Hi All,

To anyone who read this month's (June, 2008) Popular Mechanic's article entitled "The New Moon Race", I just wanted to make a couple of edits.

Though we were only listed (as were 8 out of the 10 teams included in the article) in the matrix on the third page of the article, and were not interviewed or quoted for anything in the text of the article, it was good, I suppose, to be in it.

However, we needed to clarify errors made in the matrix on Team LunaTrex.

First of all, we are not a "Public/Private Team". Public infers government involvement. We are purely a private team, and not open to the public, nor are we publicly traded, nor do we have any government involvement at all, nor plan to, as yet.

Secondly, my (Pete's) disembodied head sits on the matrix, showing me wearing sunglasses. We provided them with other pictures, but they went and took this from the AP (assuming they got permission, mind you), possibly to drive a point...

This picture was taken of me in 2004 by the Associated Press for a national article (which was on CNN also), which showed me looking at a bolt of artificial lightning flashing about 18 inches from my face. I don't normally wear sunglasses indoors, or for photo shoots, but this picture didn't include the lightning. It seemed to point to and illustrate the comment about the Team being led by "maverick defense contractor, Pete Bitar".

While I loved the movie Top Gun, and while I've been called a maverick in the media in the past, it belies the seriousness of our efforts and also belies the professionalism of the space industry experts that have joined me in this quest. We have some of the best of the best on our team, and I am incredibly proud to be among them.

If the point of the article was to reflect opinion about the seriousness of each team, and cast certain teams in certain lights, it succeeded. I'm hopeful that the quality of the publicity for GLXP teams improves across the board, shining deserved light on the teams in an unbiased way.

We look forward to the next articles that come out. My understanding is that Space.com is going to run a set of articles on the GLXP sometime soon; stay tuned.

Clear skies!