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The critical variable for measuring progress in the effort of humankind to get into space is examining how much currency it takes to take a certain amount of mass into orbit. The more efficiently it can be done, the less humanity will be shackled to one planet.

For a long time space travel has been thought of as so expensive that it was the province of governments. Yet governments are notoriously bad at spending money to undertake revolutionary or even evolutionary innovations.

Private space travel is going to put some shame into the debacle that is government funded space travel. Far less money, far more impressive results. Burt Rutan designed SpaceShip One (http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/), a private space ship that reached into the boundary of space. Here he is explaining why government funded space travel sucks at innovation: http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=b_rutan

Now Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket, which greatly decreases the cost of getting to space, has launched successfully enough to prove that rockets much cheaper than the prior state of the art can reach space: http://crunchgear.com/2007/03/20/spacex-successfully-launches-falcon-1-rocket/#more-5140

These achievements are important not just in themselves, but for the new capital, new ideas, and new entrepreneurs they will attract into the quest to reach for the stars above.

Drug dealers, often glamorized by entertainment media, actually have a pretty terrible job, that pays most of them $3 an hour and within 4 years gives them a 25% chance of dying. That shocking mortality rate is actually a much worse chance of dying than if they were already sitting on death row!

This lecture by Freakonomics author Steven Levitt is very informative, rather funny, and quite horrifying:

http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=s_levitt

I have seen some amazing presentations and heard some great conversations by scientists and inventors and entrepreneurs lately. I highly recommend taking a look at:

Hans Rosling’s presentation on how the world is changing. If there is simply one thing you must see, that will give you hope for humanity and a greater understanding of the world, it is Hans Rosling’s talk. It’s about how the countries of the world have changed over the last 40 years,and it’s super rich data presented in an amazing visual style: (http://tedblog.typepad.com/tedblog/2006/06/hans_rosling_on.html)

James Dyson’s presentation on his personal history of invention. (http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/362/)

Tina Seelig’s presentation of 10 things she wish she knew when she was 20. (click on Seelig’s video at http://etl.stanford.edu/archive/)

Fabrice Grinda’s discussion of his entrepreneurial career. (http://www.venturevoice.com/2005/12/vv_show_21_fabrice_grinda_of_z.html)

Also, be sure to check out other presentations from the organizations that put up such interesting speeches:

TED (http://www.ted.com/)

MIT World (http://mitworld.mit.edu/)

Stanford’s ETL program (http://etl.stanford.edu/archive/)

Venture Voice (http://www.venturevoice.com/)

Truly inspiring stuff!