The Race Is On...

Between China, India, SpaceX and others...

Within the past week we have seen India's Mars probe exit Earth orbit and successfully transition to its outbound trajectory, China launch its Moon rover set to arrive in a few days and SpaceX put its first commercial satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit.  And here the US government is sitting with its thumb up its keester...

With the hope for US space ambitions firmly in the hands of the private sector SpaceX is our leading hope.  With today's 100% successful launch SpaceX has completed its second of three required successful launches in order to become eligible for US Military and other government agency work.  While SpaceX has a big backlog of commercial work ahead of it, opening up another revenue stream is never a bad thing.  Nor is getting a big satellite to a position about 1/9 of the way to the moon.  Only bigger and better things to come from SpaceX as they will continue to expand and build upon their run of success lately...

Is it so wrong of me to hope for the Chinese rover to impact the Moon at some uncontrollable rate, disintegrating on impact??   At some point if all these entities continue on their courses, SpaceX interests will conflict with Chinese or Indian interests...will the US be strong enough or willing enough to protect its own private enterprises since it no longer seems willing to protect itself or its interests in space??

SpaceX Completes First GTO Mission...

Lego Model of Hayabusa Probe

Legos are not just kids toys.  With their architectural series covering famous buildings (Sears Tower, Frank Lloyd Wright houses, etc.) and legions of dedicated fans around the world making ever more complex projects, Legos have expanded their reach well beyond the Cartoon Network demographic.

A primary example is found with the Lego CUUSOO website where people can vote on projects that Lego may build.

The second Lego product to be produced this way is the Hayabusa Probe.  This Japanese probe was the first spacecraft to fly to an asteroid, land and return a sample of said asteroid to the Earth using an ion thruster for propulsion.

The Lego version looks like a true collectors item and includes a figure representative of the probe's project manager.  This would look great on your desk and is a great way to learn about some of our world's more overlooked space endeavors.

Buy Lego Hayabusa Probe...
Hayabusa Probe Wiki...

Which brings us to the second part of this post and what got me aware of the aforementioned to begin with.  The Lego CUUSOO program has announced that the next model to be produced will be the Curiosity Rover.  Already wandering around Mars, the Lego Rover will look similar to the one pictured here (this was the proposed model, Lego will create the final version).

It appears that geeks all over the world should rejoice and prepare to pilot their own rover around the Red Planet in the very near future!  A collection of these realworld space program related Legos would be cool to see--a great teaching tool for kids and adults as well.

Lego CUUSOO Curiosity Rover page...