Falcon 9 launch pad, Google Lunar prize and UK space law

Work has begun on Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies' (SpaceX) Falcon 9 rocket's Cape Canaveral launch pad that will be used for its NASA Commercial Orbital Transprotation Services (COTS) demonstration programme flights. SpaceX's first scheduled COTS demo launch is qaurter four 2008.

Prolific linker Hobbyspace.com has assorted X Prize related news-bites; and there is a link to a potential Google Lunar X Prize competitor

And here there is a Spaceport America update

Hyperbola has also heard that on 3 December Sir Richard Branson, head of the Virgin group business empire and suborbital space tourism provider-to-be Virgin Galactic, is to get flung round in the NASTAR centrifuge - most of Galactic's 100 first customers, called 'founders', have already been spun - but in the meantime see the centrifuge here in this US commercial for sauce

Here the UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper reports that the UK government is making tentative steps towards regulating commercial human spaceflight; but then again you could have read about that in Flight 16 months ago, back in June 2006

Finally you might want to ask yourself if Transterrestrial Musing's Rand Simberg got good value for money...