Trivial gripe to be sure, but nonetheless: space.com is blocked off from India. What's that all about!?? I haven't encountered any other websites that are blocked, but space.com hasn't responded to my queries for many, many moons.

On a cooler note, I had lunch the other day with an ISRO scientist, the husband of one of the architects that I work with. He lived in a "Space Research Colony" which housed about 2,000 ISRO employees in small but pleasent flats. Alas, while I can hold my own in a discussion of politics or propulsion, his area of expertise was antennae design for their satellites, and he didn't seem to know or care much about the rest of it. (In fairness, he was VASTLY less apathetic than the SRB safety technician whom I once sat next to on a flight: he was so bored by anything to do with space that he could only remember the shuttles' designation numbers, and not their names!) When I asked him whether he thought that China's continuing exploits in space would spark any competativeness from India, he was rather dubious. But I was quite impressed to learn that the ISRO, for all that it has accomplished, has only 17,500 employees. That's *everyone*, from engineers to launchpad sweepers, and they've managed to design and launch some very impressive rockets, as well as some fairly world-class imaging and communications birds. Not a half bad start, and it would be nice to see them get more fiesty.

Cheers,

Nathan.