The drive for inexpensive orbital access took a step forward with this week's successful test of a robot crawler designed to traverse a potential "space elevator." The elevator is proposed as one hundred thousand kilometers of a carbon nanotube composite material, tethered between the Earth's equator and an orbital counterweight. The robot in total managed to climb about three hundred meters, which makes its distance about three hundred thousand times too short. But! It's a step forward. Additional challenges hosted by NASA aim to develop stronger tethers and methods to utilize high intensity light to power the descendents of this crawler.

Lots of brains focus on the difficulties of the elevator, and it's worth the thought. Meanwhile we've got to keep working on what we've got going. It's hard to improve on a system that works.

The return of Expedition 11 is imminent, as the delivery of Expedition 12 (cosmonaut Valery Tokarev and astronaut William McArthur) is set for launch come the first of October. God willing with them will be the third "space tourist," Dr. Gregory Olsen. A well-educated entrepreneur, Dr. Olsen will not only observe but also perform some experiments (as well, allow experiments to be performed upon him!). After speaking with pioneers Tito and Shuttleworth, Olsen reports "they both said to me that whatever I feel now about space I will feel better when I'm up there." Yeah, I'll bet!

As the hurricanes produce even more downtime on the shuttles, thanks again to the Russians our progress continues. As the durable Soyuz stepped up to fill the gaps left by the shuttle's stuttering schedule, a political problem arose over the legality of the United States funding such activities. In fact, the Soyuz slated for Expedition 12 is the last "free" one the Russians must provide under bilateral agreement with the U.S. These days I find few reasons to admire politicians, but Senator Richard Lugar (of the great state of Indiana!) introduced a bill to remove the obstacle, allowing such purchases to sustain ISS for another seven years. That bill passed the Senate with ease and now awaits action in the House.

I wrote my Senator and thanked him for his effort. I encourage everyone to contact their Representatives to get this legislation passed as soon as possible, as a sign of friendship and good faith if not common decency and proper business manners. I've said it again and again: The Russians have done more than their share towards keeping ISS afloat. Surely they deserve to be paid!