Saturday, Sept. 4th is the current target date for the Copenhagen Suborbitals launch of the HEAT-1X rocket.
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An overview of current solar sail projects and speculation on future applications: Solar Sail Spacecraft Could Explore Beyond Solar System - SPACE.com
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Space competition related links: Prize Roundup: MICI Presentations, MoonBots Winners, More X-Hab Finalists, More - Space Prizes

Here's an audio clip of a discussion about the recent SpaceUP DC event: Evadot Podcast #33 - SpaceUp DC, the aftermath.

BTW, esources related to the event are at SpaceUpDC Wiki
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More on the recent letter by 30 notables to the House about the NASA authorization bill:
/-- Space Luminaries Petition Against House Version of NASA Bill - SPACE.com
/-- 14 Nobel winners write letter supporting Obama space plan - Lee Roop/Huntsville Times

Another overview of commercial spaceflight companies: Counting Down to Commercial Space Launches: The next few years will see at least two new commercial spacecraft put into orbit - Technology Review - Sept.2.10.

NASA announces the three university finalist teams in the eXploration Habitat (X-Hab) Academic Innovation Challenge competition: NASA Selects University Finalists for Inflatable Loft Competition - NASA.

Some reports about the letter to the House Science and Technology committee protesting the proposed House NASA authorization bill:
/-- Nobel Winners Back Obama Space Strategy - NYTimes.com
/-- Nobel laureates and others push for restoration of White House NASA budget provisions - Space Politics
/-- Letter urges House to shift NASA priorities - Flame Trench/Florida Today

The Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) website had been recently revamped.
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An article about the NM spaceport: Spaceport America - AZCentral.com - Aug.31.10 (via spacetoday.net).
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Pad 39B will get a major makeover: Retired space shuttle launch pad to be dismantled this fall - Spaceflight Now

Students in ESA member and cooperating states can apply for payload opportunities on sounding rocket and high altitude balloon flights in the coming year: Fly your experiment to the edge of space! - ESA - Sept.1.10.

The USAF gives up on using the primary engine to move the AEHF satellite to its GEO orbit. Instead they will use the small station keeping thrusters, which can tap into the fuel for the primary engine. This will preserve the full planned working life of the satellite but getting to the final GEO slot will take nearly a year: Faulty AEHF To Reach Orbital Slot Next Summer - Aviation Week

The AIAA Space 2010 meeting continues. See posts at twitter.com/#search?q=%23space2010

Examples of Jeff Foust posts include:
/-- "At #space2010 luncheon, Lori Garver plays up key areas of agreement on NASA budget (ISS extension, Earth sci, overall funding level)."
/-- "Garver said she's encouraged by lessening of tensions in budget debate, but still pushing for full funding for key programs."
/-- "Garver is concerned there's nothing in any budget bills for Cx transition, worried those costs will come out of other programs. "
/-- "One interesting trend from COTS/CCDev panel: everyone seems to be going to pusher escape systems vs. tractors. "
/-- "Les Lyles, ex-Augustine Cmte member: somewhat pleased w/Senate version of NASA authorization bill, less so w/House bill "
/-- "Question of the day: "Lori Garver admitted administration didn't do good job rolling out 2011 budget. What the hell went wrong?" "
/-- "Jim Vedda: every year at conferences like this people say "we're at a crossroads." This time it's actually true. "
/-- "Vedda: we have to get away from our destination fetish in spaceflight. Destinations are not goals."
/-- "Robert Bigelow has no shortage of ambition: talks about having up to 20-30 stations in orbit with volumes of up to 20,000 m^3."

Here's an interesting overview of commercial spaceflight projects from the perspective of composite engineering: The Private Space Race: NASA passes the development torch to legacy contractors and NewSpace entrepreneurs, igniting a new competition in space transport - Composites World - Sept.2010 issue (via spacetoday.net)
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An update from Paul Breed who is "getting excited about working on rockets again": Getting back to rockets - Unreasonable Rocket - Aug.31.10

Scott Hubbard, former head of NASA Ames and now at Stanford, is distributing a letter that was

signed by a total of 30 Nobel Laureates, NASA astronauts, former NASA senior officials, and other space and science educators, [and] was just delivered to Rep. Gordon, the Chairman of the House Science Committee, and copies were delivered to the Speaker of the House and the House Majority Leader.

He goes on to say

that this letter may well represent one of the most distinguished yet diverse sets of people to ever put forth a unified position on our nation’s space program.

The reason this disparate group – including representatives from both the human spaceflight and science sides of our community – united into a single letter is because we believe that the House version of the NASA Authorization Bill, as currently written, needs significant improvements.

Here is the text of the letter:

Dear Chairman Gordon:

NASA has long been a critical component of American economic competitiveness, inspiring young people to enter careers in science and engineering, ensuring American leadership in human spaceflight, and driving cutting-edge research. However, we have watched with concern in recent years as NASA’s programs for advanced technology, commercial spaceflight, student research, and robotic exploration have been scaled back or postponed. The data are sobering: since 2005, NASA’s technology program has been cut by more than 50 percent; robotic exploration precursor missions were eliminated; NASA was unable to fund commercial systems for carrying crew to the International Space Station despite a pressing need to avoid extended reliance on the Russian Soyuz; and NASA-sponsored university research was sharply curtailed.

President Obama’s new strategy revitalizes and expands our investments in technology, commercial spaceflight, student research, and robotic exploration precursors. These are the key elements of the President’s new plan for NASA that must be retained in any consensus solution reached by Congress and the White House.

These investments will benefit all parts of our space program. Indeed, human space exploration beyond Earth orbit can only be truly sustainable and affordable if commercial spaceflight to low Earth orbit and innovative research and development efforts are pursued as well.

We feel that the following programs, which are substantially underfunded in the current House Science Committee authorization bill, are especially critical:

Some commentary on Dennis Wingo's recent essay on space policy direction: That Would Have Saved Me a Lot of Time - Vision Restoration - Aug.31.10.
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Some commentary on Lockheed-Martin's asteroid mission plan: Plymouth Rock - Asteroids here we Come - Space Business Blog - Aug.31.10.

Spaceport America has a job opening in top management: Spaceport America Seeks Deputy Director - Spaceport America - Aug.31.10

Copenhagen Suborbitals is still aiming for a flight on Thursday according to their homepage. This latest entry in their blog (in Danish but I use the Google translator) says they were in the process of moving the floating platform out to the launch area.

Jonathan Amos writes about the project: Danish rocketeers ready to launch British dummy - Spaceman/BBC - Aug.31.10.

Jeff Foust posted this from the AIAA Space meeting in Anaheim:

Gwynne Shotwell: SpaceX to announce up to 3 additional Falcon 9 launch contracts in the coming weeks.

Lots of other Twitter postings from the meeting can be found at Twitter / Search - #space2010.

Jeff also posted these from Shotwell's talk:
/-- "Shotwell: temperature issue w/roll control nozzle caused 2nd stage roll on F9 launch. That problem has been corrected."
/-- "Shotwell added the F9 launch report will be released in the near future, once it clears ITAR and related approvals."
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NASA has a spare space station module that could be launched via an expendable rocket to the ISS to provide extra docking ports for an inflatable habitat or other new modules: Test article could facilitate space station applications - Spaceflight Now.

Masten Space Systems releases a statement on its new NASA contract: Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) Award! - Masten Space Systems blog.

A couple of other reports on the contracts for Armadillo and Masten:
/-- CRuSR makes its first awards - NewSpace Journal - (Jeff says Masten gets $250k, Armadillo $225k)
/-- NASA Cash Rockets Two X-Prize Space Teams Into The Void (In a Good Way) - Fast Company

Some space policy items from Jeff Foust: Briefly: Olson on the NASA bill, upcoming space policy conference - Space Politics.
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ATK created a lot of smoke in Utah today: This is what I get for missing staff meetings - The Unwanted Blog.

More about the big rocket show:
/-- Big rocket tested in Utah - Spaceflight Now
/-- NASA Tests New Rocket Motor Despite Uncertain Future - SPACE.com
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NASA's latest plan for deriving a super expensive HLV from the super expensive Shuttle technology: ATK conduct DM-2 test - Inline SD HLV gaining NASA support - NASASpaceFlight.com.

Here's a new update from Henry Vanderbilt at the Space Access Society (Note that the version of the update on the SAS website has the budget tables in a much more readable format.):

The NASA Authorization Battle: Why It Matters

A week ago we asked you all to actively support the Senate version FY 2011 NASA Authorization bill. We described it as not great, but acceptable compared to the extremely bad House bill. The response we've seen so far has been pretty lukewarm.

Partly our fault, we expect - we'd done considerable puzzling over the legislative fine print before concluding our best immediate tactic is to support the Senate version, but last week's Update presented a rather condensed version of that thinking. We didn't want the thing to turn into a novel. Nor to tip our hand on tactics unduly, since the opposition is way too well financed and organized already, while our side is still scrambling to shake off rust and rebuild an effective coalition. (It's been years since there was anything much at NASA we thought worth volunteering to fight for.)

Then too, we'd forgotten how far we gradually came around during that bill-reading session. Our position going in was, fight the Senate bill too, kill the continued in-house NASA launcher boondoggle, do or die, right now! We concluded that wasn't a useful approach over the course of a couple of weeks; we can't blame anyone who got whiplash being asked to make that course change in a couple of paragraphs.

But we do understand how you feel. A few weeks ago we too were happily anticipating the revolution implicit in the Administration FY 2011 NASA budget request: Shut down unaffordably bloated in-house NASA launcher developments, encourage many-times-cheaper commercial launch options, and spend the (substantial) difference refilling the (bare) NASA exploration technology cupboard, so in a few years NASA might be ready to begin putting together some real exploration missions. We knew we had a fight on our hands over the House bill, but that was so outrageously bad it was easy to get motivated.

Then the Senate surprised us with a bill that roughly split the difference - about a 60/40 compromise between the House's rejection of reform and the original Administration proposal. Our first reaction: NASA had been serving up a crap sandwich for a lot of years, and we were just getting used to their new plan to switch to caviar. The Senate suddenly compromising on a 60/40 blend of the two didn't thrill us. We were pumped to attack it too.

Then we started remembering our previous years of fighting such fights. Once the House and Senate have staked out their positions on something like this, the final result is almost always in the range bounded by those two positions. Moving significantly outside that range takes extraordinary outside pressure, especially once the White House and NASA already have admitted they can live with the Senate version. We don't think that our coalition (yet) has the kind of political firepower it'd take to get a better Authorization than the Senate version in the next couple of weeks. (Frankly, the only way we'll ever have the clout to push this toward a good final outcome is if a whole bunch of you decide we're making sense.)

After calming down, we spent some time reading the fine print in the different versions of the NASA budget, trying to figure out how they really compare, and how that fits into the tactical situation. (Tabular results, with commentary, follow below.)

To sum up, the House Authorization effectively kills the good Exploration options, largely defunding them, and also strewing their path with poison-pill requirements. This House bill steers 92% of all Exploration funding to a sort of Constellation-Lite - even more full of fatal contradictions, more underfunded, and less likely to ever fly than Constellation - blatantly sacrificing NASA's future for a political jobs program.

The AP's take on the Armadillo/Masten contracts with NASA: NASA funds rocket flights by Calif, Texas firms - AP.
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The latest Space Prizes blog collection of space prize related links: Prize Roundup: XHab Award, Zero-G Benefit, CRuSR Test Flights, ARLISS, Lunar Architecture, More - Space Prizes.
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More about an expensive solid rocket motor test in Utah: Solid Rocket Motor’s Future With NASA Is in Question - NYTimes.com.

Mr. Muncy said of Tuesday’s test: “I wish them the best of luck. I don’t know why they’re doing it.”

The latest SSI update has been posted on line: Space Studies Institute Update July 2010 - Space Studies Institute - Aug.30.10.
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The Commercial Spaceflight Federation congratulates Armadillo and Masten on their NASA contracts: CSF Congratulates Initial Winning Launch Providers in NASA’s Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research Program - CSF - Aug.30.10.