Let Me Dance Among the Stars: British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic will place its headquarters and mission control center in New Mexico, per an agreement announced Tuesday. The company plans to build a $200 million spaceport on 27 acres of state land in the southern portion of New Mexico, from which it will send paying tourists into space. According to news service reports, the company expects to make the first flight by early 2009.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III chaired a China-focused military briefing Oct. 27, part of a biweekly series of briefings with senior military commanders about China’s growing threat in the wake of an orbital hypersonic weapon test that elicited public worries from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “What we…