With US Help, Private Space Companies Press Their Case: Why Not Us?

"The space agency has jump-started two companies' plans to provide cargo services to the station with hundreds of millions of dollars in financing through its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. Last week, NASA announced that Space Exploration Technologies of Hawthorne, Calif. and Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Va., had won $3.5 billion in contracts to begin delivering cargo to the station by 2010."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/science/30spacside.html



Big Year In Store For Space Station 

The coming year promises to be "just as big a year, if not a bigger year than 2008" on the International Space Station (ISS), says Kirk Shireman, deputy ISS program manager at NASA.

This past year saw the addition of two major pressurized laboratories and some lengthy repairs. But 2009 will see the station get its fourth and final solar array wing in February; a "porch" on Japan's Kibo laboratory in May for space-exposure experiments; a crew doubled in size to six by midsummer, and the first visit of Japan's robotic H-II Transfer Vehicle in September.

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/Crew122908.xml&headline=Big Year In Store For Space Station

NASA - Pictures of jobs well done in 2008 (slideshow)

http://www.tgdaily.com/slideshows/index.php?s=200812291&p=1

Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective..
"... whether or not they wear purity rings or make other pledges that they will protect their virginity, more than half of American teenagers become sexually active before they get married."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/28/AR2008122801588.html?hpid=topnews