After that Sputnik induced hangover, some soothing news bites

NASASpaceflight.com apparently has some detail about NASA's Lunar Lander progress. Flight reported on the Lander's project office's plans back in July with an expected first design analysis cycle to be completed by August.

Russia is to provide instruments for Moon and Mars missions according to this report

The US Senate has passed an amendment to the appropriations bill that includes NASA's budget to give the US space agency an extra $1 billion. But its not obviously good news, the US House of Representatives has passed its version of the relevant appropriations bill but I am not aware of any extra billion from them. And under US law the Senate and House have to come together to agree a final appropriations bill, and so this amendment could be a very temporary. At the moment NASA is being funded for its 2008 fiscal year that started on 1 October under what is called a continuing resolution, which is what NASA was funded by for its last fiscal year. That resolution is essentially the appropriated 2006 budget.

Cosmiclog podners the next 50 years of spaceflight

Leonard David has a look at what people can expect to see at the forthcoming X Prize Cup

Hobbyspace.com's spacetransportnews.com has plenty of links for everything from the LA Times debate about space with transterrestrial musing's Rand Simberg to the North Dakota student rocket initiative.

Aviation Week and Space Technology has reported that the US Senate has killed plans from the Missle Defense Agency to develop a space based test bed, which means anti-ICBM missiles in space, I think.

MSNBC reports on Russian celebrations of Sputnik. And if you're still hungry for Sputnik stuff then there is this clutch of links from spacetransportnewws.com or you can see ex-NASA engineer and author Jim Oberg's writings on the subject here and here or you could even checkout Flight's Sputnik stuff here.