Things seem to be all out of whack. An employee of a subcontractor is being investigated for sabotaging a computer set to go to the International Space Station with Endeavour two weeks from now. The flight is proceeding. Phil has a good piece about it on BA.

Then there are allegations that at least one astronaut could have been under the influence of alcohol during a trip into orbit — sorry guys, but Launched Under the Influence (LUI) is bad.

Even in the private space front things are out of sorts, three people have been killed in an explosion on a rocket test pad at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California. Three people are still hospitalized, two are in critical and one is in serious condition.

Those injured worked for Scaled Composites the private space company, led by Burt Rutan that won the X-Prize in 2004. The explosion occurred during a “cold fire test”.

Oddly enough I am reviewing a book “Rocketeers” by Michael Belfiore, and published by Harper Collins publishing, it’s all about private space flight, a history really. So far the book is great, but let me finish and I’ll put a complete review up.

The image to the right is from the CNN.com/US website(from Kcal), they also have a video of a fly around of the area, and a detailed story about the blast.