Meanwhile, Back at NASA/KSC

NASA has removed ATK Liberty Launch from the shortlist of potential carriers of crew to the ISS because of concern over the technical matters.  According to William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, the problem was that they didn't provide enough details to reassure NASA of the safety of their planned vehicle.  ATK did not commetn to Space News about this, and there's nothing about it on their website that I could find.  I hope that they will be able to recover from this and re-propose their plans.  If not...that's one good thing about this kind of contract system--instead of the government being stuck helping fund a program to make it work, it can choose the ones that are effective.  Right now, SpaceX and Boeing are forging ahead.  read more here: http://spacenews.com/civil/120904-nasa-dropped-atk-comm-crew.html

Good news for Florida workers in teh space industry: XCOR plans to manufacture and launch its suborbital ships our of Kennedy Space Center.  They're taking over some of the old Space Shuttle facilities for its Lynx vehicle.  The Lynx willfly tourists, researchers adn payloads into suborbital space (about 100 kilometers, although they intend to later move on to orbital vehicles.  They'll be doing test flights of the Lynx Mark 1 in 2012, and plan to build and fly the Linx Mark 2 from Florida in 2014.  Right now, the company is stationed in the Mohave, CA, but are moving research to Texas and building and flight to Florida.  the comany said they might leave some operations and test flight activities in California.  Why the move?  Money--the other states provided better incentives and better business conditions.  Read more here:  http://www.universetoday.com/96987/xcor-to-move-operations-near-kennedy-space-center/