Maybe the music in the background set me thinking, but do these images strike anyone else as breathtaking? We put a man-made object onto another heavenly body that looks surprisingly Earth-like. Granted, Titan is much colder than Earth (as can be gleaned from the mention of “water ice rocks” near the end). How cool will it be when, sometime in the next hundred years or so, man sets foot on one or more of these planets or moons in our solar system.

To further set the mood, someone from the Huygens Probe team produced a piece of cool music to go along with the descent and the applause it was awarded by the team upon learning of its success. “Listen to it here.”:http://www.sensoryoutput.com/downloads/huygens_titan_descent.mp3

“SpaceShipOne”:http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/index.htm, along with pilot Mike Melvill, soared 100 km above the Earth’s surface today, marking the first time a privately-funded and built space craft carrying a human being entered into orbit. This marks the beginnings of commercial, manned space flight, just as the Wright brothers did just over 100 years ago with air flight.

I woke up early this morning (6:30 am :???:) just to see the launch. It was interesting how this craft takes off with the assistance of a plane (Knight One)—very slowly albeit—separates at 50,000 feet, and then engages its rocket for a single burn to reach about mach 3 and the edge of space. An interesting approach.

This is huge! Given the deadline of the Ansari X Prize in the next year, we should be seeing more such flights soon. And lately, to think, I’ve been more sceptical of anything like this in my lifetime. I like to have my scepticism proved wrong.

Check out more with this “Scaled Composites press release”:http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=14315.