By far the coolest thing I get to write about while covering the Bay Area is NASA, the Johnson Space Center and the aerospace industry. While every newspaper journalist has reported on local government, school boards, transportation and other common beats, the future of spaceflight is a fun and unusual topic the geeky side of me is elated to cover.

Government, education, economic development and aerospace industry leaders are all excited about Houston’s role in where aviation goes from here, and, if you will pardon the pun, the sky is the limit. Supersonic and hypersonic jets capable of quietly flying at thousands of miles per hour are in development now, and officials think this technology is less than a decade away from commercial viability.

Of course, ticket prices for rides on such jets will be—again, pardon the pun—astronomically high at first, but so were normal commercial jet flights when they first went on the market. Who knows? Maybe I will live long enough to afford a jet ride out of Houston into the lower reaches of space.