On Star Trek, the Starship Enterprise cruised the galaxy defending the United Federation of Planets. Is this the first step to making that future a reality?

The Personal Spaceflight Federation, whose establishment was announced Tuesday, brings together a who’s who of space entrepreneurs, including SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan, whose team won the $10 million X Prize last October, and video-game genius John Carmack, whose Armadillo Aerospace team was among the leading contenders for the prize.

The industry group plans to work with federal regulators to help draw up the “rules of the road” for suborbital space tourism, following up on last year’s landmark law on private-sector spaceflight, said Gregg Maryniak, who serves as the federation’s chief spokesman as well as executive director of the X Prize Foundation.

Actually, an association of private businesses designed to bring commerce to space seems like something one would find in a Robert Heinlein novel that anything created by Gene Roddenberry, who couldn’t even bear the though of money being used in the future.

Since our government seems more interested in subsidizing tobacco farmers and honey production than in extending humanity’s presence to the Moon, Mars and the outer planets, it’s up to private enterprise to secure humanity’s survival by placing all our eggs in more than one basket — the Earth.

That’s J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of the excellent “Balylon 5″ series. He is making a big push to be the guy to reboot ‘Star Trek.’

So here’s the deal, folks. If you want to see a new Trek series that’s true to Gene’s original creation, helmed by myself and Bryce [Zabel, "Dark Skies" crator], with challenging stories, contemporary themes, solid extrapolation, and the infusion of some of our best and brightest SF prose writers, then you need to let the folks at Paramount know that. If the 48% of the 18,000 folks who voted at scifi.com sent those sentiments to Paramount … there’d be a new series in the works tomorrow.

I’ve blogged about this before. I didn’t get much support. I still think it’s a great idea.

I’ve got a feeling I’m gonna like this chick. Jennifer lists the Grandmaster of Science Fiction as one of her literary influences:

Robert Heinlein is not only a superb storyteller, but he�s a truly free thinker. He has a libertarian bent, which makes for a good political read, and he�s usually ready to address the hard questions through some unusual approaches, to illustrate a point. He�s fun to read. Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Stranger in a Strange Land should be on anyone�s must-read list for the questions they ask and address about relationships, government, and service.

Hat tip to Acidman, who says:

I read everything he ever wrote. Boy, did HE put an eggbeater in my head. Heinlein believed in freedom, but understood clearly that freedom isn’t free. It is EARNED and DESERVED. The crotchety old bastard was anything BUT a liberal, I started reading him when I was 12 years old and I still agree with him today.

I knew there was a reason I liked that hillbilly Jawa b*st*rd.

Heinlein was like a slow acting innoculation that eventually cured me of the liberalism that permeated the high school and college education I received.