In the course of an enjoyable dinner with Douglas Yazell, Shen Ge and Al Jackson (this was in Houston at the 100 Year Starship Symposium), I learned that the Houston section of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics was in the process of reprinting, in its entirety, the famous Collier's series on manned spaceflight. Yazell is editor of Horizons, the bi-monthly publication of the Houston group, and fortunately for all of us, it is both online and free. For me, revisiting these stirring articles will be a priority as each comes out. The July/August issue contains Collier's for March 22, 1952, first in the series. I can only imagine how this issue of Collier's would have drawn the eye in the typical early 1950s newsstand. The Chesley Bonestell cover shows an enormous winged rocket staging as it soars above an Earth flecked with cloud and crimson with distant sunlight. Evidently we have Scott Lowther to thank for scanning and repairing the entire Collier's series, a fact...

by Shen Ge Coming up this January is a two-week long "minds-on ties-off" research workshop at Callao Salvaje on Tenerife on the Canary Islands. I learned about the organization behind the workshop -- the Scientific Preparatory Academy for Cosmic Explorers -- in Houston when I had the good fortune to have dinner with its young co-founder Shen Ge. Shen's organization is a nonprofit academic and research corporation created by young people from many countries. It began this year with a July conference on the Isle of Man, and will soon enter what it considers Phase 1: Building educational modules for brief space courses that can be taught at the university level. The ultimate goal is an actual university with full-time faculty and students. I asked the energetic Shen if he could supply us with a brief article outlining his vision and the steps ahead. In some respects, Shen's ideas parallel those of the International Space University, as he notes below, although he hopes to extend their...