Well, I have just returned from the most fantastic holiday in the Scottish highlands. If anyone is thinking of heading up there and doing a tour I can definitely recommend MacBackpackers and if you can get on a tour lead by Colin even better! I will try an get photos up on
https://www.jamesfitzsimons.com as soon as possible.

I have been following the Discovery return to flight mission with great interest. I have always been a bit of a space nut, but this mission really caught my attention partly because of the test flight nature of it I guess. I think NASA are absolutely fantastic and don’t get anywhere near the recognition or funding the deserve in spite of the rubbish the media would have you believe. To prove a point, here are a few interesting figures I found with a quick bit of googling:

2005 NASA budget $16.2 billion
2005 military budget $400.1 billion
Cost (to US) of war in Iraq $314 billion
US GDP 2005 $11,750 billion

So, NASA gets 0.14 % of the US GDP or put another way, 4% of what the US spends on it’s military.

Pretty sad.