There are some interesting tidbits over at Space.com today that probably won’t make it onto the evening news, so I thought I’d provide a valuable public service and bring them to the attention of my three loyal readers.

First, the Japanese are preparing to test a prototype of a supersonic passenger plane intended as a successor to the now-mothballed Concorde. The end goal is a production plane that will be able to carry 300 people from Tokyo to LA in four hours, but without the engine noise and piggish fuel-consumption that always plagued Concorde.

I’ve long been fascinated by the thought of supersonic flight, and especially by the Concorde aircraft. This is going to sound weird, but I think my interest comes from seeing an Airport-style disaster movie on TV when I was a kid. You’d think that would have discouraged me from wanting to even set foot on one of those planes, but it actually had the opposite effect. The characters in the film (as best I can recall) kept touting the plane as the future of travel, and I believed them. I used to be certain that by the time I was in my 30s, we’d have flying cars, easily affordable weekend getaways to the moon, and a sky filled with SSTs (supersonic transports). Yes, I was a little geek, and probably gullible to boot, too, but science-fictiony visions of the future really did seem plausible back then. Hell, Concorde actually looked like a spaceship, so what was so unbelievable?

I eventually gave up on flying cars and lunar holidays, and there never more than a handful of Concordes built, but I still hoped I’d be able to afford a ride in one someday, just to say that I’d done it, right up until the day they were retired. I came very close to pulling money from my savings account to make one of those final flights, actually. Maybe I’ll get my chance to go supersonic on a Japanese SST.

Moving along, a ceremony today at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center has corrected a historical oversight by awarding astronaut wings to three civilian test pilots who flew the X-15 rocket plane into space back in the ’60s.

The X-15 was a wicked-looking machine that occupied the shadowy middle ground between a true spaceship and an airplane. A descendent of Chuck Yeager’s legendary X-1 — the first plane to fly faster than the speed of sound — and a direct ancestor of the space shuttle, the X-15 was carried aloft under the wing of a B-52. After being released by the mother ship, the X-15 pilot would ignite his rockets and take the plane as high and fast as he could get it to go. Eight of those pilots managed to get the plane above an altitude of 50 miles, which is beyond the atmosphere and officially into space. Five of these eight were military men, but the remaining three — William H. “Bill” Dana and the late John B. “Jack” McKay and Joseph A. Walker — were civilian flyers employed by NASA. While the military pilots got to call themselves astronauts, complete with official insignia for their flightsuits, the honor was withheld from these three, until today. It’s about time. I always feel a pleasant little glow when ancient wrongs are redressed and proper respect is at long last paid.

And lastly, if you’ve been wondering about those little Martian rovers that just seem to keep going and going like that damn toy bunny, here’s an update on one of them: after a long drive, Spirit has finally reached the summit of a mysterious land feature called Husband Hill, and the view is spectacular. Details here.

That’s all for tonight. Catch you on the darkside…