Worth a read: Fascinating Op/Ed piece in today’s Times by Carolyn Porco on the brightening future for human space travel, which has been faltering since the Nixon era. TED2006 speaker, Burt Rutan, had a lot to say about this in his TED talk, which provocatively began: “Houston, we have a problem. We’re entering a second generation of no progress in terms of human flight in space.”

Porco, who will speak at the opening session of TED2007, is a planetary scientist who leads the imaging team for the Cassini mission to Saturn; she’ll share a selection of stunning images from the edge of our solar system.