You know how sometimes you put off a big task for a really long time, but when you’re finally forced to start it, you realize that it’s actually kind of fun, and you wish you’d started it earlier? This is not like that. At all.

ALSO.

Space Law is like listening to five TED talks at once, plus someone’s wacky old grandpa.

I’ve been lucky this year to be in some (okay, two) of the right classes at the right times. Last semester, when much of the healthcare debate was going on, I was in Health Law Survey. We didn’t have time to do a comprehensive analysis of the issues, but we read a few articles and looked at some of the provisions in the bills, and the process was enlightening.

I learned just enough in that course to know that U.S. health care is insanely complicated and full of problems and money sinks, and that I never ever want to practice health law.

And now I’m in Space Law in time to talk about Obama’s announcement of the cancellation of the Constellation program. To be honest, I haven’t been keeping up with space stuff in the last few years, and I knew very little about Constellation before it got axed. I’m excited about the further development of private space enterprises, personally, but it’s going to be weird for NASA not to have a manned spaceflight program. Will American kids nowadays have to dream of becoming space tourists?

I heard on the radio a couple weeks ago that NASA will be auctioning off the artifacts of the shuttle program that museums don’t want. I don’t know if any of the auction is open to the public, but how cool would that be, to own a little tiny piece of a space shuttle? Or even a lowly space shuttle wrench that spent its whole career in Florida? Surely there are more bolts and unidentifiable thingamajigs than the museums of the world can handle.

Of course, now I can’t find any reference to this auction at all, except a few news articles about the shuttles themselves being offered to museums (for a surprisingly low price, in the hundreds of thousands). I did, however, find this little series called “50 Years of NASA” from KUHF. You’d better not have been lying to me about this auction thing, KUHF. I can see you from the Law Center. Or I could if the building had windows on that side.

So yeah. Maybe I wandered a little off topic in this post. But I want my space stuff.