's a few 10's of millions (or is that 100's of millions). Baseball is coming back to the Capital.

The next two stories are write ups on the flight of SpaceShipOne. It made its first of two flights to claim the X-prize. It will have to make a second flight to an altitude of at least 60 miles in the next two weeks to win the prize. I remember back in the late 1970s when the Space Shuttle was said to make going into space routine. The Shuttle was sold to us (the public) that it would be able to go into space, land and with in two weeks go again. Its never quite worked like that. Now we have a machine that hopefully will be able to do just that.

Of course the difficulty of orbital flight is much greater then sub-orbital. If anyone can figure out how to get a ship from the ground into orbit and back and do it again in two weeks, then manned space exploration suddenly becomes more feasible.

Congrats to the SpaceShipOne team and good luck on the next flight. May it be even more routine then the last one.