• We quoted views on civilian space flight safety held by Gérardine Goh, who is legal counsel with the German Aerospace Centre and would like us to make clear that these views are entirely her own and are not necessarily shared by the organisation (1 November, p 24). She, with colleagues in the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, is researching and advocating issues of space safety – rather than pressing the UN to legislate, as we said.
• In a moment of diffuse concentration, we wrote of “a draft law designed to diffuse conflict over water” (8 November, p 8). The aim of the draft is of course to defuse, as is that of this.
• We suggested that if there were a second star in our solar system it would “banish darkness” on Earth (23 August, p 40). In fact it would still be dark about a quarter of the time. And the planets of 55 Cancri are not “circumbinary”: they orbit the larger of the two stars.
