Actor Dennis Quaid is starring in a new movie, but he is eyeing a much higher vantage point, according to one report. Quaid, a pilot, tells the World Entertainment News Network that “The ultimate would be to fly in space”. The $200,000 ticket price for Virgin Galactic is “almost getting to be reasonable”, he said, but wants something more than a simple suborbital hop at that price: “They should have at least two orbits with an in-flight meal and all that stuff.”

I didn’t receive the original email blast from Scaled Composites about the health of Burt Rutan, but, like no doubt many readers, wanted to pass along my best wishes for a speedy recovery to him after undergoing open heart surgery earlier this month. Rutan was suffering from something called “constrictive pericardium”, which meant he suffered from “extreme fatigue” for five months—so much so, he tells MSNBC, that his participation in the Virgin Galactic design unveiling in New York last month was “real dicey”. (I last saw Rutan in person six months ago when he spoke at the Univ. of Alabama; at that time he appeared healthy.)