Following on from Meklit's note about her tour and upcoming residency at Eric Berlow's Swall Institute I thought I'd give another shout-out to Eric for letting me enjoy a brief residency of my own at his place in Wawona to finish revising my dissertation chapter on the economic history of early American spaceflight pioneer Robert H. Goddard. One can hardly begin to express the psychological importance of being able to break up this;

with gazing out across the porch at this;

Thanks to Eric and the pleasant environment of planet Earth for a productive week!

Incidentally, did you know that Goddard - the first person to achieve flight for a liquid-fuel rocket - received most of his financial support from private-sector billionaires (Daniel and Harry Guggenheim, through advocacy by Charles Lindbergh) interested in the exploration of space in the late 1920s and 1930s? Modern private-sector spaceflight patrons - such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Paul Allen, Robert Bigelow, etc., - are not a new phenomenon. They are part of a long tradition that dates back to the very origins of spaceflight. Just thought y'all might like to know that.