There were two fascinating developments this week in the American effort to carry freedom into space.
President Donald J. Trump announced that the United States would be creating a Space Academy modeled on West Point, the Naval Academy, and the Air Force Academy. The new academy will provide a steady stream of competent leaders working to get America into space. It will also provide a center of intellectual excellence for thinking through the challenges of a space-based economy and humans living permanently beyond earth — from low earth orbit to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Furthermore, by making the new academy military and civilian, it will be a little like blending the Merchant Marine Academy and the Naval Academy.
Just in time for the holidays, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn for more than eight years now, has delivered another glorious, backlit view of the planet Saturn and its rings.