Well, it's been a busy couple of days.

A day of tidings both fare and ill for spaceflight on the 4th. Burt Rutan's SpaceShip One has won the X-Prize, ascending over 62 miles high to the edge of space twice within a week and thereby handily bagging the 10 million clams. Having done so now several times (first test flight was during the summer, and made it to suborbital altitude), civilian commercial spaceflight is fast becoming a reality. Hopefully NASA will now have the fear of God put into them and they'll get their collective ... er, uh... afterburners ... in gear.

But it was a day of sadness too, for we have lost another hero. Gordon Cooper, one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts who flew on the last Mercury flight, died on the day SpaceShip One won the X-Prize. His first flight in Faith 7 lasted 34 hours, 19 minutes and 49 seconds. One of primary goals for that flight was evaluating the effects of weightlessness for such a lengthy time. He also bagged a first on that flight as the first person to sleep in space. His second flight during the Gemini program was with Pete Conrad for eight days. This flight proved that humans could survive for the period of time it would take a crew to travel to the Moon and back, along with evaluating rendezvous and guidance systems for docking with other spacecraft. Whilst on this mission, he and Conrad also spoke by radio with fellow astronaut Scott Carpenter who was in SEALAB II, 250 feet underwater off the coast of La Jolla, California. At one point he was slated to be the commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13, but then was replaced by Alan Shepard who was himself bumped up to Apollo 14 and replaced by Jim Lovell.

So we have lost four of the original Mercury 7 now. Alan Shepard, Deke Slayton, Gus Grissom, and now Gordon Cooper. All these bright lights who once led us to the future, now fading away.

Why must we always outlive our heroes?