Great home made pictures by a space enthusiast. 
Robert was trying to take aerial photos of his house, using a remote control helicopter. When that didn’t work, he looked into high altitude balloons – the kind used for weather observation. He has since sent up 12 of the balloons, each toting a cheap digital camera, taking incredible photos and video capturing 1,000 miles of the Earth’s surface. http://www.motherboard.tv/2010/3/30/one-man-s-diy-space-photography-has-nasa-calling Now that is commitment to a hobby.
Scientists have analyzed data from the Mini-SAR radar on India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft to discover nearly 600 million tons of water ice locked in permanently shadowed craters near the moon's north pole.
Lunar water is a resource of inestimable value. Reserves of this volume would be enough to support a permanent colony on the moon and could even be used as fuel for missions to Mars, the asteroids, and beyond. Water is the key to the exploration and exploitation of natural resources in space. Finding this much water on the moon is unbelievably great!
Neat little rankings of the commercial space race going on right now. No big surprise in the top two: Ranking the Players In the Private Race to Space They show them in a neat little gallery, but if you just want the quick list here it is. - Virgin Galactic
- SpaceX
- Orbital Sciences Corporation
- Scaled Composites (How is this different than Virgin Galactic)
- Masten Space Systems
- Armadillo Aerospace
- Planetary Society
- Bigelow Aerospace
- XCOR Aerospace
- Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos)
- Ad Astra Rocket Co.
- Interorbital Systems
- ARCA
- Da Vinci Project / The Dreamspace Group
- Space Adventures
My opinion is Number 4 is a repeat of Number 1 and once you get down to number 10 the quality of companies drops off a bit. Also can Space Adventures really be on this list, it is really just a travel agency…
Last night, amid rain, wind, and near freezing temperatures, Virgin Galactic unveiled space ship two. The rocket plane, strapepd to the White Knight Two launch plane, was roled out on the runway before fans, future space travelers, and Arnold "the governator" Schwarzenegger.
And, something else amazing happened to the space tourism industry, competition! While Armadillo continues to develop their suborbital space tourism vehicle, Blue Origin has begun flights on their VTOL rocket which could also carry space tourism passengers. Space tourism competition is really heating up. And, of course, nothing drives inovation like competition. Within a decade we coudl see real, viable comercial space flight. Rock on!
Commercial Spaceflight: All Systems Go An article posted by Buzz Aldrin and 12 other astronauts making a proposal to which I completely agree. Let NASA handle the new space efforts and leave the tried and true road to low earth orbit to the commercial companies. We wholeheartedly agree. NASA should put its unique resources into pushing back the final frontier and not in repaving the earth-to-orbit road it cleared a half century ago. Commercial human spaceflight is not competitive with NASA. It is complementary.
Space.com A tool bag lost by a spacewalking astronaut last year met its fiery demise in Earth's atmosphere Monday after months circling ever closer to the planet.
Dateline: Kiruna, Sweden.  The northernmost city in Sweden, home of the famed Icehotel, will now be the European launch point for Virgin Galactic.
So why there? Outside of Kiruna is the rocket range and research center: Esrange Space Centre. "We hope Kiruna will become Europe's main launch pad for the tourist flights," Bergstroem-Roos said, pointing out that the town located some 145 kilometres (90 miles) north of the Arctic Circle has been home to the Esrange Space Centre since 1966. Article link: breitbart.com: Space tourism to take flight in 2012
In the spirit of the new year, I have compiled a list of the 10 coolest topics covered last year in the Deep Space Report - 3 planets orbiting other stars were imaged, Fomalhaut, HR8799, and beta pictoris, in that order.
- The discovery of an ancient shoreline provided proof that Mars once had an ocean of liquid water in the northern hemisphere.
- Phoenix detected actual snow falling from the sky on Mars.
- Armadillo Aerospace wins Lunar Lander Challenge level 1, and also announces partnerships with the Rocket Racing League to provide rocket motors for their racers, and also work on a joint venture to provide commercial space tourism flights.
- India successfully sends Chandrayaan-1 to the moon.
- China send's it's first moon probe too, Chang'e-1
- Catalina Sky Survey program detected a meteorite before impact.
- A spectacular fireball meteorite was seen over Alberta, Canada.
- Cassinni makes 2 flybys of Encleadus, the first passing within just 16 miles of the tiny moon.
- NASA tests out several new lunar rover designs, including ATHLETE and PILOT
I apologize for the missing reports over the holidays, but not much has been happening anyway Luna The US DoD has proposed the idea of using Atlas and Delta rockets as a platform for launching manned missions to the moon. Both rockets have been in service for decades and have a proven flight record, but neither is "man rated". They have never been used to launch astronauts that is. however, the safety record has been proven by hundreds of successful launches, and they are probably as safe as or safer than the space shuttle. the big advantage would be cost. With such a long program history, NASA could save as much as $3.4 billion over the proposed Ares program. Also, a NASA instrument on Chandrayaan-1 has detected the signature of iron bearing minerals on the moon. This is mildly exciting. lunar materials containing aluminum and titanium are already known, this discovery may add iron as a potential material available from resources on the moon. Mars Lets give it up for the little rovers that could as they celebrate their 5th anniversary on Mars. As I'm sure everyone remembers like it was just yesterday, Spirit landed on 1/3/04, and Opportunity landed 1/24/04. Those little robots have surely exceeded all expectations of success by a wider margin than any other program in NASA history. Of course there is Voyager, still going, but voyager was DESIGNED to last decades, not mere months. The MER program is a shining example of success that should be used as a model for future NASA programs. Jupiter University of Arizona Professor Richard Greenberg has published a new book on his thin ice theory for Europa, and the implications this has for the possibility of life there. The more conventional theory is that, if Europa has an ocean at all, it is covered by a thick mantle of ice, tens of kilometers thick. Greenberg's thin ice theory, which is supported by his analysis of surface features on the moon, is the ice is no more than a few kilometers thick. This would allow more flexing and cracks which reach the surface, allowing material to be exchange more easily between the surface and the deep ocean. The theory also supports periodic melt troughs, where the liquid ocean would be exposed directly to the surface. Saturn According to Dr. Rosaly Lopes, new data collected from Titan supports the theory that the moon may have active cryovolcanoes. Human Space Flight MIT has released a comprehensive independent review of NASA's future plans for manned space exploration. MIT's review actually calls for a much more aggressive program of exploration, with more international cooperation, clearer stated goals, and less pressure on NASA to do more with less. Deep Space Report 1.12
 26 days.
...this could also make trips into orbit agonisingly slow, adding nine days or more to a climb that – at several hundred kilometres per hour – might already take about 15 days. How many games of pinochle can you play on your way up the elevator? Space elevator trips could be agonisingly slow
The top news this week is the golf ball astronaut Alan Shepard launched from the moon in 1971 has been located more than 200 million miles away, on Meridiani Planum 
Actually, this appears to be close to the largest, if not the largest example of a Martian "blueberry", or hematite spherule. They have been found in various sizes, usually 5 mm or less in diameter. But some extraordinarily specimens have been found in various pancam images, this one appears to be more or less the size of a golf ball. MSL delayed 2 years NASA has finally admitted defeat in getting MSL off the ground on time, the only alternative is to slip the schedule nearly 2 years to the next launch opportunity. That sucks, and it's going to add $400 million to the overall cost, just for the schedule slip. Possibility of Life on Mars? In a recent experiment, scientists have determined that certain organisms can survive in a sporified form for an indefinite period of time on Mars, provided they are buried under the surface by as little as 4 cm. In this form, life could survive for tens of thousands of years through Mars' climactic cycles, perhaps remaining dormant until the planet warms slightly, just enough to support thin films of liquid water for even a few years, and then go dormant again. The experiment exposed earth bacteria to accelerated martian conditions, including both the daily temperature fluctuations, near vaccum, and intense UV radiation. The martian soil simulant was sterilized down to a depth of 4cm, but sporified bacteria below 4cm were preserved. Some bacteria have been shown to survive for millions of years trapped inside salt crystals on earth. Sporified martian bacteria could survive just as long, waiting for climatic changes to bring water and life back to the long dormant planet. On much shorter timescales, sporified bacteria may remain dormant and become active seasonally. For example, some locations on Mars, such as areas of the Hellas basin, may support liquid surface water for a few days per year. Bacteria could survive under these conditions, remaining dormant in the soil for the rest of the year. Life in this form could follow annual cycles, not unlike desert life in places like Death Valley on earth. HiRISE releases new high res 3-D images More than 300 new high resolution stereo anaglyphs have been published on the HiRISE web site. These are the highest resolution stereo images of Mars ever released, and among the highest resolution images period. You need those goofy red blue glasses to see them properly, but the effect is impressive. They also have the stereo pairs as individual images. I have found a simple blink animation, alternating the left and right images at about a 500 ms time interval, works very well, better than 3-D glasses, and doesn't require the glasses. It takes a little time to do that, I'll see if I have time to publish some of the images in that format. 
Deep space Report 1.10
Mars Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Russian Space Agency have announced plans to develop a joint mission to Mars. The mission plans to land a spacecraft on Phobos and sample the surface material directly. This may confirm the presence of water ice on Phobos. Jupiter A sophisticated computer simulation has predicted that Jupiter may have solid core of water ice and other rocky materials. NASA and ESA have also announced plans to work on a joint mission to Jupiter's moons Europa and Ganymede, the Europa-Jupiter System Mission (EJSM). Saturn Measurements of Encleadus' mysterious plumes have shown the material is moving at 1360 mph. It is difficult to imagine how to achieve this velocity without liquid water near the surface of the tiny moon. Alberta Meteorite Update The spectacular fireball seen last week over Alberta, Canada has now been estimated to have been an approximately 10 ton asteroid which entered the atmosphere at approximately 14 km/s. This is relatively slow, compared to an average velocity of around 20 km/s. Several security cameras recorded the event. Dr. Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario hopes to find as many video recordings as possible, as this will help to determine the original orbit of the asteroid. Although no fragments of the actual meteorite have yet been recovered, it is likely that some will be found. Only 9 other meteorites have been associated with a known orbit prior to impact. With any luck this will be the tenth. Noting that meteorites have substantial commercial value, under Canadian law, meteorites are the property of the landowner of the property on which they are found. Deep Space Report 1.09
Luna Britain is now planning it's own moon mission, MoonLITE, focusing on studying moon quakes. Water on Mars There were two exciting discoveries this week related to water on mars. First, they have identified what seems to be an ancient shoreline, indicating an ocean once existed that would have been as large as the Mediterranean, and possibly even larger. The other, perhaps more exciting, discovery is buried glacial ice in Hellas basin, between 35 and 60 degrees latitude. The ice is buried by less than a meter of rock and debris, which acts as an insulating blanket, otherwise the ice would have sublimated long ago. The ice containing deposits, which appear as gently sloping aprons at the bases of taller features, have puzzled NASA scientists since they were first observed in the early 70s. Conclusive evidence from the ground penetrating radar from MRO show these aprons are in fact made of ice. Opportunity Continues on to Endeavour Hortonheardawho has posted some awesome new color panoramas from Oppy's journey to Endeavour. They've set several new daily records, But what's amazing is the consistent distance they are putting on. Sol 1704 
Sol 1707 
JPL has also published an updated an updated traverse map from sol 1713. Be sure to check it out at full res. This is a terrific example or MRO's MOC capabilities. Image resolution could easily pick out even smaller boulders or ejecta debris, although I haven't spotted any. I think the JPL page links to the source image from MRO. 
MSL site list narrowed NASA has narrowed down the list of candidates for the MSL landing site to 4: 
- Holden Crater - another crater, similar to Gusev Crater, with and outflow channel, containing alluvial fans, flood deposits, possible lake beds and clay-rich deposits.
- Mawrth Vallis - contains exposed layers containing at least two types of clay.
Deep space The Dawn spacecraft has shut down its ion motor and will cruise unpowered until February next year, when it will have an encounter with Mars. Dawn is on schedule for an encounter with Vesta in 2011 and Ceres in 2015. French astronomers have used the ESO' Very Large Telescope to image yet another extra solar planet, beta pictoris. Beta Pictoris is a very young star, about 12 million years old, about 70 light years away. The planet has approximately 8 times the mass of Jupiter and orbits at the distance Saturn orbits our sun. I think this is perhaps the most earth like solar system yet imaged. A recent study has detected cosmic rays which appear to be originating from a nearby source, perhaps 300 light years away or less. The high energy electrons are encountering the earth at such high velocity that they could not have traveled much further than that without losing more velocity. However, the detector is not capable of accurately determining what direction the electrons are coming from, so we really have no idea where the source is, just that it must be relatively nearby. China as a space threat The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission issued a report to congress which, among other things, warns of China's space program as a potential military threat. What does this have to do with deep space? Well, the biggest space program in US history, Apollo, was a military program. It was a response to a perceived threat by the USSR, and a demonstration of the US space capability. In particular it was a demonstration of the US ICBM capability. What, Saturn V was just a giant ICBM? Yes it was, why do you think NASA built a disposable launch vehicle? You don't reuse ICBMs. And, China has stated that there long term goal is to establish a permanent base on the moon. Now, if this is seen as a potential military threat, we must follow suit and build our own moon base with equal or greater capability. Of course we also have plans for a permanent moon base, but the plans of NASA can shift from year to year. With out a "guns and butter" justification for the expense of such a program, it would be likely to lose support eventually, especially when the enormous cost of a moon base turns into a line item on this year's congressional budget talks. Whether or not there is a real military threat isn't really the point. The point is there is a congressional report which at least mentions this as a possibility, and that should be all the support we need. Deep Space Report 1.8
Cool Stuff Check out this interactive map of nearby stars: 
Luna Chandrayaan-1 has begun remote sensing of the moon, and has also landed a remote probe, although apparently the probe had a "hard landing" that "terminated it's functioning." But, let's focus on the success, they DID land the probe on the moon! NASA has also tested some more lunar rover designs, and more importantly two separate ISRU methods to extract oxygen from lunar material. This is a really big deal, not only can lunar oxygen be used to breath, it also makes up the bulk of most rocket propellants. Future missions to the moon might use lunar oxygen as propellant for a return trip. Mars Spirit has been caught in a dust storm which has drastically reduced the amount of solar power generated by its solar panels. NASA has commanded the rover to take some severe power saving measures, including shutting down the heater to the thermal imager. The thermal imager is susceptible to cold, so shutting down the heater may cause permanent damage to the imager. As of last Friday, Spirit was low on power but still communicating with NASA. Deep Space ESA's Ulysses spacecraft is about to end it's 14 year mission to study the sun. Its RTG power generator is beginning to wane, and soon it will lose the ability to operate. Launched in 1990, Ulysses first traveled to Jupiter and used a gravitational assist to launch into an orbit which took it over the poles of the sun. It has orbited the sun 3 times since then, it was originally designed for a 5 year mission. Beyond Amazing images of 2 extrasolar planetary systems were published last week. A Jupiter size planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut, 25 light years away,
and an amazing 3 planet system around HR8799, some 140 light years away. 
Deep space Report 1.7
Luna
NASA tests new rover designs
NASA tested a bunch of new lunar rover designs last week in Black Point, Arizona, including ATHLETE, a 6 leg rover design, and the Small Pressurized Rover Concept vehicle. This video sort of rambles a bit but watch the whole thing, there are so many rovers being tested at times it looks like a scene from Star Wars.
Chandrayaan-1
Chandrayaan-1 has sent back pictures and also adjusted it's orbit for the 4th time. The orbit now takes the spacecraft 267,000 km from the earth. The next maneuver should take the spacecraft all the way to the moon.
Google Lunar X-Prize
In a bizarre twist, NASA has announced it will collaberate with Odyssey Moon Ventures LLC to compete for the Google Lunar X Prize.
Shakleton Crater may be xenobiotic deep freezeIn an interesting article last week,
Joop Houtkooper presented an interesting paper at Europlanet's latest Planetary Science Congress last week. He presented the idea that permanently shadowed parts of Shackleton Crater near the moon's south pole should in theory act as an interplanetary deep freeze. In particular, ancient meteor impacts on earth and even mars could have expelled debris into interplanetary space. Some of this debris almost certainly would have been collected on preserved deep inside Shackleton Crater. In fact, over the billions of years of history of life on earth, it is very likely that, at the very least, some samples of very early life on earth would have been preserved on the moon in this way. It is interesting to note that the same thing is true for Mars. If at any point in the past microbial life existed on Mars, those microbes would also have been expelled and transported to the moon in the same way. Although Mars is obviously much further way from the moon, it is also nearer the main asteroid belt and would have experienced more frequent large impacts.
What is unique about the moon is it is not geologically active. We do not have samples on the surface of the earth which would preserve evidence of life on earth from the time when we believe the origin of life occurred, because the earth is a very active place. that geologic record has been erased billions of years ago. However, this record may still be preserved hidden in the shadows of Shackleton Crater.
Mercury
Moving at the speed of interplanetary science, the MESSENGER team has finally released some amazing new images and science results from the recent flyby. Among other things, they have discovered a mysterious blue material on the surface of Mercury.
Mars
Once again, MER-B Opportunity is roving across the seemingly endless sands of Meridiani, on its way to Endeavor Crater (image credit hortonheardawho)
On a sadder note, the sun is setting on the Phoenix lander. It has already entered safe mode at least once due to low power, and NASA has begun the shutting down systems to try to squeeze the last remaining watts out of the spacecraft.
Deep space Report 1.5
What is a Guelph? Is that the sort-of mediocre evil elf. Half as evil as a Drow? 
"This event was a relatively slow fireball that made it far into the Earth's atmosphere," said Phil McCausland, a postdoctoral researcher in planetary science at Western. "Most meteoroids burn up by the time they hit an altitude of 60 or 70 kilometers (37 to 44 miles) from the ground." - LiveScience.com ...and because you asked for it, here is where Guelph is. 
Hat Tip: Scooter over at GadgetGrid.com
A Danish company, Copenhagen Suborbitals, announced plans to build yet another rocket which will take passengers to the edge of space at 100km. Currently they are testing just a rocket motor. Now, commercial space tourism is GREAT, but did they see what companies like Scaled Composites (Burt Rutan, space ship one, Virgin Galactic, those guys) and even Armadillo Aerospace have already accomplished? On the other hand, there design is soooo simple. They say they are going to use epoxy as a propellant and LOX as an oxidizer, but I don't see why you couldn't use NOx.
Looks like any idiot willing to blow them selves up could build one. 
Sounds like a mythbusters episode to me. Good luck!
There is not much to report form Luna and beyond this week. The big news was really Chandayaan-1. Other than that, the ESA announced they are delaying ExoMars again, Iowa State Research Center sponsored a symposium for asteroid deflection, and there was some interesting news on using a form of waterless concrete (made largely from lunar regolith) for construction on the moon. And, of course, Armadillo Aerospace won the LLC level 1.
There was also a NY times article on the possibility of ice on the moon. In a new study published in Science, infrared images of permanently shaded areas inside Shakleton crater taken by the Japanese SELENE spacecraft were analyzed. Although the temperature of these areas were found to be cold enough for water ice to be stable, infrared spectra of surface material in these areas did not include any ice. However, this does not preclude subsurface ice, even if it is only covered by a few centimeters of dust. In fact, if ice were present, one would expect to find at least a thin covering of moon dust, the moon being an extraordinarily dusty place. So, although ice was not detected directly, I would say the confirmation of the temperature being cold enough for ice to be stable is more of a positive sign than the lack of direct evidence for ice on the surface, which would not be expected anyway.
Here are some gratuitous video links 
After winning the Level 1 LLC, this weekend, Armadillo Aerospace's John Carmack gave an interesting interview. In the category of what's next for Armadillo, they are obviously working on the Rocket Racing League racers. They are also planning to start work on the new suborbital space tourism vehicle. This is going to allow them to do some larger run fabrication of the new rocket motors. They've also been working with NASA on a LOX / Methane rocket motor. It turns out getting combustion with methane is allot harder than they expected, which is counter intuitive because it is a gas and should combust more easily. The problem is both the LOX and methane are very very cold to start with so it turns out to be harder to get them to begin combustion. They are hoping to start work on the crewed version for commercial flights right away. "Megapixel" will essentially be a scaled up version of the mod/quad design. It will probably have 8 fixed mount motors and achieve attitude control by adjusting thrust to each motor, which will be offset slightly from each other. The crew cabin will eventually be a fully transparent sphere which holds one or two passengers and offers unobstructed 360 degree views. They are hoping to be able to try an unmanned suborbital test flight next year with existing hardware, and be able to launch manned test flights by 2010. They've also had allot of interest in trying to break the high altitude sky diving record, a so called "space jump" above 120,000 feet. They think they could actually try that next year with existing hardware, but obviously they'd need someone with "the right stuff" to attempt the jump. On the business side, they are hoping to be able to offer flights for $100,000 or less. That is 1/2 what Virgin galactic is asking, but of course the RRL / Armadillo offering is a vertical take off and powered vertical landing. Many people just won't ever be comfortable taking off and landing without wings, so obviously there is plenty of room in the market for both offerings. Things are definitely going well for Armadillo Aerospace. Carmack commented that they are now operating profitably, even without the prize money from winning the LLC, which is just gravy. He also shared some interesting views on different approaches to engineering. Armadillo has always strived to make the engineering process more like software. You try something, it fails, you learn, and make improvements. It is an iterative process that is very hands on. The NASA approach is much more cost intensive, because they spend more time on tests and simulations. Ironically, the goal of the tests and simulations are to save cost, because they idea is the hardware is so expensive you want to learn all you can by doing simulations. But, in the long run, you learn allot more, and learn more cheaply, by building test vehicles and maybe blowing them up occasionally. He says it takes an engineer to build a bridge that will just barely not fall down. The typical NASA approach is to try to engineer the best vehicle possible, but if you try to build a perfect vehicle it will never happen. That's why the Armadillo approach is so much more effective and less expensive at the same time. As a point in fact, before yesterday's launch they went at the vehicle with a hack saw, removing several pounds of extra structure they probably didn't need in the first place. Of course they didn't need to lose the weight, they had plenty of fuel to spare at the end, but the point is this is experimental science. Every flight is a test flight, and you always learn and adapt as you go. As a closing comment, he said once they have the suborbital platform essentially as a solved problem, they will be able to scale it up to deliver a payload to the 100 km mark. From there they could easily launch a LOX / methane second stage to possibly achieve orbit and deliver a sputnik like test platform into orbit.
More breaking news, it is not yet official, but Armadillo successfully completed the second 90 second test flight to win the LLC level 1. Congratulations Armadillo! What was amazing is on the second flight, the launch aborted twice, and they just restarted the count immediately. I think the first abort was an ignition failure, and the second abort was a combustion failure. Looks like they got ignition and then had a flameout. PS, you heard it here first UPDATE: It IS official, Armadillo won the level 1 challenge! Here is the video of just the winning flight: Here is a longer video of the whole level 1 competition with Peter Diamandis:
Breaking news, at the Northrup Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson announced a private partnership between the Rocket Racing League and Armadillo Aerospace to offer commercial space flights from Spaceport America at Las Cruces, New Mexico. Test flights will begin next year. The concept vehicle will have 8 rocket motors, using the same engine developed by Armadillo for the LLC, with a full 360 degree view crew cabin (looks like either glass or polycarbonate sphere). Rocket Racing League CEO Peter Diamandis also made an appearance.
Mercury
After it's successful encounter with Mercury a couple of weeks ago, Messenger has increased it's velocity relative to the sun to 63 km/s. This is the second fastest NASA spacecraft in history, the fastest being Helios 2 back in the 70s.
Earth
The IBEX spacecraft was launched on a Pegasus rocket last week. Pegasus is an aircraft launched rocket. IBEX's mission is to observe the boundary of our sun's magnetosphere. IBEX will use it's own solid rocket boosters to achieve a 100,000 mile earth orbit before beginning the science phase of it's mission.
Also, 9 teams (including Armadillo Aerospace, see RRL article last week) will compete in Northrup Grumman $2 million Lunar Lander Challenge this week. Here is a video from last year:
Mars
New observations by ESA's Mars Express spacecraft have been used to more accurately measure the mass and density of Phobos. With a revised density of 1.85 g/cc, which is significantly lower than the density or Martian rock at 2.7-3.3 g/cc, the conclusion is Phobos is most likely a rubble pile. It is also likely that the mass of Phobos contains significant quantities of water ice, which of course has a density of 1 g/cc. Of course, it would be nice to obtain a sample of Phobos, and a Russian mission planned to launch next year may do exactly that. However, with Russia's less than spectacular success record with missions to Mars, I would not bet on seeing those samples return to earth any time soon.
Opportunity is continuing on it's journey to Endeavour Crater, taking one last lap around Victoria first. Also, a couple of weeks ago, on sol 1671, Oppy acquired this panorama (assembled by Hortonheardawho)
Saturn
After the spectacular encounter with Enceladus last week, Cassini has still not posted any details or results from the encounter. They did post some raw images from 5000km+, but I was hoping for some extreme closeups. So far the hihgest res images are these images from August, at 545 km:
Now that is darn good, you can practically see the polar bears and leopard seals lounging on the ice, but if they got better images in the most recent encounter I'd love to see them.
Deep Space
A new comet was discovered last week, w00t!
Deep Space Report 1.3
Near Earth Space
For the very first time, our extensive near earth object tracking program has detected an impactor before it hit the earth. Well, not long before it hit the earth, and it wasn't much of an impactor. Asteroid 2008 TC3, estimated to measure between 3 and 15 feet in diameter, burned up in the atmosphere over Sudan on 10/7 at 2:46am GMT. The really cool part is the asteroid actually was detected prior to impact, and being a relatively small chunk of rock, this was quite a feat!
Image Credit: Richard Kowalski and Ed Beshore, Catalina Sky Survey
The asteroid was initially discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson Arizona. The final orbit shows 2008 TC3 was both a Mars crosser and also (obviously) and earth crosser.
But, can anyone say invasion from Mars? Maybe, just as a precaution, we should send a team of international investigators to the impact location to check things out. Anyone exhibiting curious behavior or extra limbs should be detained ;-0
But seriously, JPL's Near Earth Object Program posted some nice data on this event:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news159.html
Mercury
On 10/6 Messenger successfully completed the second flyby of Mercury this year. The spacecraft passed within 125 miles of the planet.
NASA update
Latest images
Mars
MSL was nearly cut this week, but then it wasn't. It's gone over budget of course. they've already spent $1.5 billion on the program. I think the real issue is if they do not get enough funding to keep the program on schedule, it will have to slip to the next launch opportunity for Mars, which come about 18 months apart. That would add even more cost which would suck even worse. The project is expected to run at least 30% over budget as is. Status quo really.
Phoenix is desperately trying to get in some more science before the mission ends from lack of sunlight. I have to say that compared to MER, Phoenix hasn't delivered much.
MER continues to be the poster child for the Energizer Bunny on Mars. If they keep going they may have to pick up Energizer as a sponsor because NASA is going to get tired of funding the mission that refused to die.
Saturn
10/9 was a busy busy day for Cassini. The big news was a very close flyby of Enceladus, at a distance of less than 16 miles. But along the way they also passed through the rings and had encounters with Telesto and Janus at 42,000 and 56,000 miles respectively. The encounter was a success. Apparently they have sent back data from the encounter, but none of the really close up images have been posted yet. In addition to acquiring phenomenally high res images of the vents near the south pole, Cassini flew directly through the plumes and sampled them.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press-release-details.cfm?newsID=874
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/index.cfm
Pluto
Almost forgot, 10/15 is going to be the 1000 day aniversary for New Horizons mission to Pluto. Everyone put on a party hat and sing happy birthday new horizons or something like that
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspective.php
Deep space Report 1.2
This website: http://isstracker.com/ is en example of so many technologies and trends in this world, I find it beautiful. But then I'm a geek. - The ISS. I know, I know many people argue it doesn't have a compelling mission beyond just being a space station but I still think it's vital. We are continuing and extending our knowledge about how humans can live, work and build in space.
- Global mapping tools that are now available at our fingertips. Like cell phone cameras, maps.live.com and maps.google.com and mapquest and all the others are now ubiquitous in our world. Remember the Thomas guides to find where you were going?
- Mashups: Information and tools put into the hands of ordinary Joes. Anybody with a modicum of skill can build this site.
- Now we have a 2+2=5 type of equation. And you as a member of the intertubes viewing public have an ISS live tracker system at your fingertips. Think of that. You don't have to be in the control center of NASA to track the space station. You can be in your pajamas, click click click. Oh yeah there she is, over Bermuda.
Cool.
All the news that's fit to print from Luna and beyond!
Luna
Carnegie Mellon University has decided to pursue the $20 million Google Lunar X Prize. http://www.space.com/spacenews/071001_businessmonday_lunarprize.html
The UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has developed a sophisticated x-ray camera for lunar observation. The camera is scheduled to be launched 10/22/08 on the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft - India's first mission to the Moon.
http://www.moondaily.com/reports/X_Ray_Specs_Ready_To_Eye_The_Moon_999.html
Mercury
MESSENGER's second pass by Mercury, a gravitational boost maneuver, is scheduled for 1/14/09. MESSENGER sill pass within 125 miles of the surface, snapping pictures as it goes. Although they are planning to eventually orbit Mercury, the planned trajectory uses many gravitational boost maneuvers to save fuel. They should achieve capture by Mercury in March 2011
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/081001-mercury-flyby-preview.html
Mars
Phoenix
The Phoenix science team held a press conference last Monday. They have discovered calcium carbonate and sheet silicates. These two minerals don't usually form without the presence of liquid water. Calcium carbonate was detected by both TEGA and MECA at 7% or more. In general, evidence of phyllosilicate clays are abundant. MECA lead scientist Michael Hecht commented, "We are seeing smooth-surfaced, platy particles with the atomic-force microscope, not inconsistent with the appearance of clay particles." Extreme dryness of soil might be related to perchlorate prevalence. So far the science team has not detected organics.
Perhaps more exciting, a laser instrument designed to measure the atmosphere has detected actual snow falling on Mars. The snow was detected high in the atmosphere. Similar to dry deserts on earth, This was a "ghost" snow since it evaporated before it reached the ground.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080930/ts_alt_afp/usscienceastronomyspacemars;_ylt=Aq1nxcED8qVFptS5WZdCAfwPLBIF
http://astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2890&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Other Mars news
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has discovered hundreds of small fractures on the surface of Mars which may have served to direct the flow of water through Martian sandstone billions of years ago.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080926-fracture-mars.html
http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/MRO_Reveals_Rock_Fracture_Plumbing_On_Mars_999.html
A new study based on information collected by the ESA's Mars Express Planetary Fourier Spectrometer has come up with an explanation for why Mars' ice caps are slightly offset. Detailed, accurate measurements of wind flow patterns have revealed that the Hellas Basin reroute high altitude winds and force weather systems towards the south pole. This creates a strong low-pressure system in the western hemisphere of Mars, which is responsible for the asymmetry of the southern polar cap.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080929-mm-mars-ice.html
Researchers at the DLR Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin have analyzed images of the Xanthe Terra region of Mars. "For years scientists have been suspecting that the current appearance of the landscape has, in part, been shaped by rivers that cut into the surface," comments Ernst Hauber of the German Aerospace Center. They have concluded that fan shaped sedimentary deposits are the result of flowing and standing water in Mars' ancient past.
http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/The_Ancient_Rains_Of_Mars_999.html
Deep Space
The Dawn mission to Ceres and other minor planets has reached it's first anniversary. Using an advanced ion propulsion system, Dawn has used 67 kg of propellant to produce 1.68 km/s delta V. It is difficult to put this amount of thrust in perspective, but it is a huge improvement over less efficient chemical rockets, and is only the beginning of Dawn's mission.
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Dawn_Reaches_It_First_Anniversary_999.html
F. Marchis, PI, at the SETI Institute and at UC-Berkeley, and P. Descamps from Paris Observatory announced recently the discovery of two moons around the M-type asteroid 216 Kleopatra, the so called "dog bone" asteroid.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20081002/sc_space/twocompanionsfoundneardogboneasteroid;_ylt=AokvI8HNSM.FpcO.QTvy4KqHgsgF
The Kepler planet hunting telescope mission has managed to cut costs and avoid cancellation. The nearly 1 meter Schmidt telescope was designed to scan a large field of stars, searching for earth size planets in potential habitable orbits. The new plan would launch the mission in 2009.
http://www.space.com/spacenews/070716_businessmonday_kepler.html
ESA's Stone-6 artificial meteorite tests if a Martian meteorite could transport living organisms to Earth.
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Stone_6_Artificial_Meteorite_Shows_Martian_Impactors_Could_Carry_Traces_Of_Life_999.html
Deep Space Report 1.1
We need to put this in the propper context. Up until now there have been TWO countries capable of this feat. The United States and Russia. Now China has done so as well. The space walk is a key skill that needs to be tried and learned for any space program to be successful. Many other capabilities that you would expect from a space program are based on this knowledge. Congratulations China,
tags: [ China | CNSA | space]
 Space exploration key to mankind's survival: NASA chief
So in this he agrees with Stephen Hawking. A couple of pretty *froopy thinkers there.
"I can think of no lesser purpose sufficient to justify the difficulty of the enterprise, and no greater purpose is possible." - Michael Griffin
* FROOPY [fru-pee]: 1. adj. An Azlumic word equivalent to cool, awesome, and somewhat neat.
2. adj. An Azlumic word equivalent to sexy or attractive. (from Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy).
Congratulations to Elon Musk and the whole SpaceX corporation. The design, build and launch of a private space operation is truly historic. In many ways it is much more impressive than Spaceship One's double flight to win the xprize.
With this key milestone, Falcon 1 becomes the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to orbit the Earth. - spacex.com
Way to go SpaceX!
Deep Space Report Vol. 1 Issue 1 This is the first installment of a weekly summary of what's happening in solar system exploration. My goal is to include all the news that's fit to print from the moon and beyond. Mars Mars has been a very busy place recently. MER Opportunity is leaving Victoria crater and heading for an even larger crater, Endeavor, 12 km away. This is a very ambitious goal, one which would never have been dreamed of at the begriming of the mission, but the rovers have proven to be two tough little robotic explorers. Steve Squyres, Principal Investigator on the MER team, says with the new driving software JPL uploaded he believes Opportunity can cover up to 100 meters per day easily. On the way to the massive 20 km diameter crater, they hope to find some impact debris which may have been excavated from deep beneath the surface. Studying the ejecta could give them a window into Mars' ancient past. On the way, Opportunity will be guided by ground imagery from HiRISE, the high resolution imager on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. HiRISE can image features as small as 50 cm across. This will allow the MER team to possible identify some impact debris along the way, and navigate the rover to study the debris. By the way, I posted a thread on the Mars Rover Blog forum 4 years ago, suggesting we visit endeavor crater, although at the time I did not realize this was a crater. It's so huge I saw the crater rim in some MOC images and thought it looked like an enormous canyon. Meanwhile, the end is fast approaching the the Phoenix lander in the Martian arctic. Winter will bring a thick layer of water and CO2 ice which will bury the lander, but long before then the dwindling amount of sunlight will cease to provide enough energy to continue with science operations. This means the Phoenix team is in a race against time to collect one more sample of ice. According to Peter Smith, Principal Investigator on the Phoenix science team, soil samples collected by Phoenix do not behave like any of the simulants they worked with prior to launch. The soil particles seem to be small enough to fit through the sample screen, but they still get stuck. The particles appear to be sticking to the screen which was designed to prevent larger particles from entering the sample and clogging the mechanism. Obviously this has been very frustrating for the science and engineering teams. They have already obtained one small sample of ice, but they want to get one more sample of a high concentration ice deposit before the mission ends. Saturn Cassini is sponsoring a scientist for the day competition for high school students. Sounds like fun!
For a quick news blurb level of info go here: Solar wind weakest since beginning of space age - Breitbart.com For an in depth look at the issue go here: Solar System's Protective Shield is Weakening; Solar Wind Velocity at Record Low - Universe Today The Ulysses space probe has been busy. The latest reports show the level of solar wind to be at its lowest level since accurate reports began half a century ago. 
Ulysses' orbit 2002-2008
There are some far ranging repercussions to this, some potentially good, some potentially bad. Most not fully understood. - The solar wind creates the Heliosphere. If the solar wind is weaker then the Helioshpere will be smaller and weaker which would allow more cosmic rays into the solar system. All things being equal we want less cosmic rays coming in, but the overall impact is unknown.
- The lessening of the solar wind will cause less drag on satellites and therefore allow them to stay in orbit longer. Weird but true. This reduces cost, potentially by a lot. How much does one more day in orbit save an agency or company with a satellite there? One more hour? Multiplied by how many satellites?
- Rich's plan to create a solar wind powered spaceship has reached a snag.
- ?Global warming? - no idea. My opinion with ZERO data to back it up is that, again everything else being equal, a reduction in solar wind will cause a cooling of some sort on the earth.
Heliosphere - courtesy wikicommons.
 China counts down to Thursday space launch
In October 2003, China became the third country to put a man in space with its own rocket, after the former Soviet Union and the United States. It sent two more astronauts on a five-day flight on its Shenzhou VI craft in October 2005.
As an aside, the China National Space Administration has a pretty crappy website...just sayin.
Update: launched.
Very odd and strangely beautiful. http://www.semiconductorfilms.com/root/Brilliant_Noise/BNoise.htm Brilliant Noise takes us into the data vaults of solar astronomy. After sifting through hundreds of thousands of computer files, made accessible via open access archives, Semiconductor have brought together some of the sun's finest unseen moments. These images have been kept in their most raw form, revealing the energetic particles and solar wind as a rain of white noise. cool.
...why space poop of course. This cute short video actually has one of the most succinct explanations of how a space toilet works.
Get rich quick, in 200 years or less, and explore the solar system while you are at it.
 Former Moon Engine Burns Bright Once More
The RS-18 engine has been resurrected and re-purposed to test fuel mixtures for the new Constellation program. I will take this opportunity to drop in a classic clip of the Apollo 11 launch:
The merits of a cold war in space
Why Mars ROCKS and living an Earth can be a real drag
http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/science_news/4276745.html "On the plus side, the flight of our first stage, with the new Merlin 1C engine that will be used in Falcon 9, was picture perfect," he [Elon Musk] wrote in a message to employees. "Unfortunately, a problem occurred with stage separation, causing the stages to be held together. SpaceX will not skip a beat in execution going forward." eh... ok... Our rocket blew up but its ok, the first half before the explosion was good. um... I want these guys to succeed, heck I want all of the private space companies to succeed, but this can now be called a trend with SpaceX.
 Interesting article over at the Washington Post by Michael Benson: It's All Decked Out. Give It Somewhere to Go.
His premise is we already have a habitable platform built in Earth orbit, the International Space Station, why not give it a little boost and make it an interplanetary spacecraft. Cool idea. The one issue he does not bring up is the radiation exposure on humans outside of the Van Allen belt. The Space Station is not built to protect astronauts against the harsh radiation between planets but relies on the strong protection of the Earth's magnetic field. ...but besides that tiny detail, fairly compelling idea. Reminds me of a cycler as proposed by Buzz Aldrin: Mars cycler, which could sail on the low energy pathways between the planets: Interplanetary Transport Network I vote Do It!
Would you like to see the size of an impact crater depending on the size and make-up of an asteroid? Yes? I knew you would. Go over here and check it out: [Impact Calculator] 
Space Tourism is really here. Get out your checkbook and let's go!
Now Space Adventures has upped the ante by buying not just one seat aboard one of the expendable Soyuz spacecraft that have been the mainstay of the Russian space program since the 1960s, but an entire flight. A professional Russian cosmonaut will command the flight for two ticket-paying passengers some time in late 2011. - Popular Science Article
That's cool.
But if you go visit the Space Adventures website you will see that their ambitions are much higher than a simple "lob" up to the ISS. They have on their agenda a launch to the MOON! Lunar Mission
Price - $100 million
By joining the Space Adventures Lunar Mission you will contribute to the dawning of a new era in space exploration and enter the history books alongside the great explorers of our time.
Awesome!
An interesting read here from Gregg Easterbrook regarding the risks from a major asteroid strike on the Earth. Once thought to be a terribly remote occurrence, it seems the more the astronomers look at the issue the less rare it appears to be. The Sky Is Falling A generation ago, the standard assumption was that a dangerous object would strike Earth perhaps once in a million years. By the mid-1990s, researchers began to say that the threat was greater: perhaps a strike every 300,000 years. This winter, I asked William Ailor, an asteroid specialist at The Aerospace Corporation, a think tank for the Air Force, what he thought the risk was. Ailor’s answer: a one-in-10 chance per century of a dangerous space-object strike. Although from what I can glean from this table: Sentry Risk Table [NASA], there appears to be only one rock that is of any concern at this time. [this one - 2007 VK184] and that will happen June 3rd...2048. The whole point of the first article seems to be that we may be more at risk than we had previously thought and spending some money on asteroid defense systems may be prudent.
Here is a roundup of links regarding the successful landing on Mars of the NASA Phoenix Mars Lander. First of all there are several pictures taken of the lander taken from Mars orbit by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) [now THAT is a mouthfull]. ![img2[4]](http://www.techrivet.com/content/binary/WindowsLiveWriter/BigMarsPhoenixLanderRoundup_92B2/img2%5B4%5D_1.jpg)
Here is one of the Lander with its solar panels extended on the surface.
And this one is remarkable, the HiRISE satellite captured the Lander during decent!
This is remarkable. Stop and think for a moment. We have four eight probes looking at Mars at one time. Scientists are experiencing a golden age of Martian exploration right now. Links:
 So this goes down as one of those "if-you-can-think-of-it, someone-has-already-made-a-website-for-it" things on the Internet.
I wanted to put together a blog entry detailing all the locations of all the space launch facilities in the world and well wouldn't you know it someone has already done so. Check out this link. It's pretty cool. Every Lat|Long listed is linked to a google map (I woulda used maps.live.com but no big deal).
There were two separate articles that are two sides to the same coin that came out this week. On the 12th Popular Mechanics had this article: NASA Makes Space U-Turn, Opening Arms to Private Industry which spoke of NASA changing its policy. NASA officials insist that the budding commercial spacecraft fleet represents the only way the United States can realize its dreams of solar-system conquest on schedule and at an affordable cost. Wow! This is great news, it opens the door to the protagonist[s] in our second article from Aviation Week: SpaceX Claims Crew Transfer Ability By 2011. techrivet.com has reported in the past the business plan that SpaceX and it's principal Elon Musk are pursuing. They want to be the private space delivery system for NASA and other customers. Specifically the only ones capable of the heavy lifting needed to supply the ISS. It appears his plan is well on its way to fruition.
Based on a sub-compact car the little Reliant Robin. Excellent.
 Those pesky Soviets...er Russians and there socialist propoganda...er democratic...er dictatorial...er whatever they've got for a government and its pesky propoganda.
The Buran shuttle itself, otherwise, is quite similar to the U.S shuttle, it is, however, more advanced in the sense that unlike the U.S shuttle it can be piloted unmanned solely by computer, completing even complex two week missions with no-one on board. To summarise... Buran-Energia was in many ways an improvement on the US Shuttle system, with a much more flexible design, even if sadly, it is not the system that is currently in operation. The U.S. Shuttle System Vs. Russia's Buran-Energia heh. eh... Wait. I got lost there somewhere. Doesn't something have to actually DO something before it can be declared better? I mean we are up to Shuttle Mission STS-124. That should count for something don't you think. Throw me a bone here people. There are some awesome pictures over there though. Like this one. 
...static..."This is Major Tom, I'm ready for liftoff, tell my wife I love her."...static.
Sorry about the snark...sorta. More Official Site: Molniya Research Industrial Corporation.
 So I found this link out there on the fabulous intertubes. Teh r0><or (that's translated into "the roxor", [that translates one layer further into "That Rocks!"]). But I digress...where was I again?
Oh yeah space shuttle. Well being the proud owner of a 3rd grader and a 1st grader the first section of the document regarding the Space Shuttle that I drilled into was the how-do-they-go-to-the-bathroom section: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/sts-eclss-wcl.html#sts-eclss-wcs You're welcome. You can go over the rest of the document here: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/ heh: Ironically named software platform upon which to build your Shuttle OS - The software programs are written in HAL/S (high-order assembly language/shuttle) especially developed for real-time space flight applications.
This is fascinating. We have a private Space Race fully underway. Several companies pursuing several different strategies. A couple, like Virgin Galactic, are promoting space tourism with a sub-orbital flight. SpaceX is looking to create ISS capable rockets. Bigelow is looking create space hotels. Heinlein would love it right now. Anyways check out the pictures of the construction of SpaceShip Two. http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4256017.html
On March 19th of 2008, Arthur C. Clarke passed away. Earlier in that day [Earth time] there was an event, an explosion the likes of which has never been witnessed in human history. A powerful stellar explosion detected March 19 by NASA's Swift satellite has shattered the record for the most distant object that could be seen with the naked eye. NASA Satellite Detects Naked-Eye Explosion Halfway Across Universe It was a gamma ray burst of such magnitude that it was visible to the naked eye from across half the universe. Later that evening, the Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Hobby-Eberly Telescope in Texas measured the burst's redshift at 0.94. A redshift is a measure of the distance to an object. A redshift of 0.94 translates into a distance of 7.5 billion light years, meaning the explosion took place 7.5 billion years ago For those following along at home, that is CRAAAZY far away. Well this is all mind-boggling, but now there is an effort to get the event named after Arthur C. Clarke. Why not the “Clarke Event?” Sounds worthy to me.
We gotta keep this telescope operational: Hubble discovers 67 new gravitationally lensed galaxies What is gravitational lensing? Gravitational lensing occurs when light travelling toward us from a distant galaxy is magnified and distorted as it encounters a massive object between the galaxy and us. These gravitational lenses often allow astronomers to peer much farther back into the early universe than they would normally be able to do. Here is a cool video of an Einstein Ring. An Einstein ring is a complete circle image of a background galaxy, which is formed when the background galaxy, a massive, foreground galaxy, and the Hubble Space Telescope are all aligned perfectly. Therein creating a complete circle lense effect. So pretty pictures are nice, but what impact do these discoveries have on astro-physics? Well read on dear surfer, read on. ...they can be used to create a census of galaxy masses in the universe to test the predictions of cosmological models. Basically, since we understand how gravity works here, and we can get estimates of galaxy size out there, we can then compare and contrast and see if gravity remains constant from one side of the visible universe to the other.
Because you just can't get a good cup of Earl Gray in orbit. </rimshot> Actually they voted in 1986 to not participate in human space missions. Sensible and boring...oh wait this is England so that makes sense. http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1084/1 The article's lede is that Britain might be returning to the human spaceflight arena. But if you read through the whole article you will see it is merely an opinion piece without any basis in fact. Looking at a search on the subject, it appears people bemoan the current status of the lack of Englishmen in space every couple of years. Oh well, space free of Englishmen...I guess we'll all keep drinking our squeeze tubes of coffee.
 The much maligned International Space Station keeps moving forward oblivious to its critics. Yesterday the Shuttle Atlantis blasted off with the Columbus Module aboard.
The Columbus module is another science module with the ability to hold 10 racks of scientific experiments. It is growing and finally becoming a significant platform in space. I understand the critics that deride its lack of strategic space location. Its in-between-ness that doesn't help us much to get anywhere else in the solar system. I understand the critics that bring up the ROI on a manned space station and compare it to one of our probe missions like the Mars Rovers. I understand all that. But I believe it provides other benefits: - It teaches us how to construct complicated things in space. What we are learning from the ISS will be crucial for ANY construction we do in space and if you think there won't be much call for that...well I disagree with you.
This has been done over a period of years. From a broad base of contributors spanning continents, languages, governments. It's remarkable.
- We continue to learn how to make livable habitats for humans in space. We need to have this sussed if we are to do any sort of long range trips in the future - Mars anyone?
- There ARE science experiments that can only be performed by humans in space. The trick is identifying them and prioritizing them.
- It is a manned presence in space. Do you realize if things just stumble along like this for another 10 years or so that we might enter an era where mankind will always have a representative in space. And in my opinion there will be increasing numbers of extra-terran humans as the years go on. Too many people want to explore "out there".
I also think it is flippin' cool. And in the grand scheme of government and society expenditures the entire space programs of all the world are hobbies. NASA has had a 12-15 billion dollar budget since the 1980's. Through all that inflationary time, where the value of its dollars has steadily decreased, it has maintained the program and accomplished significant things. It will be fascinating to see if the burgeoning commercial space programs will interface with the existing governmental ones. Stay tuned... Update: The final volume of the ISS is going to be approximately 1000 cubic meters. It is more than half done but for the sake of argument let's say there is 500 cubic meters of livable volume in orbit right now. Well according to the awesome intertubes a standard 40 foot shipping container has 67.5 cubic meters of volume inside it. That means there are the equivalent of 7.5 shipping containers of habitat up there right now and in the end there will be approximately 15 shipping containers of habitable volume (a little less actually but close enough). Now that is amazing. The space boys and girls aren't just whistling Dixie.
 ...Commercial...Space...Station...
Look, I don't mean to keep talking about all this accelerating change and stuff, but I really think we're on the verge of something here. 1. We have Virgin Galactic releasing their spaceship design and preparing for launches at some undetermined time. 2. We have SpaceX developing a new cost effective rocket system with the intent to be the only ISS supportable US based space system at the time the Shuttle fleet is finally grounded. They have already had two launches and have several scheduled this year. And now this news from Bigelow. Bigelow Aerospace and Denver-based United Launch Alliance (ULA) have been working together for over a year studying what it would take to human-rate the Atlas 5 rocket. Industry sources said Bigelow Aerospace is ready to place an order that includes six launches starting in 2011 to begin assembly and early operation of the new station. We live in unprecedented times in so many ways this is merely one more manifestation of the change that is taking place all around us.
This Poll will be closing tomorrow Jan. 31 so get your vote in if you haven't already done so.
 Virgin Galactic unveils SpaceShip Two model.
$200k per trip. What will be the rate of failure? What are you chances of getting blowed up? There are more than 200 people that have already signed up to fly on the SpaceShip Two. I wonder if Branson will fly on one of the early flights. I suppose owing to his nature that he will. I mean I'm all for space travel and all that, but this is the FIRST commercial spacecraft. I'm not sure I'd be all fired up to be part of the early adopter crowd in this space. I think I would prefer to hang back with the pragmatists. Wait until the statistics get boring and the price comes down a bit...juuuust a bit.
I don't see the benefits in this plan: Space leaders work to replace lunar base with manned asteroid missions Well let me re-phrase that, I see the benefits, but I don't think they're compelling enough to make a political argument. Which is the battle the space program needs to always fight. And in general they suck at it. They're engineers, not politicians. What they need to realize is the the whole man-in-space thing is a tough sell to congress. And the only things that spark the political will when it comes to the whole man-in-space thing is big mountaintops to summit. Asteroids are small and pointless. Small foothills in the landscape of space. The MOON! MARS! Those are marketing messages a politician can sell. So my space program engineer side says, "duh, the moon doesn't help us get to Mars much." But my congressional lobbyist side says, "Gimme something I can sell to joe sixpack, 'cause the asteroid belt ain't it." If it was MY space program I'd be spending way more money than 15 Billion, but it isn't mine, and that is the budget and you can't do everything you want and you HAVE to sell the program. Sell the moon, sell Mars! Don't try and sell small rocks with names like numbers...it won't work.
 What do we hope to learn?
Well for starters scientists have never had the opportunity to view an asteroid impact as it is happening. They were able to watch the Shoemaker-Levy comet strike Jupiter, but that is a different type of observation entirely. Here we are talking about a planet strike. There it was an impact into the atmosphere. For the potential Mars impact we have two ground based rovers and an orbiting satellite. For the Jupiter impact...none of that. This is historic. According to the latest data the likelihood of an actual strike keeps going up. From 1-in-75 down to now a 1-in-25 chance, or approximately a 4% chance. LA-Times Story
tags: [ mars | NASA | space]
 They've been too busy to update the website since August. And by busy I mean BUSY!
Report from Elon Musk. Among the many items listed, all of them impressive, is this one that caught my eye. A few months ago, NASA approved the critical design review (CDR) for the initial flight of our Dragon spacecraft on the Falcon 9 rocket booster. F9/Dragon is intended to provide crew and cargo service to the International Space Station after the Space Shuttle retires in 2010, so passing this review was no small matter. Apart from the flight itself, this was arguably the most important mark of progress in the NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. SpaceX is in a unique position. A place and time in space exploration that is unlikely to come again. They have a project plan that aligns with a demand from NASA that no-one else will be able to meet. If they can stay on schedule or near schedule SpaceX could become one of the if not THE private space launch company for the U.S. Wow! Overall, the Falcon 9 program remains on track for demonstration of cargo delivery to the International Space Station by the end of 2009. Go read the whole thing.
 Accelerating change is going on all around us. We see it in entertainment from computer games to movies. We see it in telephones as they keep getting smaller and more feature rich. We see it in cameras and music players and personal GPS devices. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
All of this creeps into our lives and becomes ubiquitous. The changes quickly becomes invisible, expected and, in a weird sort of way, un-important. But accelerating change is also affecting the sciences. For example the hunt for extra-solar planets. The first one discovered was in 1991. Since then there has been a rapid pace of discovery. The bulk of the discoveries essentially done by inference: careful detection of the wobbling of the star around which the planet[s] orbit.  So the point here is that before 1991 we had NO evidence of planets orbiting other stars. In theory we were 100% sure (or so close as to make no difference) that most stars had some planets, but we had no direct evidence. Now there has been over 250 planets identified. But wait that's not all! N ow there is a new technology under development by the Lyot Project, it's goal to create the necessary instrument and associated software to remove starlight from images thus allowing the much fainter planets to be viewed directly. Astronomers will no longer need rely on inference to discover new planets. This would be a remarkable achievement and would allow for a much greater number of planets to be discovered. It would probably also allow for the discovery of Earth like planets and the reading of spectrums from the planets themselves. What would the reactions be if we found a planet with a spectral analysis that matched Earth? Orbit, temperature, water, oxygen?... Would that spur some research into a viable star probe? Just asking... Accelerating change is cool. Sites of interest:
To paraphrase Austin Powers - "Yay Capitalism!" I think there is a remarkable group of efforts going on right now in the world of space technologies. And all of it is being spearheaded by private companies. Not by huge governments. Where NASA is struggling to set a roadmap and plan for hundreds of different missions, here we have small nimble private corporations creating solutions to problems. Here is Armadillo Aerospace attempting to capture the Lunar Lander X-Prize. They're sponsored by nVidia, which to me seems a cool corporate investment. Google is in the act as well. The next couple of decades could be very interesting. I would like to wholeheartedly encourage the multitude of high-tech billionaires that read the Rivet to invest in the emerging private space race. C'mon you already have 3 Ferraris, what's left? How about a moon base. Related articles: SpaceX Flight Review
 So interplanetary travel...cool yes?
How do we do it? Shane Ross gives a compelling speech about the use of LaGrange points as entry and exit points into orbits of planetary bodies. The Interplanetary Transport Network Essentially there are low energy paths that lead from Earth orbit to L1 or L2. There are then low energy paths that lead from L1 to the Earth-Sun LaGrange point called E1 or E2. And from there more low energy paths to the LaGrange points around other bodies in the solar system. He uses the Genesis project as an example of very low energy orbits. The Genesis project used these low energy pathways to make its way from Earth to L2 and from there to E2 where it stayed and sampled the solar winds for 2 years. It then used the reverse of those paths to make its way back to Earth again. Genesis was able to do all this travel while using "...five hundredths of 1% of the fuel that it takes to get a rocket into Earth orbit." That is remarkable. The major point of this whole speech was summed up early: Once you reach Earth's orbit you are halfway to anywhere. Here is a little lighthearted graphic from the speech defining the low energy pathways as a Metro map. 
Transit stop Professor Ross argues that the Lunar L1 location become a gateway station. It's the best location for a manned space station because: travel time is a matter of days from the Earth, launching craft and maintaining craft from that location is cheap, launching from L1 up to E1 or E2 is cheap and therefore exiting the local Earth system to head to other planets is cheap as well. It becomes the closest rest stop on the interplanetary highway. Can we get into orbit cheaply? So then the remaining hurdle is getting into Earth orbit. If we can make that cheap then the entire process of interplanetary travel becomes inexpensive. What technology are we working on right now that might lower the cost of getting payloads into orbit? Space Elevator. Does it feel like we are on the cusp of a convergence here? If we are able to tie these two sciences together, the engineering feat of a space elevator with the comprehensive knowledge of how to navigate the solar system's "currents", what will the bounds of our exploration be? Cheap Planetary Travel It would no longer require huge chemical rockets to get from Earth to Mars or Jupiter or anywhere for that matter. It would be like nudging a stick out into a stream and watching it float on down to the next stop. Only you would be able to nudge the stick back upstream as well, whenever you wanted. Download and watch the video it's compelling.
So I've read this great book just lately called: A Man On The Moon. It's really cool. The author, Andrew Chaikin, does a great job. He interviewed a lot of the astronauts and gives a great telling of the adventure. I highly recommend it. Well one of the subjects that he covers in the book is how the first spacecraft were very much like floating latrines. The capture and disposal of calls-of-nature was a rather crude amalgamation of poorly functioning technology. I was curious how this might have changed over time. I  mean there are now a significant number of women going up into space as well. Some of the technology described in the book about the Apollo mission just wouldn't work. I mean...well...how do they do it? Here is a good article from the BBC that describes it clearly. How do you 'go' in space? So now you know. Thought you might like to have that question answered. Update: What other finalist in the entire list of weblog finalists would have an article on space toilets. Once again techRivet breaks the mold.
Very interesting article over at TCS: [A Modern Day Erie Canal]  The premise being that a functioning space elevator would have a similar impact on space exploration, commerce, migration, and general usage that the Erie Canal had on New York City, New York State, the United states as a whole and in the end the world.
The one point that the author of the piece doesn't hammer home enough is the impact that the Canal had on NY City. Prior to completion of the canal NYC was the smaller, less important city when compared to Boston. Soon after its completion, NYC became the hub of the entire eastern seaboard and never looked back. The Erie Canal alone was what drove NYC to prominence. A completed Space Elevator at the disposal of the US will only solidify the US preeminence in the world economy for the rest of the 21st Century.
In honor of the launch of discovery today and marking the first time in history that a woman has commanded both the space shuttle and the international space station at the same time, here is a great video of a shuttle launch from the viewpoint of the cockpit. Wow. The rockin' and rollin' inside the cockpit is freaky. I also think it is interesting how you can hear it get quieter right after they pass through Max Q (maximum air pressure during launch). Great video.
 And then, why then my dear travelers through this universe of ours, we will have the mind blowing space traveling abilities of the far future. I speak of the awe inspiring year of 2001.
At least that's how science fiction predicted it. Funny we're still driving combustion engine cars and the grand total of people who have been in space is still less than 1 thousand. (I guess that is a lot more than 1, but it is still less than a billion). Now we hear about a "new" set of technologies being refined down under in Oz. [linky] Devised by an international team of 30 space scientists, Luna Gaia would be a 'closed-loop' environment, meaning that almost all material within the system is recycled with very little need for input from outside sources. The current design caters for a team of 12 astronauts under isolation for up to three years. This doesn't sound Earth shattering except it is a skill set that we do need to have fully understood before we can successfully deploy a space colony. Shipping up a couple of cases of macaroni and cheese gets a bit prohibitive at thousands of dollars per pound of payload. A lunar base is unlikely to ever be 100 per cent self-sufficient, said Chartres, because no atmosphere is completely safe from leaks and it could not provide humans with all the nutrients that they need to survive. Luna Gaia...ugh. Why not call it Lunar Colony Test Facility?
 Just an example of accelerating change.
There were rooms and devices in history that could be categorized as planetariums dating back to the 13th century, but the first true planetarium was created in Munich in 1920. [ref. linky] [wikipedia] That planetarium used a metal dome with holes poked in it to project the lights onto a domed ceiling. This technology remained largely unchanged for 60 years. Since then we have seen rapid change. With computer processing power increasing continuously it is now possible to provide dynamic content up onto  the dome. I went to a local planetarium last year and the experience was more like a trip through space than a lecture from an instructor. It was remarkable. But it doesn't stop there. We now have sophisticated programs available to everyone for free that exceed the capabilities of ANY planetarium that was built before the year 2000. Stellarium [linky] is only the most sophisticated example. The power of a full planetarium placed in your hands for free. Accelerating Change: This is only one trivial example of accelerating change in our lives. We have the capabilities at our fingertips that only large institutions have had in the past. And even those institutions, whether business or government, have only had THOSE capabilities for a hundred years or so, before that essentially nobody could do these things. And we take it all for granted. We shouldn't. We live in an age of miracles. It is not an age of once in a blue moon someone gets healed by some mysterious means or someone walks on water or something trivial like that. It is an age where the miracles are so common and ubiquitous that they have become mundane.
http://www.stellarium.org/ Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.
It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go. Remarkable program. Go get it. Send a link for it to your Dad or Uncle who is into astronomy. 
Comparison of the very small and the very large. Let's take a look at the empty space inside a hydrogen atom. Do NOT grab the horizontal scroll tab, but click to the right in the scroll bar and see how far to the right the hypothetical electron resides in comparison to the proton...11 real world miles of scrolling supposedly, good luck. ...ok, once you get the idea grab the horizontal scroll tab. ...or go to the web page if you prefer: http://www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/atom/index.html Now compare that to the cool planet and stars scale video... I don't have anything else...I just thought it was cool Look! Kittens! 
NASA's Centennial Challenges to Advance Technologies "The innovations from these competitions will help support advances in aerospace materials and structures, new approaches to robotic and human planetary surface operations, and even futuristic concepts," said Ken Davidian, program manager for NASA's Centennial Challenges, Headquarters, Washington. More info here. http://www.spaceward.org/
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posted: Aug 28, 2007
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scooter
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While looking for info on tomorrow mornings Lunar eclipse, I ran into a cool Solar System Simulator from NASA. Just punch in what you want to see and from what point of view.  I captured some screen shots of what you'd see, but there are disclaimers everywhere on using NASA photos. It's worth a look! Check it out and follow up with feedback on the site and others like it... Space is everywhere, I just can't seem to find it... Scooter GadgetGrid.com
 Ok so it's only for three people, but Bigelow Aerospace is committed to having their Sundancer module launched before 2010.
This is private enterprise at its best. Let's review. Paul Allen is involved with Space Ship One / Scaled composites.
Richard Branson also.
...and Northrop Grumman buys the company. Elon Musk is working hard with SpaceX on the Falcon project. Successfully launching a Falcon earlier this year. Impressive in most accounts. He has revenue coming in from scheduled launches of satellites (whether that covers his costs is unlikely). And now we have the ambitious plan of Bigelow Aerospace. This is an unprecedented influx of private industry into the space exploration realm. The design of the Bigelow modules are very innovative...they inflate once in space. As long as the interior is sufficiently safe, this is a very cool evolution. Space stations cubic interior space would no longer be limited by the carrying volume of the launch spacecraft. If it is scalable, it would make vastly bigger constructs possible in space. More info: [cosmic blog ]
 So this comes up in sci fi a lot, beginning with "2001: a space Odyssey". In that movie Dave has to jump from the pod to the emergency airlock without a helmet.
He does it and it takes some seconds, approximately 10 or so..
It happens in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy wherein Arthur and Ford are thrown off the Vogon Constructor Fleet ship and are rescue 29 seconds later by Zaphod in the Heart of Gold.
Total Recall had it where Quaid and Melina were exposed to the partial atmoshpere of Mars for awhile until the atmosphere kicked in.
It's in the new movie Sunshine too. So how long can a human actually survive in the vacuum of space?
Turns out we actually have an incident, where the astronaut survived.
At NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center (now renamed Johnson
Space Center) we had a test subject accidentally exposed to a near
vacuum (less than 1 psi) in an incident involving a leaking space suit
in a vacuum chamber back in '65. He remained conscious for about 14
seconds, which is about the time it takes for O2 deprived blood to go
from the lungs to the brain. The suit probably did not reach a hard
vacuum, and we began repressurizing the chamber within 15 seconds.
The subject regained consciousness at around 15,000 feet equivalent
altitude. The subject later reported that he could feel and hear the air
leaking out, and his last conscious memory was of the water on his
tongue beginning to boil.
[linky]
 Bottom line: you have about 15 seconds until you pass out...and that will result in you...um...dying.
It's a nasty ride, you're blood boils, your skin blisters, you lungs might explode if you try to hold your breath...icky, icky.
 SpaceX has just posted its review of its latest launch. The key parts of the review is the impressive job of "Rapid response capability – launched within 70 minutes after hot launch abort". And lower in the anomalies wherein it discusses the upper stage control anomaly. It appears that was due to Liquid Oxygen sloshing in its tank.
Upper Stage Control Anomaly
An oscillation appeared in the upper stage control system approximately 90 seconds into the burn. This instability grew in pitch and yaw axes initially and after about 30 seconds also induced a noticeable roll torque. This roll torque eventually overcame the 2nd stage’s roll control thrusters and centrifuged the propellants, causing flame-out of the Kestrel engine. There is high confidence that LOX slosh was the primary contributor to this instability. This conclusion has been verified by third party industry experts that have reviewed the flight telemetry.
Falcon 1 did not use slosh baffles in the second stage tanks, as simulations done prior to flight indicated the slosh instability was a low risk. Given that in space there are no gust or buffet effects, the simulations did not take into account a perturbation, as occurred due to the hard slew maneuver after stage separation. Extensive 2nd stage slosh baffles will be included in all future flights, as is currently the case with the 1st stage.
Installing baffles will increase weight though...
Go go Elon.
I was talking about the scale of the solar system with one of my kids and I wanted to find a picture of the Sun taken from Voyager to show how small it was. I came across this picture.
1970's technology meets 2007.
1970's - Voyager:
Here we have one of the shining stars of the NASA space program, Voyager, sending back to Earth a composite picture of our solar system with all the planets out to Neptune captured in one amalgamation.
Brilliant.
2007 - Google:
And here I am able to go clickety click click and view the fantastic image on my own machine.
Also brilliant.
The vast store of all knowledge that is available to any person with an internet connection is immense, ubiquitous, stupefying and already taken for granted.
My kids will never know anything different. Will they ever have the need to open a printed encyclopedia?
Will their research ever involve going to the school library "stacks" to find a specific tidbit of knowledge squirled away on page 743 from some obscure research scientist from Peru?
Will they even have the need to learn the Dooey Decimal System?
I would argue "no" to all three of those questions.
 So everyone talks about the increasing computer speed and power, Moore's Law as it were. But there are many technologies that are following a similar path. One that may not have the same visibility in the press is telescope power.
There has been a rapid increase in telescopic abilities lately. We have seen the number of extra-solar planets discovered go from 1 (which was huge news) to tens to many more than that in just a few short years.
Now comes word that NASA researchers have demostrated that they have the technological capabilities to detect an EARTH SIZE planet. This is a remarkable development. [linky]
Even the vaunted "Futurist" looks like he has underestimated accelerating change when he stated last October: [linky]
I believe that increasingly more powerful telescopes will ensure that we discover the first genuinely Earth-like planet in another star system by 2011, and that by 2025, we will have discovered thousands of such planets.
Well, we haven't found one yet, but I feel confident to say that we should smash that 2011 estimation he made. Accelerating change indeed.
I've been wanting to see this for awhile. Here is the map that lays out the whole course that the Mars Rover Opportunity has taken in its mission so far.
cool
In our modern world we take the fact that anyone can just go click-click-click and see any number of amazing pictures from the Hubble Space Tellescope.
We don't even think about how unimaginably amazing this would be for someone from 1950-60-70 even the 1980s, not to mention earlier than that. NOBODY saw stuff like this. And now here it is served to you on your home LCD screen.
Accelerating returns indeed.
I now end your daily Kurzweil minute with this picture.
So I've talked about World Wind, [linky] which comes with an interface for several planets and the moon. Well now Google has gotten into the act and created a moon map. [linky]
Google goes one better by highlighting the locations of the moon landings.
 The Drake Equation is the equation formulated by Frank Drake. It is a speculative equation that is used to attempt to estimate the number of civilizations alive and kicking in the galaxy today. It is stated as such.
N = R* × fp × ne × fl × fi × fc × L
So why are you bringing this up Greg? Well I'm glad you asked. Astronomers have been using highly specialized techniques lately to detect planets around nearby stars, in general by detecting the wobble in the star's path caused by massive close orbiting planets.
So historically we have been able to Estimate R*, which is the estimate of the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.
And recently, with our new capabilities, we have been learning about how our estimates play out with fp, which is the estimate for the fraction of the stars that have planets around them.
But the rest of the variables have been wild ass guesses.
Now Astronomers have spotted a potential ne data point. ne is the number of planets per star that might sustain life. [linky] They believe they have spotted a candidate planet. Now this in its own right doesn't tell us much. What it does reveal is the growing capability of astronomers to detect smaller and smaller planets.
"On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X," Delfosse said.
As the technologies and skill of the astronomers continue to increase, we may very well nail down the front end of the Drake equation. We may statistically "know" three of the seven variables.
If we can refine our techniques and increase the power of our telescopes even further we might be able to answer fl which is the fraction of planets where life evolves. Spectroscopic analysis comes to mind.
With knowledge of four of the seven Drake equation variables we will have a much better grasp of our standing in the universe.
Beyond that we really need a way to communicate with the intelligent life supposed in fi and fc. But still...
Update: Let's hear what Carl Sagan has to say about it:
1. New blog discovered: Lord Matt
 Lord Matt is this guy from England. [linky] I like his style, anybody that can self title themselves "Lord" has got it going. His blog is a bit esoteric and chaotic but I think that's what makes it a good one. Don't go changin' Matt. Oh and by the way does wikipedia know you are using their style sheet?
2. Cool Thing: The International Space Station in Second Life.
I've been skeptical about second life up until now, [linky]I mean there are many different online communities out on the web that you can participate in and they have all been niche markets, what makes Second life different? Well now it has its own space station, so that's something.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17841125/
3. Cool Website: The size of our world
Somebody sent something cool to me via email and whenever anyone does that I feel the need to search for the original source, here it is: [linky]. This is a really neat representation of the different sizes of celestial bodies, running from the Moon and Earth all the way up to Betelgeuse aand Antares. It is interesting to see them laid out side by side.
4. Cool Tool: The Enigma Cypher Machine in Flash.
 I'm not sure how useful this is [linky]...unless you want to pass love notes in class...but it is pretty cool none-the-less. Here we have the great ENIGMA machine of NAZI fame from WWII, de-mystified in flash. Made into a toy as it were.
I don't want to belittle the effort of the team that put this flash implementaion together, but still, here it is, on the web for anyone to use. A very fascinating statement about our technology as compared to the generations that have come before us. Accellerating change indeed.
1. New blog discovered:
No Idea But In Things.: No Ideas But In Things is a library of controls, animations, layouts, and displays that might be a source of inspiration for interaction designers. Dan Saffer is the curator.
Title is from this poem: A SORT OF SONG by William Carlos Williams.
It has more impact taken as two lines together:
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
...and I actually like the line "but in things Invent!" better...but I digress. Go check out the blog, it's cool.
2. Cool Thing:
Space Tether test to launch on March 27. I couldn't decide if I should put this into Big News or Cool thing. But it is a thing so I finally put it in Cool Thing.
For those of you not in the know, the barrier to cheap space travel is our damn gravity well. It takes a huge amount of energy to get something up and out of it. Chemical rockets are the only feasible way we have right now of getitng things up there. Well people are actively working on a space elevator and making progress. In theory this would reduce the cost to put stuff in orbit by a factor of 100.
Well here is another test going up next week. Keep in touch with the latest over here: Space Elevator reference.
3. Big News:
Viacom vs YouTube heh, They got their own verb!.
4. Cool Tool:
 After seeing this [linky] and the example of NASA World Wind inside the video I went out and installed it. It's from NASA, it's gotta be cool. Right?
NASA Whirl Wind
So we have Virtual Earth from Microsoft and Google Earth from, well, Google, what does Whril wind offer us extra. Well how about the Moon and Mars and Jupiter, flippin' cool.
 SpaceX had a successful launch yesterday [linky] of their Falcon 1. This is an extraordinary acheivement. We are truly seeing the comercial private space launch programs take off.
All in all, this test has flight proven 95+ percent of the Falcon 1 systems, which bodes really well for our upcoming flights of Falcon 1 and Falcon 9, which uses similar hardware. We do not expect any significant delay in the upcoming flights at this point. The Dept of Defense satellite launch is currently scheduled for late Summer and the Malaysian satellite for the Fall.
 SpaceX is the less sexy, more practical private rocketship competitor to Spaceship One. These gyus are serious: Q3 2009 - 3 days - Full cargo mission profile including mate to ISS, with empty capsule , woah, docking with the ISS. Sa-weet! Space tourism here we come.
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