Robert Heinlein's house in Colorado springs. The one he built himself.

From the pages of Popular Mechanics, no less. How about that?

Here are a couple of postcards from his boyhood home, Kansas City, made within a few years of his birth.

If you click here, you'll have access to a number of brief audio files. I had never heard his voice before.

Lastly, a list of his published fiction that allows you to call up the various cover illustrations. Here's an old favorite of mine. And another. Ah, those good old Scribner's editions... If you were a kid in the sixties, these books were what you found at the library when you went looking for science fiction. Looking at these old classics, I can almost feel the buckram.

Okay, just one more. Red Planet. My very first Heinlein.

Meanwhile, up here in the 21st century Elon Musk is a happy man. The Falcon I pad test I mentioned a week ago has finally gone off successfully. More on that here.

For an informative (to say the least) interview with Mr. Musk you can download an audio file here.

From the intro...

...he sees additional and significant cost reductions coming from the comprehensive launch and business systems, not specifically from the chemical rocket components...

He made it clear that the high cost of space access is the main barrier to our being a space-faring people and that we could not look to the usual players to bring us into a space-faring world.

Total investment in Falcon I and V so far is around eighty million according to RLV News. Depending on who you ask, a single shuttle launch will set you back half a billion, or roughly ten thousand dollars per pound to low earth orbit. Musk thinks he can do much better.

He's building cheap access to space. With his own money.

Gosh, it's like something from a book.