From The Space Review, a review of The Star Wars Enigma: Behind the Scenes of the Cold War Race for Missile Defense by Nigel Hey; proponents of human space exploration often struggle to develop compelling rationales for such missions — Frank Stratford explains how the best reason for human spaceflight may be to unlock the vast untapped potential of humanity; spaceflight is an expensive, high-tech endeavor that suffers from too much government regulation, right? A lot of people might agree with that sentiment, but Wayne Eleazer busts some enduring myths; and only a lucky few get to fly Nasa’s state-sponsored shuttles, but a new era of space tourism will demand one more skill from astronauts: business acumen. A review of Living Off the Land in Space: Green Roads to the Cosmos by Gregory L. Matloff, Les Johnson, and C Bangs. Here are 20 things you didn't know about living in space: Exploding boobs, toilet target practice, the second birth. If we make radio contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, and the only thing we can transmit is text, and we transmit the entire text of a dictionary, what can they learn from it?
