Alan Boyle: Off to the space races!

Alan Boyle: Even before the $10 million Ansari X Prize competition for private spaceflight was finished in October, the X Prize Foundation began a push for an annual rocket festival in New Mexico, known as the X Prize Cup. Now the Las Cruces Sun-News reports that the warmup exposition is being planned for September. A spokeswoman for the New Mexico Office for Space Commercialization told me that details, including the precise dates for the X Prize expo, should be hammered out by the end of next week.

There’s more than one space race to run: Wired.com reports SpaceX conducted a test of its Merlin rocket engine that went well enough for the rocket company’s founder, Elon Musk, to talk about winning the $50 million America’s Space Prize for orbital flight. And the Los Angeles Daily News focuses on NASA’s plans to put its proposed crew exploration vehicle out for competition. Let’s hope the race brings in more than just the usual suspects.