space

Via NY Times:

"Stratospheric airships could give us spacelike conditions from a spacelike platform, but without the spacelike costs," said Sarah Miller, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Irvine.

High-altitude airships are still in their relative infancy. None has ever flown at 65,000 feet for longer than eight hours. But a recent study from the Keck Institute for Space Studies at Caltech suggests that a more capable airship may not be far-off...

ScienceNASA hopes to launch 'flying saucer' after delay NASA hopes to try again to launch a "flying saucer" into Earth's atmosphere to test Mars mission technology after losing the chance because of bad weather, project managers said Thursday. The space agency is working with the U.S. Navy on the Hawaiian island of Kauai to see if it can get the experimental flight off the ground in June. During the current two-week launch window, the team came "tantalizingly close," but winds spoiled every opportunity, said project manager Mark Adler of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

I think this rocket is going to be a GIFt for all mankind.

It was only a matter of time really.