First Steps Out of the Cradle

The early space visionary and scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky famously stated: "The earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot remain in the cradle forever."

James Muncy describes two important political baby-steps out of the cradle: the Congressional funding of the President's Vision for Space Exploration and the passage of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act.

I would argue that the latter, together with the successful flights of SpaceShipOne to win the X-prize, represents a much larger step than pouring yet more money into NASA, new "vision" or not.