GSC Update

World Spaceflight status

*China has been parading it's new space program around to show off it's technical prowess and capability (wow, you've finally made it, 40 years later!) including having Col. Yang Liwei (the first Chinese astronaut) visit foreign dignitaries, the U.S. Congress, and Buzz Aldrin. Call it a PR tour (nothing the U.S. didn't participate in after landing on the moon, though).

*Russia = perpetually broke. Trying to train the occasional crazy and rich investor to be a cosmonaut so they can keep building rockets, with a general low success rate.

*Good and bad in the land of the free.
The U.S. government has been bowing to outside pressure (politics, contractors, other influences) in order to appease all groups, and in the process has crippled the return to spaceflight in a post-Columbia world. Looks like quite some time before the Space Shuttle will return to full space flight status, if at all. George Bush's Space Flight Initiative, promising Moon flights and increased NASA spending, has also fallen by the wayside.
On the plus side, however, competition for the X-Prize has radically increased independent aerospace groups within the U.S. to make great strides in small non-government operations. Congress has approved a bill to allow certain companies purchase a high-altitude launch operations liscence (read: clearance for launch). Several groups have already reached important milestones, such as breaking the sound barrier.