From the Baltimore Sun:
LISSIE, Texas – On a rice farm west of Houston, in a pasture littered with cow droppings, Jim Akkerman is immersed in the work of the future.
Flanked by industrial gas tanks and wearing a straw hat, he rummages through his 1978 Ford Club Wagon van for pliers as a crop-dusting plane drones overhead. The retired NASA engineer pays it no mind. He’s too busy connecting copper tubing to the 27-foot propulsion system of his homemade spaceship.
That’s right, spaceship.
Amid the dusty plains, the inventor, hands stained with oil, is preparing to test the system of Mayflower, a 35-foot winged rocket that he believes will revolutionize space flight.
With NASA mired in navel-gazing and bureaucracy, it makes sense to support private development of outer space. Maybe someone will try to get to the moon to round up all that valuable Helium-3. Not to mention all those diamonds littering the lunar surface.
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