RTFA: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080411/sc_nm/olympics…

BEIJING Reuters - China is preparing an arsenal of rockets and aircraft to protect the Olympics opening ceremony from rain, hoping to disperse clouds before they can drench dignitaries at the roofless “birds nest” stadium.

Wow, who knew rain was more dangerous than rockets

RTFA: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Boeing_Patent_…

Industry sources have told SpaceDaily that the patent is regarded as legal “trite”, as basic physics has been rebranded as a “process”, and that the patent wouldn’t stand up to any significant level of court scrutiny and was only registered at the time as “the patent office was incompetent when it came to space matters”.

SES has decided not to pursue any legal options against Boeing and wants to collect their insurance policy payout. However, their insurance company was not being fully briefed on the options and at this time is planning to pay the policy out.

Separately, another company has approached the insurers about buying the spacecraft for salvage using the lunar flyby option. Initially, the insurers were surprised as they had no knowledge of this option and suggested that they contact SES Americom directly.

While most satellite insurance policies allow the insurer to take ownership of a satellite when they pay a claim, they rarely do this. The default is instead to leave “ownership” with the operators, who are then legally obliged to safely deorbit the satellite or move the satellite into a GEO parking orbit.

At this stage SES Americom is working with a major US space consultancy to rapidly deorbit the satellite - as early as this Friday. SpaceDaily has been told that various attempts by third parties to buy the satellite have been ignored and both parties are “eager to splash the satellite within days”.

This reads like science fiction… and like future-nostalgic reminiscing about good old 2008.