Space, the final frontier....Inshallah....

Reading through the Saudi paper al Sharq al Awsat, we learn of plans to launch not one, but two Saudi satellites into orbit by 2011. Apparently this is is a joint project with an American university. The fact that Iran just launched its own satellite into space has NOTHING to do with this entirely coincidental development; Saudi Arabia has always been a beacon of scientific learning and discovery. On a purely speculative note, wouldn't it be amazing if the reason for all this joint space cooperation is because someone has convinced the Saudis to pay a lot of money to fund NASA? The last I heard, the US government was looking to cut back their funding so I wonder how their mission of exploring space and studying moon rocks is faring with what could be the worst recession in living memory.