EIROforum / CERN

A hardhat worker is dwarfed by the inner workings of the Large Hadron Collider's ATLAS detector. The collider is due to begin operation in 2007.

Even though it's been judged Science's "Breakthrough of the Year," it's a safe bet that people won't be buzzing about the Poincare Conjecture in 2007. Instead, the coming year is bracketed by two paradigm shifts in science, having to do with politics and particle physics.

At the beginning of the year, control of Congress changes hands from the GOP to the Democrats. And by the end of the year, the Large Hadron Collider should be online at last at CERN's headquarters on the French-Swiss border.

You might not think of last month's midterm congressional elections as a science story, but the outcome is likely to have an effect on how a whole range of science policy issues are handled. Here are the three top examples:

• Climate policy: No longer will congressional hearings be used as forums to downplay the issues surrounding greenhouse-gas emissions - a fact of political life that sparked a humorous twinge of nostalgia from researcher Gavin Schmidt at the excellent Real Climate blog. As noted by Grist, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., is due to take over a key committee on the environment and is planning extensive hearings on the issue - perhaps resulting in legislation modeled on California's greenhouse-gas cap. Even the prospect of change is leading industry executives to jump on the emissions-reduction bandwagon.
• Environment vs. energy: Beyond global warming, the congressional changeover should take the heat off Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Democrats have taken the lead role in staving off oil drilling in the 19.2-million-acre area - and as noted in the Kodiak Daily Mirror, the tide may well turn toward more environmental protection. There might well be more legislation to encourage conservation and renewable energy sources rather than promoting petroleum production. Who knows? Perhaps even the H-Prize, an initiative to boost hydrogen-based energy that has languished in the Senate, will rise again. 
• Stem cell research: The incoming House speaker, California Democrat Nancy Pelosi, says she'll aim to push through stem-cell legislation in the first 100 hours of congressional business - the very bill that President Bush vetoed last year. A measure to liberalize federal funding for research using human embryonic stem cells is a priority for the Senate as well as the House. It's likely that the new legislation would be vetoed again, of course, but will the changing political climate result in a changed outcome?

More generally, the Bush administration has come under criticism for sidetracking scientific assessments that run counter to its policies. In such cases, a Democrat-controlled Congress could offer a bully pulpit to make sure such assessments get a full airing.

Of course, there are two sides to every story when it comes to politics. For climate skeptics, the congressional changeover represents the triumph of "junk science" over sound science. I'm going to refrain from rendering judgment on that score; that's up to you to do in the comments section. But even the skeptics will have to admit that the rules of the science policy game have changed.

Then there's the Large Hadron Collider. If you're not keyed into particle physics or the hubbub over string theory, the name might not be familiar to you. But those who follow the field have been salivating over the LHC for years. (It even plays a bit part in "Angels and Demons," novelist Dan Brown's precursor to "The Da Vinci Code.")

The $1.8 billion LHC should be able to smash particles together with enough energy to unlock longstanding secrets about black holes, the cosmic balance of matter and antimatter, the nature of the Higgs boson (a.k.a. the God particle) and perhaps even the existence of extra dimensions. Virtually every story I write about the big questions in physics ends with the line that the LHC could provide the answer. Heck, some have even worried (needlessly, scientists say) that the LHC will gobble up our corner of the cosmos.

We won't find out about all this next year, of course - but this month, CERN said the collider is on track to start up operations by next December. To keep track of the LHC's progress, you can click on over to the nifty Web portal at Interactions.org, or go straight to the source at CERN.

Now you've got my two picks for the top science stories of 2007. MSNBC.com readers provided their own observations as a follow-up to Science's top 10 list for 2006, as well as my list of top five space stories. I'm afraid mathematician Grigory Perelman didn't get much respect for his topological proof of the Poincare Conjecture:

Jerry: "That's all cool and everything, but I really think that in the time it took for these 'smart guys' to figure out the doughnut and coffee cup math problem, they could have worked on something less important like a cure for cancer or alternate fuel sources. I am pretty amazed to find out that a beach ball has a chance to get a hole in it without ripping, tearing or stretching. I will sleep better tonight."

Jeffrey: "I have to echo Jerry's sentiment a bit in that the mathematical curvature of three-dimensional sphere in relation to the boundary of a four-dimensional sphere really doesn't accomplish any currently discernible effect on mankind. Global warming I believe is a much more noble quest for our science dollars. Now if he can find a way to use Poincare's Conjecture to develop a method for the Earth to act as a doughnut instead of a sphere to dissipate the heat of global warming, as the math has a direct correlation to thermal mechanics, then I will pat Perelman on the back for all the sleep I'll be able to enjoy.

"Aside from global warming, alternative fuel/energy sources would be my next scientific discovery of the year. With the political clout shifting to the scientists, and the adoption of ethanol-based fuels and the development of cellulosic fuel, this has been a landmark year. To think that since the Industrial Revolution we have been essentially using the same energy sources as we did 200 years ago. The years to come will prove to be exciting as we push to alleviate our dependency upon fossil fuels and non-renewable fuel sources.

"The future of science holds promise. I hope my grandchildren will be able to appreciate the distinction between a mug and a doughnut, because the significance is lost on me ... and I understand the math!!"

John G.: "I wholeheartedly disagree with the value or lack thereof we place upon the proof of Poincaré's Hypothesis. The reason I do so is we cannot predict the effect a discovery/accomplishment in one field of the science will have on another field. For instance, if Newton or Leibniz had not discovered/created calculus we could not have formulated classical physics. Without classical physics we could not have created the steam engine, without the steam engine no Industrial Revolution. In fact, without the proper formulation of classical mechanics we would not have automobiles, airplanes, radios, television, Internet, etc, etc.

"If calculus, linear algebra, complex analysis, real analysis and other more advanced math were not discovered/created it would be impossible to formulate quantum mechanics or atomic physics; we would not have MRI machines which help detect cancer, we would not have the physics necessary for chemists to analyze the behavior of molecules which may lead to new treatments for cancer. We would not have the physics necessary to create semiconductors which form the basis for the genetic engineering revolution (analyzing DNA requires computers). In, fact modern chemistry depends upon the results of atomic physics. Without modern chemistry we would not have the tools to create new fuels for our automobiles, and a whole host of other modern amenities.

"So you see, sometimes something as insignificant as a mathematical result may have profound influence upon our world, through physics. In addition we can never predict which mathematical result may lead to a useful discovery in physics, so let us view this result with admiration for one day it may play an important role in our society."

Neal: "I have to agree that until practical use of the proof of Poincaré's Hypothesis develops, we may never know if it's just a footnote or the foundation of future science.

"The movement on alternative fuels was more economics than science. The price of fuel simply rose to pass the 'break-even' point for some of them (until gas prices rise past the alts' production costs, or their production cost drops below that of gasoline, they're only 'interesting' at best).

"But I gave up on these platitudes when the work Professor Frink did on the pickle/condiment matrix as it related to hamburger earmuffs was virtually ignored by the Nobel committee.

"Just call me jaded, I guess."

Meanwhile, regarding the top space stories:

Denis: "[I vote for] the idea of getting more people involved this year in space projects [such as Stardust @ Home]. Also, more countries with the technology and means to do more work is good news. More, please, for the future. Can we have a virtual lab on the space station?"

Fred Richards: " 'Return to Flight' ... There were many extraordinary efforts made to make the phrase a reality. I think passing on the effort and achievement to make this possible is now becoming an assumed norm. Many individuals and companies worked extremely hard (and at little or no pay) to make this possible."

Finally, in light of all the comments that our Science and Religion Symposium generated, I'm going to wedge in this waning month's selection for the Cosmic Log Used Book Club: "God in the Equation: How Einstein Transformed Religion" by Corey Powell. Reviews of the book have been mixed: Some have called the book an understandable, readable account of physics' deepest mysteries, while others have criticized it as giving the science too much of a mystical spin. In any case, Powell's exploration of "sci/religion" seems to fit quite well with the tone of the past week's discussion.

The CLUB Club regularly highlights books with cosmic themes that could conceivably be found on your local library's shelves or at the secondhand-book shop. If you have suggestions for future CLUB Club selections, let me know ... I just might send you a brand-new book.

The state of Ohio has followed up on its intentions to make a spaceport deal with an offer of incentives to Planetspace, a Canadian-American rocket venture that's thinking of putting its base of operations at Columbus' Rickenbacker International Aiport. Planetspace's chairman says the offer is roughly in line with his $20 million expectations. "We're very excited and very encouraged about it," Indian-American entrepreneur Chirinjeev Kathuria told me today. "We would definitely want to move forward in the state of Ohio."

Kathuria said he received a preliminary version of the state's incentive offer last week, with follow-up letters from the city of Columbus and Franklin County on the way. The details would be ironed out over the next 60 days, he said. Those comments confirmed a report published in The Columbus Dispatch on Wednesday. 

The deal would serve as an enticement for PlanetSpace to put its suborbital rocket facility at Rickenbacker, which currently is used primarily for cargo flights. "The offer includes tax credits, grants and other incentives," Kathuria told me.

All this is aimed at setting up a space tourism operation in America's heartland, with passengers lifting off from a Midwestern site, rising to altitudes in excess of 62 miles (100 kilometers), then landing at Rickenbacker. The passenger craft would be a space plane based on a design pioneered in the 1960s, launched atop an updated version of the V-2 rocket used in World War II.

Kathuria and his principal partner in PlanetSpace, Canadian Arrow's Geoff Sheerin, are aiming to start suborbital flights by the end of 2008. Once commercial service starts, passengers would pay in the neighborhood of $200,000 per seat for rides to the edge of space.

Lots has to be done between now and then, including licensing and spacecraft development. What's more, PlanetSpace is facing plenty of rivals out there. But Kathuria - who made millions in the telecom and medical-equipment industry, and spent some of that money to help keep Russia's Mir space station going until its demise in 2001 - says his PlanetSpace plans are still on schedule.

• NASA: Cassini sends end-of-year greetings from Saturn
• Defense Tech: The 20 biggest posts of 2006 
• Bad Astronomy Blog: Top 10 astronomy images of 2006
• Scientific American: Most important science stories of 2006

IBM

A virtual version of IBM's chairman and CEO, Sam Palmisano, stands in a replica of China's Forbidden City to announce the company's 3-D Internet initiative.

Five years from now, which technologies are going to be the breakout hits? It's not an easy game to play: Sure, some folks predicted at this time last year that 2006 would be the "Year of Video on the Internet." But try looking five years ahead.

IBM did just that, bringing together 150,000 people from 104 countries to pitch in their prognostications. Then the company narrowed that list down to the five innovations that were the "most impactful, and probably the most likely to be successful" by 2012, said George Pohle, IBM's vice president for business consulting services.

Here are the five that IBM came up with:

• The 3-D Internet: Pohle said this technology is "about translating the user experience on the Internet from being almost a replication of a piece of paper - a Web 'page' - to almost a three-dimensional experience on the Internet." Basically, a virtual world a la Second Life, with open borders.

IBM has been experimenting with virtual environments for locales ranging from Eternal Egypt and Russia's Hermitage Museum (open now) to China's Forbidden City (due in 2008). Just this month, the company announced a deal with Circuit City for an experiment in Second Life retailing.

As the 3-D Internet develops, IBM says it will be aiming for the integration of virtual environments into a seamless whole.

"Instead of separate islands of virtual worlds, where you cannot cross over from one to the other in a consistent way, IBM's vision is to allow your virtual personal to cross over from one world to another, much in the same way you can go from one page to another on the Internet without losing any consistence, enabling all sorts of new applications of the technology," the company says in a 3-D Internet fact sheet.

Pohle said "we're not sure where this is going to lead, but the experience you get going to a 3-D site is a very different experience from what you get using the traditional Internet or a messaging tool."

• Mind-reading cell phones: In the next five years, cell phones may well have a mind of their own - integrating location information with a database of your surroundings. If you're on the road at dinnertime, your phone could let you know where the nearest pizza place is, and what's on special. Or it could figure out on its own that you're in a conference room and will have to go into voicemail mode.

You could also point your camera phone at a nearby landmark, snap a picture, and have the network tell you everything it knows about what you're seeing. IBM is already working with Norway's Telenor mobile network on this "presence" technology. Meanwhile, the company's India Research Lab has developed a phone-presence service called Business Finder.

Pohle admitted that having a cell phone looking over your shoulder all the time could be a downright scary proposition, "so the opt-in feature is important." You should be able to turn your "presence" on or off at will.

• Nanotechnology for energy and the environment: "Over 2 billion people live without reliable water sources," Pohle said. "More people die from issues related to the lack of water than from any other cause."

As a spin-off of its work with carbon nanotubes for electronics, IBM is looking into developing filters woven from nanotubes that could remove the salt and impurities out of salt water, at a lower cost than current desalination technologies. The company is also developing software to manage water more efficiently. "The water distribution system would serve as a grid, much like a utility grid, at multiple levels," IBM said.

Another company objective is to adapt nanotechnologies to create more efficient, lower-cost solar power systems, Pohle said.

• Telemedicine: "Because many people now have Internet or even broadband connections, you can start using those communication platforms, free or very cheaply, to connect to your doctor's office," Pohle said.

Imagine having a setup at home that can beam your vital signs directly to the doctor's office, or alert a health-care provider if something goes wrong. Patient information could be contained on an RFID-equipped bracelet - in fact, such bracelets have been in use for years already. Meanwhile, care providers in remote areas could use a "Doc in a Box" to transmit medical images and data to specialists thousands of miles away for instant review.

The scenario may sound like something from George Orwell's "1984" rather than IBM's 2010 - but Pohle said technological shortcuts could actually create "a higher quality of interaction between the doctor and the patient."

• Real-time speech translation: This field is already a hot one, and over the next five years, IBM predicts that translators will be popping up in mobile phones, handheld devices and automobiles. "These services will pervade every part of business and society, eliminating the language barrier in the global economy and social interaction," the company said.

IBM already has developed some translation tools with obvious homeland security applications: It has provided the U.S. military with two-way English-to-Arabic translation software called the Multilingual Automatic Speech-to-Speech Translator, or MASTOR, for use in Iraq. MASTOR also does Mandarin Chinese, and still more languages are in the works. Another program - the Translingual Automatic Language Exploitation System, or TALES - can monitor Arabic-language broadcasts and send e-mail alerts when a particular subject is mentioned. 

It should be obvious by now that these are not technologies coming totally out of the blue (Big Blue, that is).

"In many of these cases, there will be products that come directly from what we do, and then there will be products that come from our customers," Pohle told me. "There's not really a change in direction, because all of these things are things that we're working on already."

These are merely the fields that IBM thinks will bear a prodigious technological harvest in the next five years. "These are things that the public should know about," Pohle said.

Does this list contain too much gee-whiz speculation, or is it not gee-whizzy enough? Register your opinion on which of these technologies are most likely to change society over the next five years, using our unscientific Live Vote, and feel free to add your suggestions and observations below.

• BBC Magazine Monitor: 100 things we didn't know a year ago
• Universe Today: '365 Days of Skywatching'
• Popular Science: 10 sci-tech moments that mattered in 2006
• Wired: Four lo-fi sci-fi flicks from 2006

The mystery over former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko's death by radiation poisoning is getting curiouser and curiouser, with Russian prosecutors pointing the finger at the managers of a now-bankrupt business empire. It's yet another bizarre twist in a tale that has already entangled the Russian government. But even though the murder investigation is getting murkier, it's no mystery that the murder weapon, radioactive polonium-210, could be produced in virtually any chemistry lab.

Last month we noted that polonium-210 can be found in many walks of life - usually in forms that don't threaten the public. However, some Cosmic Log correspondents observed that the polonium from innocuous products such as anti-static brushes could be extracted to produce a potentially harmful dose.

Over the holiday weekend, self-styled radiation watchdog Walter Wagner said this was indeed the case. I got to know Wagner years ago because of his work with uranium-glazed tiles as well as his concerns about the "Big Bang machine" (a.k.a. the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Here are some excerpts from his letter on polonium-210.

"I began writing about polonium-210 circa 1980. You can find a letter I wrote to the New England Journal of Medicine regarding polonium-210 in cigarette smoke (as naturally occurring radioactive fallout from radon gas in the air that falls onto the leaves of plants such as tobacco) if you Google my name, and Po-210, which should result in [this] Web page. You have to scroll down a ways.

"That article was written, of course, long before I taught myself about uranium tiles. I also point out in that letter the fallacy of statutorily asserting that the RBE (relative biological effectiveness) of alpha emitters is 20 (as the EPA, NRC and DOE regs assert), when at low doses it is closer to 1,000. I won't go into why that is so in this brief e-mail, though I've well-detailed how that error arose in other writings, not yet incorporated into the regulations.

"Anyway, I also read the responses to your article, which were quite interesting, and some from very knowledgeable persons.

"It is true that static eliminators can be used to extract polonium-210 in deadly amounts. The larger eliminators contain millicurie amounts, and 3 millicuries is a nominal lethal dose. Polonium-210 is one of the most lethal materials on Earth if ingested or inhaled (about 63,000 times worse than plutonium; it's simply roughly the ratio of the half-lives), yet it is ubiquitous in the form of static eliminators. Here's a Web site for one source. ...

"I suspect that the regulations will be tightened in the future to provide better control over dissemination of such radioactive sources.

"However, it is not certain that that was the origin of the polonium-210, since Russian reactors make the polonium-210 for the international static eliminator market, and they have worldwide distribution. ..."

I've left out some of the technical material about how nuclear reactors help increase the neutron output - as well as Wagner's detailed instructions for turning $200 worth of static eliminators into a hazardous dose of polonium-210. However, I will pass along Wagner's comment that "anyone with a smidgen of a chemistry background, and some nuclear science background, would be able to do this."

Authorities tend to dismiss Wagner as being too alarmist, about uranium tiles as well as mini-Big Bangs. I have a feeling the same might hold true for polonium-210. But if you ever spot someone suspicious buying up cartloads of static eliminators - consider yourself warned.

• Can you imagine the 10th dimension? (via Digital Roam)
• Manufacturing.net: Can space plane deliver on two-hour promise?
• Scientific American: What is a planet?
• Slate: How can you tell if some kid is Buddha's reincarnation?

Science-fiction tales often fast-forward the pace of evolution to create the big-brained humans of the future - or, for that matter, the big-brained chimps of "The Planet of the Apes." Research published this week in the journal PLoS Biology, however, argues that the more complex your brain gets, the harder it is to evolve further. The subject could have implications for speculation into the future of intelligence.

More than a year ago, we built that kind of speculation into our special report on "The Future of Evolution." Yes, we included a big-brained egghead as one of our options for future human evolution - even though the mere mechanics of having a huge head sitting on your typical human spine would be problematic, to say the least.

The argument against accelerated brain evolution laid out in PLOS Biology has more to do with genetics than mechanics: Researchers compared the pace of evolutionary change in humans and chimpanzees as well as macaque monkeys and mice - and they found that the brainier species exhibited a significantly slower rate of change in genes expressed exclusively in the brain.

"The more complex the brain, it seems, the more difficult it becomes for brain genes to change," the University of Chicago's Chung-I Wu said in a university news release. Why is that? The researchers speculate that with a system as complex as the human brain (or, for that matter, the chimp brain), a mutation is more likely to screw something up than to make it better.

Does that mean that we're pretty much stuck with the brains we have? Well, we can always use them more efficiently - and perhaps even augment them electronically. (Imagine a Bluetooth-enabled Google/Babelfish brain implant, for example.) Come to think of it, the same situation might hold for chimpanzees.

Over the years, scientists have gone back and forth on the genetic similarities between chimps and humans. Last year, geneticists determined that the two species' genomes were 96 percent identical - while last month, another research group said the earlier study overestimated the similarities somewhat.

Could the intelligence of other species be enhanced? Should humans help? Such were the questions I posed almost four years ago in an item titled "Chimp Encounters of the First Kind." Here's a follow-up, sent recently by a Cosmic Log correspondent named Jim:

"I believe higher intelligence is well-documented for those who don't presume otherwise.

"Check out the work done at the CHCI - the Chimpanzee Human Communication Institute at Central Washington University, in Ellensburg, Wash. There humans and half a dozen chimpanzees have been communicating via ASL American Sign Language for decades.

"It's not at all a question of 'if.' The students are researching subtle aspects and context details or somesuch (I'm not into the details). Meanwhile, in the ordinary process of daily caretaking, the staff regularly 'converse' with the chimps. One younger chimp was taught ASL, by the matriarch chimp, with no human intervention.

"I've heard anecdotal stories of interactions which indicate high levels of intelligence and awareness within the chimps. I'm sure this is much better documented in the professional literature from there."

I'm wondering what will happen when someone develops software to translate a chimp's ASL automatically into speech. Would more communication lead to brainier apes? Or are there genetic and neurological reasons for expecting that a chimp could say nothing more cogent than "give orange me give eat"? Feel free to add your observations or citations below.

• Science news of the year, from Science News
• N.Y. Times (reg. req.): Natural selection sometimes favors liars 
• The Independent: Rising seas evict island's inhabitants
• Nat. Geographic: Two-headed fossil dates back to dinosaur age

Here at Cosmic Log, the holiday season is traditionally a time for focusing on the intersection of science and religion - or would that be the boundary between them? Over the past week, we've already explored that intersection quite a bit - ranging from the latest crop of speculations about the historical Jesus, to this week's memorials for one of the world's best-loved skeptics, the late astronomer Carl Sagan. But for this discussion, I'd like to look forward instead of back.

In the wake of court rulings and the midterm elections, the tide seems to be turning on a range of issues where science and religion intersect - such as evolution vs. intelligent design, and human embryonic stem-cell research. What's your view on how those debates might develop over the coming year? Will the coming presidential campaign revive the battle over values?

Looking even farther ahead, what does the future hold for faith? Is religion always going to revolve around a "God of the gaps," filling ever-shrinking blank spots in our understanding of the universe? Or is the push and pull between science and religion a cyclic thing? Will we soon be facing a counterreformation, or even a new breed of holy war?

Could scientific advances even spawn future religions? After all, some of Sagan's meditations took on a quasi-religious tone, focusing on the cosmos rather than a Creator. In centuries to come, might discoveries open the way to new forms of mythmaking, novel perspectives on ethics and some sort of global sci-tech priesthood?

To get yourself in the mood for our fifth annual symposium on science and religion, check out these feedback files:

• 2002: How do you reconcile science and religion?
• 2003: Is pop theology good or evil?
• 2004: Does it always have to be science vs. religion?
• 2005: Debating stem cells and evolution ... and even the terms of the "debate."

If you can tear yourself away from the holiday goodies, feel free to add your comments below. And speaking of holiday goodies, be sure to keep an eye on the Santa Tracker for Christmas Eve, brought to you by NORAD and MSNBC, as well as our interactive look at the astronomy behind the Star of Bethlehem.

With that, I'll once again wish all of you a Happy Hanukkah (which is just ending), a Merry Christmas (which is just around the corner), a Peaceful Hajj (over the coming month) and a Fantastic Festivus (for the rest of us).

• 'Nova' on PBS: 'Underwater Dream Machine'
• The Economist: The Argus eyes of stargazers
• New Scientist Tech Blog: The Mindball Challenge
• Sci Fi Tech: 9 military technologies we want (via Slashdot)

Looking for that last-minute holiday gift? Fire up your photo printer, click on over to the European Space Agency's Hubble site and churn out a 2007 calendar featuring eye-popping images from the Hubble Space Telescope. While you're on the Web, take a look at some fresh views of the sun, and cast your vote for the best snapshot from Saturn and its moons.

NASA / ESA

STEREO captures views of the sun in different ultraviolet wavelengths.

We've already mentioned the Hubble holiday cards offered by the Space Telescope Science Institute, but the ESA's Hubble Information Center has its own set of goodies, ranging from calendars to posters to computer wallpaper. Many of the graphics are suitable for printing, and others can be purchased online from the ESA's Hubble Shop (although the cost of shipping from Germany to the States may be prohibitive).

Over the past few days, there have been so many stunning images released that it's hard to hit them all. Here are some of the highlights, once you get beyond the Hubble:

• The STEREO sun-watching spacecraft have sent back their first images from orbit, and the color-coded extreme ultraviolet images are as round and bright as Christmas tree ornaments. The "first light" pictures were taken on Dec. 4. One of the images included this week in NASA's advisory shows a solar eruption in progress.
• For the second year in a row, the team behind the Cassini probe to Saturn is putting on a contest to select the year's best image from the ringed planet and its environs. Considering that we've just marked the 10th anniversary of astronomer Carl Sagan's death, it's hard to resist the "Pale Blue Orb" picture. (One of Sagan's books was titled "Pale Blue Dot," which referred to a similar picture of Earth as seen by a faraway probe.) Cast your vote online, then wait until February to find out the winner.
• The Mars rovers have been plugging along for so long that it's sometimes easy to forget that Spirit and Opportunity are still working away, nearly three Earth years since their landing. But the latest round of processed pictures - including Opportunity's view of craggy Cape St. Mary - will give you a renewed appreciation for the coolness associated with having an earthly emissary wheeling around another planet. There's also a dynamite image of layered terrain from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Russia's RIA/Novosti news service reports on Moscow's plans to rejuvenate its space program - starting out with a sun-observing probe in 2008 and a 2009 mission to bring back a sample from Phobos, one of Mars' two moons. But for followers of the commercial space race, the most interesting tidbits have to do with the blueprint for human spaceflight.

Russian space officials are quoted as saying that beginning next year, their Soyuz capsules will "as a rule" have one space tourist flying alongside two professional cosmonauts - and that a round-the-moon flight is planned for 2011, with two paying passengers accompanying two professionals. This implies that there'll be takers for the $100 million-per-seat ride. Eric Anderson, the president and chief executive officer of Virginia-based Space Adventures, has hinted that there are indeed deep-pocketed adventurers interested in taking the trip.

Stay tuned ... for the next four years.

• Univ. of Wash.: Robotic crawler checks power lines
• NSF: Researchers see rare light-emitting neutron decay
• CFHT: New class of gravitational lenses found
• NASA: Scientists predict big solar cycle ahead
• Northwestern U.: How your brain turns you into a wine expert

Ten years ago today, I was muddling through this new thing called online news at MSNBC - while just a few miles away, at a Seattle cancer center, one of science's most eloquent spokesmen was dying. At the time, astronomer Carl Sagan's death was another blip on the news screen. But since then, his influence has, if anything, grown for me and for others - as evidenced by the outpouring of reminiscences on this 10th anniversary.

Cornell Univ.

Carl Sagan, 1934-1996

Many commentators have touched upon Sagan's legacy for scientific skeptics - for example, the idea that in this "demon-haunted world," extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, whether those claims relate to the existence of extraterrestrials or the existence of God. Not so many have addressed his legacy for believers. And that's what I'd like to touch on here.

Throughout Sagan's career, there were frequent parallels between his search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence and the traditional search for transcendent truth. "Carl thought it was part of the same question," Sagan's widow, Ann Druyan, noted during a recent interview. And indeed, Sagan addressed this in an exchange documented in "The Varieties of Scientific Experience," a recently published collection of lectures:

Questioner: "I'd like to ask you about why you think any omnipotent being would want to leave evidence for us."

Sagan: "I think I entirely agree with what you say. There is no reason I should expect an omnipotent being to leave evidence of His existence, except that the Gifford Lectures are supposed to be about that evidence. And I hope it is clear that the fact that I do not see evidence of such a God's existence does not mean that I then derive from that fact that I know that God does not exist.

"That's quite a different remark. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Neither is it evidence of presence. And this again is a situation where our tolerance for ambiguity is required. The only thrust of these remarks is for those - and it's by far the greatest majority of contemporary theologians - who believe that there are natural pieces of evidence for the existence of God or gods. And so I have no problems with any of that. And, as you say, if a god existed who gave us free will or merely noted that we had free will, and wished to let our free will operate, then he or she or it might very well give us no evidence of his, her, or its existence for just that reason.

"And this is connected with one of the many little tangents in the extraterrestrial-intelligence problem. In fact, there is a perfect parallel between the two cases. ..."

I'll leave that discourse over the philosophical equivalent of the "Star Trek" Prime Directive for readers of the book to explore (it's on page 238). The point I want to make relates to Sagan's tolerance, his humility, his willingness to keep the quest going. Some skeptics nowadays even question whether Sagan might have been too tolerant of ambiguity. But I think that was a big part of his charm, and a big reason why he was able to prevail over the "wedge strategies" that often crop up in the science-and-religion debate (whether from the Darwin-doubting Discovery Institute or from firebrand evolutionist Richard Dawkins).

Sagan's tolerance shines through in the writings of those most deeply touched by his legacy, starting with Druyan. She reflects on her husband's passing today in the inaugural posting of her own Web log, The Observatory, as well as in this month's issue of The Planetary Report:

"We have traveled ten times around the sun since Carl's death, and our little world is much changed. With his dazzling mind and vast knowledge, what would he have thought of the direction we, as a civilization, have taken in the years since? How might he have campaigned against the forces of darkness and brutality? How many minds might he have opened? During the last ten years, I have longed for the personal Carl of our love, family, and work together, but I have also keenly missed the man who was a global voice for science, exploration, reason, and democracy. Carl's ecological niche has remained tragically untenanted for all this time - and in my opinion, the consequences have been profound."

In his wide-ranging ecological niche, Sagan posed a challenge for believers to act more as if they really believed. At the time, the world was facing an apocalyptic nuclear threat that loomed at least as large as the apocalyptic terrorist threats that hang over us now. He noted that Christianity taught that redemption was always possible and that you should love your enemies, while "an anti-Christian would be someone who argues to hate your enemy and that redemption is impossible, that bad people remain forever bad."

"So I ask you, which position is better suited to an age of apocalyptic weapons?" he said. Or, for that matter, an age of terror threats?

Sagan went on to observe that out of the more than 140 nations on Earth, "not one of them takes a Christian point of view," a situation that Sagan found remarkable:

" 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' has a corollary. Others will do unto you as you do unto them. And that encapsulates, among other things, the history of the nuclear arms race. If this can't be done, then I think politicians who are practitioners of such religions ought to confess and admit that they are failed Christians or aspirant Christians but not full-fledged, unqualified, unhyphenated Christians."

Sagan was anything but dogmatic - about belief as well as skepticism. It is his openness to new ideas, his sense of wonder, his quest for justice as well as knowledge, that will keep his legacy alive decades and centuries after his passing. At least the tributes marking today's anniversary give us hope that it will be so.

Which brings us at last to our blog-a-thon bonus. In Tuesday's Log item, I offered up a copy of "The Varieties of Scientific Experience" to recognize the most fitting tribute to Sagan's legacy.

When it comes to pithiness, it's hard to beat this comment from John Forde: "If our intellects are candles, Dr. Sagan is the match that lights the wick." However, in my view, Chris Eldridge should take the top prize - not only for his personal reflections on Sagan's impact, but also for his continuing contributions to the Cosmic Log community. Here's an excerpt from his comment:

"... Science is a contagious inspiration. It affects us in ways we don't even realize. Carl's take on it - his intuitive and timeless perspective - has been a guiding light throughout my life.  His fear of nuclear war…  His disappointment with our caretakership of earth…  The backdrop of history, which added still more perspective…  oh, and dare I forget that damn hypnotic opening music [for "Cosmos"] that would calm Godzilla into placidity…  whatever the magic was…  IT WORKED!"

I'll be sending the book to Chris, and an MSNBC.com goodie bag to John Forde for his contribution. Graze through the comments section of Tuesday's item for the full treatment, and feel free to add your follow-ups below.

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NASA's Great Observatories have combined to produce images that are as uplifting as holiday cards - and in some cases can easily be sent as holiday e-cards.

J. Maiz Apellaniz / IAA / NASA / ESA

This Hubble image focuses on the LH 95 star-forming region.

From the Hubble Space Telescope comes a sparkling view of the LH 95 star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of our Milky Way's satellite galaxies. Hubble, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory team up to produce a flattering flame from N49, one of the brightest supernova remnants in that same Large Magellanic Cloud. And just for good measure, Chandra also offers a multicolored Christmas-light display from the Milky Way's W3 star-forming complex.

The cheery colors in these pictures aren't exactly what the naked eye might see, but they're not totally made up, either. Rather, scientists use the color coding to distinguish between different wavelengths in the invisible part of the spectrum - say, infrared (for Spitzer and Hubble) or X-rays (for Chandra).

In the Hubble image of LH 95, astronomers are particularly interested in the low-mass infant stars, which generate strong winds and powerful blasts of ultraviolet radiation. All that heats up the surrounding interstellar gas, creating the bluish haze seen in the image.

NASA / CXC / STScI / JPL-Caltech

Three space telescopes team up on N49 supernova remnant.

The Hubble-Spitzer-Chandra composite image of N49 traces the delicate filaments left behind by the explosion of a star about 160,000 light-years from Earth. The Chandra view, which contributes blue shades to the image, maps out the regions of X-ray emissions, where gas has been heated to temperatures in excess of a million degrees. The red and pink shades come from Spitzer's infrared eye, and show cooler gas in the outer regions of the supernova remnant. Hubble contributed the white and yellow shades, in visible light.

Finally, the Chandra image of W3 - which also draws upon visible-light observations from the Palomar Observatory - maps out the temperatures across the stellar cradle, 6,000 light-years from Earth. Green represents low-energy X-rays, blue stands for higher-energy X-rays, and the visible-light emissions are shown in red. Hundreds of X-ray-emitting stars can be seen in this one image.

NASA / CXC / Penn State / Pal Obs. DSS

Composite image shows the W3 star-forming region.

"Because its X-ray sources are all at the same distance, yet span a range of masses, ages, and other properties, W3 is an ideal laboratory for understanding recent and ongoing star formation in one of the Milky Way's spiral arms," the Chandra team says.

You can share the imagery from W3 and N49 - or from several other stellar stunners - through Chandra's e-card Web site. If you're into the paper variety of holiday greetings, the Space Telescope Science Institute's Hubblesite offers a selection of space telescope images formatted for the season's printings.

And if you want to send a gift that keeps on giving, check out the Planetary Society's holiday twist on the "Send Your Name to Mars" scheme. When you register someone's name to be added to a DVD for the Mars Phoenix mission, scheduled for launch next year, you can print out a certificate festooned with a fancy-schmancy holiday bow. I've already printed one out as a stocking-stuffer for my daughter - so don't tell her!

Nick Sagan sends along notice of a blog-a-thon on Wednesday to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of his famous father, astronomer Carl Sagan. The memorial is being organized by Joel Schlosberg over at Joel's Humanistic Blog, with boosts from Boing Boing and other regions of the blogosphere. There's even a "Celebrating Sagan" blog that's been created as an online remembrance book.

Although I never met Carl himself, I've been fortunate enough to become acquainted with Nick as well as with Ann Druyan, Carl's widow and the keeper of the "Cosmos" flame. I'll try to gather my thoughts for an item on Wednesday, with a bonus for Cosmic Log correspondents.

Please feel free to leave your comments on Carl Sagan's legacy here - paying proper respects to the dead, of course. The author of the best comment, judged purely by my personal criteria (including depth of insight, pithiness, relevance, etc.), will be sent a copy of "The Varieties of Scientific Experience," a posthumously published collection of Sagan's lectures on life, the universe and everything.

Update for 8:20 p.m. ET Dec. 20: I've put together a meatier item to mark the actual anniversary - a salute to the scientist's legacy that you could call "Sagan for Non-skeptics." You'll also find out who won the copy of "The Varieties of Scientific Experience."

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As a metaphor for the process of seeking out the truth, the idea of "separating the wheat from the chaff" goes back at least as far as the Gospel of Matthew. Over the past couple of days, readers have stirred up their share of wheat and chaff in response to my report on the apocryphal tales surrounding the biblical accounts of Jesus' life.

Most of those tales - highlighted in the National Geographic documentary "Secret Lives of Jesus" - are definitely chaff, created in the first four centuries of the Christian era. As scriptural scholar Ben Witherington told me, they're the ancient equivalent of Harlequin romances, or you might compare them to the popular "Left Behind" series of novels: that is, riffs on Christian scripture that flesh out the basics with plenty of fiction.

So are such also-ran gospels a fit subject for religious study - or scientific study, for that matter? Read on for a sampling of opinions from believers and skeptics:

Bill: "Are you purposefully trying to provoke Christians? Your statements in this piece are inflammatory and, in my opinion, flat-out wrong. For instance:

"'A lot of these ancient stories have come to be considered heretical.'

"This implies that it took a long time for these errant works to be considered aberrant, when the earliest church fathers didn't at all consider them correct.

"'...illustrates that the gospel story has been added to, fine-tuned and pruned through the centuries.'

"Again, this is flat-out wrong. The earliest scrap of the Gospel of John dates from about 125 A.D., a papyrus fragment from Egypt with five verses on it. You are merely restating the standard Christian-bashing position that our text is unreliable. And that just isn't so. It's one of the most reliable texts in all of history, based on the amount of evidence and copies available. I suggest you read 'The Case for Christ' by Lee Strobel. Claiming that the Gospel story underwent any significant change since about 100 A.D., let alone 'for centuries,' without any countering viewpoint, is reprehensible.

"At this point in your story, your bias and inflammatory language stopped me from reading any further. True, Fox News is probably biased, but MSNBC shouldn't be one to cast stones. Come on, at least once in a while why not give the opinion of a knowledgeable, articulate expert who holds the opposing view."

Ned Goldreyer: "With all due respect, what are the gospels doing as a topic in a science column?  Granted, this is the time of year when journalists either pander to the fairy-tale crowd or face losing eyeballs, but even so, couldn't you have chosen something even slightly closer to what we generally regard as scientific?  I love your clarification of the three kings as 'actually, astrologers.'  Actually, they are characters in piece of fiction and quite probably did not exist at all.  Or did they?  That would be a scientific question.  Hypothesis - The three kings did not exist.  Prove or disprove.  What exactly is your scientific training?  It is not mentioned in your profile.  I would bet good money that you have no scientific credentials at all.  Although I feel fully justified in asking you issue a public apology for this misuse of your position, at the very least, I would appreciate a response defending your reasons for writing on this subject."

I told Ned in an e-mail that I've chatted over the years with a fair number of scriptural scholars - admittedly, on hot-button topics such as the Gospel of Judas and the rehabilitation of Mary Magdalene - and that we've historically put these stories in the Science section (along with stories about the founding of Rome, and so on). The intersection of textual and archaeological studies with popular culture is part of our bread and butter here, whether we're talking about the Bible or Newton. I also said I make no claim to being a trained scientist - just a trained journalist (whatever that means).

My use of the word "actually" is just meant to say that Matthew was actually referring to astrologers rather than kings in Matthew 2:1. Yet another reader focused upon that reference to the Three Kings in his comment:

L. Mark Thomasson: "The Bible does not mention how many 'Kings' or 'Wise Men from the East' there were, simply that the gifts were gold, frankincense and myrrh. Some assume that there were three Kings because of the three gifts - not likely.  Another common misconception is that an 'eye for an eye' justifies retribution, but is actually meant to limit the punishment imposed.  Many other misconceptions abound - but God said it best: 'For a lack of knowledge (ignorance) my people perish.' We are responsible to seek God out and study his Word."

Terry Brandli: "With all this talk about the season, and historical Jesus, too bad at least one of these shows doesn't explain the facts that Jesus Christ wasn't born on December 25th. And that the most accurate date is April 19.  The early Christian church was more worried about gaining members then about being truthful. They picked a prominent pagan Roman holiday as the day to celebrate the birth of Christ, hoping that would help entice more people into their church. Another thing I think that is bad about the way the Christmas holiday is celebrated is the fairy tale about Santa Claus.  To tie the birth of mankind's savior with a big commercial lie like Santa Claus and teach it to every little kid in the country, is not a good way to teach the message of Jesus Christ and the Bible. Evidently, the commercial interests and organized religion can't handle the truth."

Greg Charles: "Every few years, people like to drag out these so-called new truths about the Bible. The fact is they aren't new and there are few facts to be found in them. There were lots of weird people back then, like there is today, who like to twist the scriptures to make them conform to what they want to believe. That is why these teachings were rejected at the Council of Trent. They are not true. A true follower of Jesus not only believes what is written, but obeys it. When we do what the Bible says, great things happen. I have seen lots of phony things, but I have also seen the true power of God. I have seen and experienced many miracles, healings, casting out of demons, etc. Some of the things I've seen are medically documented. I bring this up because in the book of Mark it says that these signs will follow those that believe. They will lay hands on the sick and they will recover, they will cast out demons, etc. Jesus meant what he said."

Matthew: "Have you ever read Irenaeus' 'Against the Heresies'? I wish you would before you make assertions of this nature:

"'Did we say four Gospels? Actually, in the early centuries of the Christian church, there were quite a few more than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.'

"Yes, there were other, heretical gospels that circulated, but they were written by Gnostics, not eyewitnesses and associates of the apostles.  Please read this book. If you would like more information you can contact Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana."

Reading Irenaeus is tough sledding, but scholars have used such critiques to date the ancient apocryphal works. For example, Irenaeus' scornful reference to the Gospel of Judas in "Against the Heresies," which dates to about A.D. 180, has been cited as evidence that the controversial Gnostic work is at least that old.

Even the evangelist Luke says that "many" people drew up accounts of New Testament events, based on information "handed down to us." That would imply there were plenty of secondhand stories floating around even in Luke's day.

Here's a little equal time for the Gnostics:

Kathleen Mary Hensley: "To base my spirituality and religion on a book and/or a church solely is not something I can choose to do; while a lay person scientifically and religiously, I have thought deeply about the nature of the universe and have come to conclusions about the nature of reality due to reason, science, intuition, religion and spiritual experiences. For me, the universe is a vast puzzle wherein both spiritual consciousness and physical matter/energy co-exist. We do not yet have or see all the pieces nor understand all the connections, but time will tell - and someday we will understand our nature, the nature of the universe (cosmos) and God's nature (which is bound to be far more surprising than any of us can now imagine!).  Someday, the entire puzzle will fit together and make a whole picture - this puzzle is our very lives, our meaning and we must fill in all the blank spaces between matter, energy and spirit to understand who we truly are, what our souls are and what God is. This will take centuries to happen. We are yet children in grade school who think ourselves adults.

"As a Gnostic Christian, not only in philosophy but in experience, I do not believe it is the historical Jesus that matters to me, for the physical universe does not matter, it is an illusion, a matrix of energy and matter that is both interesting and distracting - and very, very temporary. It is the spiritual reality of Jesus fascinates me ... does he still exist, can he influence me now? what is his nature ? I found he does exist, he does influence and his nature is sublime and divine.

"It is the spiritual realms that I find fascinating, and it is the experience of his presence, mystically, that proves his love and mercy for me - He is in all things, my friend and companion on the road. This experience I have had time and again.

"You, as a scientist, will say there is no such thing as mysticism or mystical experience - but are you sure ? do you know all the laws of the universe and consciousness, do you know how to weigh the spirit of a woman and measure the depths of my soul? Can you say with certainty that there is no spirit, no consciousness outside of the mind?  It is foolishness to think you do understand everything that is and can be ! We are a evolving species, evolving physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually towards what end we do not know. No one person has all the facts, all the possibilities, all the truth.  It is not what we know in the 21st century that amazes me, it is what we do not know and what we can not yet even imagine that fascinates me. ..." 

Even Pontius Pilate asked the question, "What is truth?" The gospel truth was brought up by several of the correspondents:

Leroy: "It's always interesting to hear rationalizations and explanations from those whose futures would be better served were there no Jesus the Christ.  They simply can't afford for the true Gospel to be what it actually is - true. For, if it is true, then their fiery disposition is a certainty and not a myth.  Somehow, those odds just don't add up to common sense - do they?"

Harold Thomas: "I read your article entitled 'How the Gospel Story Grew in the Telling.' If I understand it correctly, it expresses what most of the liberal biblical scholars have said for years in reference to Christ and the origin of the Bible itself. That 'drum' has been beaten long and loud for many many years. But it reflects only one view of the issues. Why? Could it be that the alternative view places those that hold the liberal position squarely in the camp of infidels, agnostics and atheists - all of whom never believed one iota of the Bible for even one split second and all of whom never wanted to believe that there ever was a literal historical character called Christ in the first place? Many people have believed that if you repeat a lie long enough and with enough fervor it will come to be accepted as the truth by the masses of the human race. So the liberals shout the idea that the gospel story 'grew' (i.e., developed over many years) as the story was repeated from generation to generation.

"But history reveals that the gospel records that the early church accepted as 'inspired' and 'historically accurate' were all written within less than 100 years of the time the events they depict and describe actually took place. The authors of the four gospel narratives were known and recognized by the early church that received their writings. The Apostle John, speaking for himself and for the other apostles and inspired writers, says in reference to Christ and what had been written about Him this: 'That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life.'

"A significant number of the members of the church were 'eyewitnesses' along with the authors of the gospel narratives, and doubtless would have raised serious questions about any material in those narratives that might have been less than accurate accounts of the facts. In addition to this there were many nonbelievers alive who witnessed a significant amount of what the gospel narratives contained. Their writings support the accuracy of the biblical text and provide independant verification of the gospel narratives' historical reliablity.

"All in all, I would suggest that before you take it upon yourself to tell your readers 'How the Gospel Story Grew in the Telling' that you devote a little time and a little research in the area of biblical inspiration as well as works that deal with how we got the Bible and the current state of the biblical text. I would be willing to recommend a few works dealing with these issues by recognized competent conservative scholars. But even if you did consult these, I would still not feel very comfortable about a 'science editor' commenting on issues clearly outside his field of study."

At the end of all this winnowing, I was desperate for some redemption - and thankfully, a longtime Cosmic Log correspondent provided some welcome words:

Dennis McClain-Furmanski: "I've been a fan of Jesus history for most if my life. In fact I turned down a scholarship to the Methodist seminary at Valporaiso to follow a path that eventually led to becoming a scientist. It is very difficult to present the viewpoints of both belief and history without either attempting to reconcile them, or risk saying something that one side or the other finds insulting. Your article accomplishes this superbly. I can hardly recall ever seeing such a masterful presentation of even-handedness on this topic, and certainly never in the 'popular' media. More than ever, I applaud your work."

Feel free to continue the discussion in the comments section below, or by joining in the discussion in our online forum on the history behind religion.

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The results are in: This year's top gift for science geeks, decided by a decidedly unscientific survey, is the spinthariscope - one of the few toys out there that's truly nuclear-powered.

The Wikipedia entry calls the spinthariscope a "now almost entirely disused scientific device for observing individual nuclear disintegrations." The principle behind the palm-sized contraption was discovered by accident more than a century ago by William Crookes, who noticed tiny sparks of light when he looked at the interaction of radium and zinc sulfide under a microscope. That observation led him to create a palm-sized device that takes its name from the Greek word for "spark" ("spintharis").

Nowadays, the spinthariscope is basically an educational toy: If you take the sealed container into a darkened room and look through the magnifying lens, you'll see the same sparks that caught Crookes' attention way back when. The flashes are created by alpha particles, the same type of radiation involved in the continuing polonium poisoning mystery. But don't worry: The toy spinthariscope is considered safe.

Some people claim to have constructed homebrew versions of the device, and the occasional antique item does come on the market. But United Nuclear - yes, the same company that sells tiny samples of polonium-210 - appears to be the primary source for spinthariscopes nowadays. That's the outlet recommended by the winner of our "Geek Gift" contest, Mnementh of Callahan, Fla.:

"The gift for the No. 1 Geek on my list this year is the Spinthariscope. Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like a nuclear-powered toy. For the younger geek (geekling?), I'll get some of the nifty phosphorescent powder and make a seriously funky nightlight. Beats the heck out of Barbie."

Mnementh's suggestion not only came out on top of the Live Vote runoff, but it earned high praise from one of the other Geek Gift competitors, Brian Glanz of Seattle:

"Even I wanted to vote for the Nuclear Spinthariscope! Put the fun back in science and encourage hands-on learning. It's only too bad United Nuclear can't process more orders in time for the holidays, but it'd be worth the wait. Nice find, Mnementh, and congratulations."

Mnementh's victory earns the big geek grab bag, filled with geeky T-shirts, gewgaws and software. And for putting in such a great effort (as well as being so sportsmanlike in defeat), Glanz will get a scaled-down version of the grab bag containing MSNBC.com trinkets.

I should mention that some of our correspondents sent in great Web links to more geek-gift resources - including ThinkGeek, Ken Murphy's "Best of the Moon 2006," the build-it-yourself Science Toys Web site and Nick Greene's About.com gift guide for space and astronomy enthusiasts.

But wait ... there's more: My blogging colleague here at MSNBC.com, Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, has provided some fantastic change-of-pace suggestions with her gift guide for entertainment junkies. Sign me up for that Homer Simpson talking-head cookie jar!

With that, I'd like to wish the winners, the also-rans and the readers here a happy Hanukkah, a merry Christmas, a peaceful Hajj ... and a wonderful holiday season.

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SpaceDev

An artist's conception shows the SpaceDev Dream Chaser spaceship in flight.

Space entrepreneur Jim Benson says he's well into the first stage of the development effort for his Dream Chaser suborbital spaceship, with seasoned shuttle commander Robert "Hoot" Gibson signing on as Benson Space Co.'s chief operating officer and chief test pilot.

"It's official - we've begun our countdown," Benson said.

Gibson is the latest former astronaut to make the leap over to private-sector spaceflight, joining the likes of Rick Searfoss (XCOR Aerospace's rocket test pilot), John Herrington (vice president and director of flight operations at Rocketplane Kistler), Jim Voss (at t/Space) and Wendy Lawrence (at Andrews Space).

Gibson has had a storied past at NASA - ranging from the trouble he got into for flying in an air show without the agency's authorization in the late 1980s, to his command of the first shuttle flight to dock with Russia's Mir space station in 1995. Now he's looking forward to taking more spaceflights over the next few years than he ever had during his 17 years with NASA.

"In all that time, they let me go to space just five times," he told me in his best aw-shucks tone during a phone interview today. "Gee, when this thing gets to be operational, I'll probably be able to go to space two or three times a day."

While Benson was at SpaceDev, the California-based company he founded nine years ago, Gibson served as an adviser for SpaceDev's bid to win a share of NASA's rocket development money under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS.

NASA turned down SpaceDev's bid, prompting Benson to start up a new company - Benson Space - and do a deal with his old company to develop spaceships for suborbital passenger service.

At the time, Gibson was still working as a commercial pilot at Southwest Airlines, the job that followed his retirement from the astronaut corps in 1996. This year, Gibson turned 60 - forcing him out of the commercial pilot pool. That provided an opening for his official entry in the commercial space race.

"I am just crazy about flying rockets," he said.

Benson Space announced today that it has worked out an agreement with SpaceDev for the first phase in the development of the Dream Chaser - a rocket-powered space plane that would launch vertically and land horizontally.

Dream Chaser's design is based on the HL-20 vehicle that NASA tested back in the 1980s. Because SpaceDev and its partners will be using a proven spacecraft design as well as an upgraded version of the hybrid rocket engines that powered SpaceShipOne to the edge of space two years ago, it shouldn't take all that long to turn the Dream Chaser into reality, Benson said.

"We're taking a recipe, mixing the ingredients together and baking the cake, so to speak," he said. "The matter for us is spaceship fabrication, rocket motor fabrication and integration. So I think we will have many fewer stumbling blocks than other people have who are starting from scratch."

The current agreement calls for a critical design review and a go/no-go decision on moving forward by the end of March. The second phase - which is still under discussion - would involve fabrication of a prototype Dream Chaser. Glide testing would begin next September, with the first powered flight in November. The third phase would call for building one to three Dream Chasers that could be used for suborbital space tours by the end of 2008. That schedule could slip, but so far the plan is proceeding ... well, according to plan, Benson said.

"We're involved in a race to space, and we're making it happen with just one concrete step after another," Benson declared.

SpaceDev and Benson Space already have begun working out the details of the Dream Chaser's design. "There are not even any foreseeable technical hurdles," Benson said.

A lot of space ventures falter on the financial hurdles rather than the technical hurdles: When Benson announced his new company back in September, he said he quickly completed an initial round of financing, and today he told me that he's in the midst of a second round - with a fund-raising trip to Europe and the Middle East planned early next year.

He declined to discuss the financial terms of the Phase 1 agreement with SpaceDev - an agreement in which SpaceDev is the supplier and Benson Space is the customer. But he repeated his view that the total development effort would cost $50 million.

Benson sees at least three avenues to profit:

• First, there's the space tourism market - which has also brought XCOR, Rocketplane Kistler, PlanetSpace, Blue Origin and the  perceived front-runner, Virgin Galactic, into the commercial space race. "I still think that we're at least a year ahead of the competition," Benson said - which assumes that the other competitors won't be spaceflight-worthy until around 2010.
• Second, Benson says it's possible that one of the COTS contractors - SpaceX or Rocketplane Kistler - will eventually bow out of the program, giving Benson Space a second chance for NASA funding. In any case, Benson is gearing up to compete for COTS' second phase, which would set aside more money for orbital space station resupply. This scenario would call for the Dream Chaser to go orbital - an option that has always been in the back of Benson's mind.
• The third avenue foresees turning the Dream Chaser into an orbital space delivery system, capable of servicing Bigelow Aerospace's private-enterprise space modules. If no government money is spent on developing the Dream Chaser, "that would qualify us for the $50 million Bigelow orbital prize," Benson said.

For Gibson, the key is developing a safe and reliable spaceship that's capable of frequent flights. Benson Space has specified that the Dream Chaser should be capable to making four suborbital spaceflights in 12 hours.

"The ultimate hope is that if you fly these things enough, you launch these things enough that you get the price down to thousands of dollars rather than hundreds of thousands of dollars," Gibson explained. "Even if all you do is get it down to $50,000 a ticket, you certainly will have a big market."

Along the way, Gibson hopes the Dream Chaser might just show NASA that there's still a place for the winged, reusable planes most people think of when they dream of spaceships.

"NASA is going back to capsules and parachutes, and - how do I say this without saying it? - in some ways, that's going back 30 years," he said.

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