After George Bush announced to the world back in 2004 that the US would aim to send a manned mission to Mars, the underfunded yet persistant Russian space agency (the Lavochkin Association) began dusting off old plans of their own, with a view to reclaiming the crown of remote robotic planetary exploration. Despite the fact that many of the Association’s staff are paid little more than retail cashiers, they are confident that their unfortunately-named probe ‘Phobos-Grunt’ will fulfil its mission to land on one of the moons of Mars and bring soil samples back to Earth.

Evidently wishing not to be outdone by their southerly neighbours, the Canucks are climbing aboard the new space tourism bandwagon. A US/Canadian outfit called PlanetSpace is planning a spaceport, which is provisionally located in Nova Scotia and set cost an estimated $200million. PlanetSpace plan to do service and supply runs to the ISS, as well as suborbital tourist launches, all to be powered by ethyl alcohol rockets in light of environmental concerns.

SellABand (unfortunate name, that) is a potentially interesting new music publishing model. If you’re a band, you publish your demo music on SellABand’s site. Listeners who like your music can plunk down $10 for a “part”. When 5,000 parts have been sold, SellABand spends the money to hire you a studio and a producer and publish your music in a special edition CD (for the listeners who bought parts) and on their site for free. SellABand’s advertising revenue is split, based on a band’s share of download activity on the site, between SellABand, the listeners who bought parts in your band, and you. You also sell CD’s through the site and split the proceeds with the listeners who sponsored you. Perhaps overly complex, but could do a good job of enabling fans and bands to make it happen.

David Dean has posted a list of free sources for science fiction online.