The rockets NASA plans to use to go to the moon and perhaps on to Mars will be called Ares 1 and Ares 5, the agency's associate administrator for exploration systems announced today. The names pay "homage to Saturn," NASA's Scott Horowitz said, referring to the Saturn 1 and Saturn 5 rockets that were used for the first push to the moon.

Ares was the god of war in Greek mythology, the equivalent of the Roman god Mars. So NASA's new rocket name is meant to evoke the Red Planet - but Horowitz insisted that it's not meant to sound warlike. "We didn't name it after the god of war," he told reporters. "That's not our intent. Our intent was that it relates to Mars and exploration."

Even though Horowitz proposed a pacifist rationale for the name, the Ares rockets should pack quite a punch.

The Ares 1, formerly known as the Crew Launch Vehicle, uses a shuttle-derived, five-segment solid rocket booster, with an upper stage powered by an upgraded Apollo-era J-2 rocket engine. Gross liftoff weight is 2 million pounds, the stack measures 309 feet high, and it should be able to deliver a 25-ton payload to orbit, according to NASA's stats.

The Ares 5, formerly known as the Cargo Launch Vehicle, will use two of those beefed-up solid rocket boosters, strapped onto a first stage with five RS-68 engines. There'll be an upper stage similar to that used by the Ares 1. The whole stack would weigh 7.4 million pounds, measure 358 feet in length, and put about 130 tons of payload into orbit. That payload capacity is very close to that of the Saturn 5.

Wind-tunnel testing of the Ares 1 is already under way, said Jeff Hanley, program manager for the overall Constellation launch system.

"A lot of work [is] ongoing right now," Hanley said.

First testing of the Ares 1's launch abort system could begin in late 2008, with a step-by-step schedule for testing the full-scale vehicle beginning in 2009. Hanley said the launch abort system tests were likely to take place at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, while the full-fledged vehicle tests might be launched from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39B, the very pad where Discovery is sitting now.

"The shuttle team is intending to be finished with Pad B by that time," Hanley said.

The first crewed flights are now slated to begin in September 2014 - eventually leading to landings on the moon beginning in the 2018-2020 timeframe.

Horowitz said the fact that the components for the Ares vehicle are drawn from the Apollo and shuttle programs was a plus, because so much of the performance data would already be in hand. "You're actually buying down risk very early in the program," he said.

Other components of the system - such as the Crew Exploration Vehicle, the capsule that will sit atop the Ares 1 - have yet to be named. But the name, and the selection of the contractor for the CEV, could be announced by September, NASA says.

Hanley said his team was looking at conceptual designs for the lunar lander as well.

As far as the naming process goes, Horowitz said he "utilized in-house NASA expertise" to winnow through thousands of proposed monikers. The name Ares harkens back to "The Case for Mars," a book in which the Mars Society's Robert Zubrin proposed a strategy for future Red Planet missions. Part of the process was doing the legal work to back up the name, including trademark registration, Horowitz said. (Click here and do a search for trademark serial number 78891265.)

The rumored "notional names" for the CEV and the lunar lander are Antares and Artemis, as reported previously. But Horowitz said he and other officials were still looking over "three or four" finalists for the CEV, including a "leading candidate." He declined to tip his hand on Antares' status on the list.

Update for 7:50 p.m. ET: I fixed a couple of bonehead errors in the technical descriptions of the launch vehicles. At least I think I spelled A-R-E-S correctly.

NASA is catching up with the schedule for the shuttle Discovery's launch preparations, making up for a delay that was sparked on Thursday by a lightning alert. This afternoon, the final experiments are being stowed in the orbiter's middeck area - including a collection of microbes that will be used to see how space travel affects mutation and DNA repair, and an intrepid platoon of fruit flies.

Fruit flies?

The fruit-fly experiment, like the microbial experiment, is designed to see how the space environment affects living things. As explained in this Space.com report, the flies will be carried in a sealed tray aboard Discovery, along with embryonic flies that should mature into adults during the flight, and samples of a fungus that would provoke an immune response in the flies.

After Discovery's mission, the flies would be exposed to the fungus back on Earth. The purpose of the experiment - known as Fungal Pathogenesis, Tumorigenesis and Effects of Host Immunity in Space, or FIT - is to see how the radiation and weightlessness of the space environment affects the immune system.

It's already well-known that spaceflight can suppress an astronaut's immune system, and that some bacteria may become more virulent in space. But scientists haven't been able to put their finger on the precise reasons why. FIT represents the best effort to date to unravel the genetic mystery.

The microbial experiment - titled Passive Observatories for Esxperimental Microbial Systems, or POEMS - will take another approach to the mystery, exposing various types of microbes to space on the shuttle as well as over the longer term on the international space station.

The flies didn't exactly volunteer for this duty, but if they did, they'd be rooting for Discovery to take off sooner rather than later.

"After two successive launch attempts, they will go in and change out the fruit flies. So we have another set of fruit flies that are in the Space Flight Sciences Laboratory that are ready if we stay at the pad a little longer," said payload manager Debbie Hahn.

The service structure that encloses the shuttle during processing should be rotated away from Discovery this evening, representing another step toward launch. But the weather prognosis is pretty much the same as it has been: 60 percent chance of unacceptable conditions on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, due to the potential for thunderstorms and lightning strikes from anvil clouds.

Even if there's no lightning, the presence of the particular types of clouds that can generate a spark within 20 nautical miles of NASA's Kennedy Space Center could lead launch controllers to call off the launch. "You could actually trigger a lightning strike with our launch," weather officer Kathy Winters observed.

That's happened before, most famously in 1969 during the launch of Apollo 12. No lasting damage was done that time, but it's just one more thing to be wary about as NASA gets ready for Discovery's fireworks show.

On the technical side of things, everything looks A-OK, said NASA test director Jeff Spaulding.

"While it's taken us nearly a year of hard work to get back to this point, I'm proud to announce that the vehicle, our launch team and our flight crew are ready to launch and all of us are ready kick off our nation's 230th birthday celebration a little early this weekend," he told reporters.

Check out our "Return to Flight" section for updates as the clock ticks toward Discovery's scheduled launch at 3:48 p.m. ET Saturday.

We aren't even close to Saturday afternoon's scheduled launch attempt for the shuttle Discovery, and already folks here at Kennedy Space Center in Florida are talking about the prospect for repeated countdown resets reminiscent of the comedy "Groundhog Day," in which Bill Murray lives out the same day over and over again.

The reason? It's not because of technical glitches - none of those are in sight, NASA test director Pete Nickolenko said at this morning's countdown status briefing. Rather, it's the weather forecast that sounds like a broken record: 60 percent chance of unacceptable weather for launch, due to afternoon thunderstorms and anvil clouds. That forecast currently applies to Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

"It's not an ideal situation when it comes to the weather," shuttle weather officer Kathy Winters admitted.

Nickolenko said the most likely scenario would be for mission managers to make launch tries on Saturday and Sunday, take Monday off, then try again Tuesday and Wednesday.

The off day on Monday would be to give the crew a break, he said. It's no picnic for the crew to get up in the wee hours of the morning, have them suit up and strap in, and then have to bring them back out of the shuttle day after day.

"It's like 'Groundhog Day,'" he explained. "That can get kind of old and difficult."

NASA can schedule four launch attempts over a five-day time frame, and then there have to be a couple of days set aside to replenish the shuttle's onboard cryogenic fuel, shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach said this afternoon. Once that's done, the five-day cycle would begin again.

Winters said the relatively monotonous forecast is actually in line with the usual pattern for Florida in the summer (PDF file). This week might be a little different only in terms of how much moisture is behind the cloud systems, and how pressure ridges happen to be steering the weather.

Several factors are giving the shuttle team hope that it won't get as bad as "Groundhog Day," however: One is that a 60 percent chance of no-go weather still leaves a 40 percent chance for launch. Nickolenko told reporters that launches have gone off even when the forecast was 80 percent unfavorable.

Another factor is that the steering ridge behind the storm pattern looks to be gradually shifting from south (bad) to north (good), Winters said.

But the biggest hope for Discovery's launch during the July 1-19 window is that each day, the scheduled launch time shifts about 23 minutes earlier, due to the changing orbital mechanics behind the shuttle's rendezvous with the international space station. Afternoon thunderstorms don't pose a problem if you're launching before the storms blow in.

"As that launch time goes earlier, that is the one thing that could help us over time," Winters said.

Update for 6:20 p.m.: Leinbach's description of the launch cycle made clear that it's a five-day cycle. After today's launch readiness review, mission managers said that there were no constraints on the launch other than the weather. We'll have further updates in our "Return to Flight" section. By the way, the skies clouded up and sent down the occasional sheets of rain as usual this afternoon.

As NASA prepares for the shuttle Discovery's launch, you can expect to see a delegation of dignitaries down at Kennedy Space Center in Florida - led by Vice President Richard Cheney and his wife, Lynne. NBC News quotes administration sources as saying that the Cheneys are due to take in Saturday's launch as well as the the Pepsi 400 NASCAR race in Daytona, then head back to Washington for Independence Day.

That schedule may be all wet, however, if stormy weather delays the shuttle launch. In that event, the Second Family might have to miss out on a roar even louder than a NASCAR engine. But I'll still be down there, waiting for Discovery to take flight. I'll try to keep this old log updated from Kennedy Space Center, dependent on time and bandwidth.

For the whole story of the shuttle mission, check out our "Return to Flight" special section, and take a look at the discussion on MSNBC's Technology & Science message board. If you have any burning questions about the space program or the shuttle flight, leave them as comments here and I'll see if I can get them addressed - again, dependent on time and bandwidth.

Transformational Space, or t/Space for short, today announced that it has added Ball Aerospace to its team in the competition to build a low-cost replacement for the space shuttle. The announcement serves as another example of the interlocking alliances being made to pursue the $500 million offered through NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS.

Other new t/Space teammates include Near Earth LLC as the consortium's investment banker; and Lon Levin, the co-founder of XM Satellite Radio, as a strategic adviser (PDF biography).

Ball Aerospace's presence on the team - with the role of providing control hardware and software for t/Space's proposed spaceship - follows a trend in which the same companies appear as supporting players on competing teams. Ball also shows up on the lineup for Spacehab, which is fielding its own COTS proposal.

Among other examples, McDonald Detwiler & Associates. the Canadian company that built the robot arms for the space shuttle and the international space station, is on the Spacehab team as well as SpaceX's team. In fact, Spacehab has also been listed as a player on SpaceX's team. Such arrangements let aerospace companies hedge their bets.

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Are UFOs real? Well, it all depends on what you mean by unidentified flying objects. Obviously there are things that seem to fly in the sky that we can't quite make out - but are they Frisbee disks or flying saucers, neurological glitches or interdimensional visitors? Last week we ran an update on the state of "scientific" ufology, and received scores of sighting reports in response. Read on for details on some of the mysterious questions and not-so-mysterious answers.

Ed: "UFOs are real. I still remember the one over Hempstead, Long Island, on a Friday in 1966 that I thought was a helicopter when I first saw it in the night sky. But it moved left and right too quickly, so I figured it was another Grumman's, Republic's or Fairchild-Hiller's test flight. Saturday morning it was a saucer photograph on the front page of the Long Island Press. Sunday the front page printed a retraction, along with a statement by the Air Force (fast, aren't they?).

"Why would a press photographer snap a clear shot (large, close and not fuzzy) and then deny it? It was a UFO, but just that, Unidentified (but it looked just like a flying saucer). I have also seen 'swamp gas' in northern New Jersey that looked like a ball of fire with a tail about 5 times longer than the ball's diameter, but there was no swamp nearby, just farms. And I read in the local N.J. papers about the Passaic cops chasing one along the river in the '70s when I lived there. Are they spacecraft? The cops didn't know either. Your guess is as good as mine."

Curt: "I was a 12-year-old amateur astronomer during the spring of 1958.  The previous Christmas I had been given my first telescope, a nifty 3-inch reflector.  I awoke one warm midnight and went to kitchen to get a glass of milk.  I took a look out the kitchen screen door to peer at the southern sky and was stunned to see a bright white point of light, brighter than any star, halfway up from the horizon.  I knew it could not be Venus, which is never out at midnight.  I ran to my closet and retrieved my telescope. I speedily set it up in the yard. As I brought the UFO into focus my heart started racing. There in the field of view appeared a huge elliptically shaped mother ship, surrounded by four small scout vessels!  Sweat quickly began dripping from my brow. My great excitement lasted for about a dozen seconds.  Then it mellowed into the gentler emotion of joy upon realization that I had 'discovered' Jupiter and its four large satellites.

"Go outside this evening and look toward the southern sky.  You'll see the same thing.  It's awesome. Acceptance and understanding of nature's marvels can enrich us far more than insistence that fanciful conjectures by default must be the true explanations."

Al Berry: "I am e-mailing to tell you a simple thing that I saw in 1953. I was 13 years old then, and I was picking apples off a tree in Lynn, MA. My younger brother, who was 9 at the time, was with me. I happened to look across the street up over a large oak tree and saw what looked like a full moon. Same size and shape, but appeared unusually close. While I was staring at it, I said to my brother, 'Look at that moon.' Before he had a chance, it went what looked like straight backward into a point of light and was gone. No flashing lights, no sound or any of that junk. Just plain gone, I can see it in my mind just like it was an hour ago. Clear night, no wind, no explanation. I have told a few friends about it but never anyone else, and I know what I saw. Have you had any other people see anything similar? Let me know."

Jeff Powell: "I don't know what they are, but I have seen a saucer-shaped UFO myself, in March '05. I was skeptical until then, but now there is no doubt in my mind that they exist. What made it even more interesting is that it left after being encountered by a very high-speed jet. The sighting was over Afton Mountain in Virginia on my way home from work about 5:30 p.m. The sunset was glistening off the bottom of the saucer like it reflects off water."

James Carbary: "I do believe that UFOs are real, and I have two reasons for this belief.

"1) I have seen natural phenomena that could be mistaken for a UFO, including Venus, swamp gas, an asteroid that passed through the earth's atmosphere, and traveled back out into space ... and two actual bona fide UFOs during broad daylight in great viewing conditions, with multiple witnesses, without actually having searched intentionally for a UFO.

"2) The statistical probability that there would be so many UFO sightings, throughout history I might add, without there actually being any UFOs in existence, is very minute to say the least. Some of the sightings have to be real occurrences of actual objects.

"The problem we face is that the U.S. government, and many governments worldwide over the years, have used the issue of UFOs to hide secret testing programs, perpetrated scams designed to confuse the public, and have used plausible deniability to cover their tracks. So we are faced with the problem of sorting the facts from the invented sightings (hoaxes perpetrated by unknown agents) which are seeded among the population to perpetuate and feed the hoax machine our government created.

"If we are truly going to solve the UFO riddle, we need a common standard, and scientific method, in order to be able to analyze the data and sort out the truths from the untruths. Why not a common worldwide standard for reporting the sightings that can be quantified and studied using a common set of rules, like the 802.11b wireless standard, created by a standards board? It would lend quite a bit of credibility to the subject and help separate the hype from the bunk, and give everyone something to agree on, a ruler to measure by, so to speak. Take it seriously, form a standards committee, come up with a set of rules and standards to use, and study the sightings in the serious light of day under scientific scrutiny.

"If that does not clear up the matter, at least we will be able to honestly say, 'We do not know what it is, so it is therefore an unknown object or natural phenomena.' This would be much more palatable than testosterone-pumped self-styled 'experts' further muddying the waters with their 'expert opinions.'

Jeff Capron: "Sure, UFO's are real.  Every day I see four or five UFO's. I am pretty sure that if I investigated, I would find out that they are aircraft landing at the local airport.

"I think the better question would be: Are E.T.s visiting the earth in crafts that we call 'UFOs' real?

"To this I would guess mostly no.  Sure, there may have been a few, but there is no way to tell.  I cannot begin to recount how many times I have had people swear to me that Venus / an airplane / a falling star / [insert normal skyward entity here] was a UFO while I am looking right at it and know exactly what it is.  This is just in my circle of friends. 

"When I was a child, I wanted to believe in Santa Claus so much that I swore I saw him fly by the house and land on the roof.  Is this evidence that Santa Claus exists?  Of course not, but unfortunately, that same 'data' is accepted by 'ufologists' across the globe as proof of UFOs. 

"Give me E.T.'s finger on a plate, show me clear video of a spaceship landing and probing sleeping victims, or wreckage from a drunk-driving alien, and then it would be possible to at least make a hypothesis."

Ray: "In the context of the description, of course there are UFOs (or Unidentified Flying Objects).  In the year 1980, my family and I were firsthand witnesses to something we just couldn't identify. We had a large glowing oval object (about the size of our house) suddenly stop and hover about 75 yards from us over our back yard.  Nothing out of the ordinary happened as far as the encounter, just a lot of ooh's and aaah's from my brothers and sisters, and a little anxiety on the part of my mother, as that's what mothers do.

"After a period of about five minutes, the object sped away toward the horizon at a terrific rate of speed and then up into the atmosphere. At the rate it was going, it should have broken the sound barrier, but it didn't. (Even though I was in my teens, I had grown up with jets flying over the neighborhood in my childhood and was very familiar with sonic booms. They have laws against that now, I believe.)

"Now as to what this thing was, we never quite got the answer on that.  The town I was living in at the time was Sundance, Wyoming. (If someone happens to look up the incident, they should try checking the Sundance paper for 1979 and 1980.)  Most of the town saw the object, but a lot of people saw it on the move and just figured it was a meteor.

"Was it gas? Was it ball lightning? I really don't know. I can't imagine ball lightning being the size that it was, or gas traveling at those speeds. (Even the best bean burritos can't generate gas power on that level!) Anyways, whatever we saw remains unidentified at the moment, so it definitely still fits the description of a UFO."

Ken Smith, Tennessee: "Yes, I believe they are real. I actually believe that I have seen some back in the 1950s. I am a retired electrical engineer and I really believe that what I saw as flying disks way up in the sky were UFOs. The disks were elliptical in shape and flying in circles at unbelievable speeds. We do not even have anything flying today that could rival the speed of the disks."

In addition to the sighting reports (or solution reports), some correspondents waxed philosophical. Here's a smattering of those big-picture observations:

Freddie: "As just one example, the Native Americans fell prey to man's conquering ways. If aliens do show up, I hope they are more understanding than we have been toward each other. I sometimes wonder if all this 'e-mail to space' is such a good idea. Nothing like waving a flag, and getting conquered for your effort."

Richard Youngs, Yuma, Ariz.: "Count the number of known objects in the heavens. Then ask yourself the question: 'Is there any possible way that we are alone?'"

Kenneth: "... If, and I do mean if, there is life along our lines out there, it would be so far away that to us it really does not exist. Or it could have come and gone. I would find it more believable that if we had or are being 'visited,' it would be us or those in the future going back in time, as if on a history field trip."

Harold M. Gott: "Is there life out there in space? Consider this idea. I live near Grand Mesa, Colorado.  On top of this mesa are several hundred lakes.  I've fished and caught fish in a few of those lakes. Some are rainbow trout, some are cutthroat, some are browns.  Am I to believe that the only lakes with fish in them, out of the several hundred on the mesa,  are the three or four lakes I've fished?  Are those three lakes the only ones in the USA - or the world - that have fish in them? Are those three species of fish the only kind in the world?  What a narrow-minded approach that would be. At some point in the maybe distant (maybe not so distant?) future, I'm certain intelligent life will be discovered out there (somewhere) and contact made with it.   I'm an old man now and will never live to see my prediction, but I feel certain some future generations will indeed see it happen."

Do you think the search for life beyond Earth will turn up any firm evidence in your lifetime, whether it's microbes on Mars or Enceladus, or beacons from Beta Pictoris? Feel free to add your comments on aerial anomalies, or on the step-by-step search for extraterrestrial life.

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Joan Roch / Mars Society

Clad in simulation spacesuits, Mars Society crew members walk away from their habitat for "extravehicular activity" during a 2004 expedition to Devon Island.

Being cooped up on a space mission can do funny things to you - even if it's a make-believe mission. During an extended simulation of a voyage to Mars back in 1999, a bloody fistfight reportedly broke out between two ersatz astronauts, and one woman participant complained of sexual harassment.

So it'll be interesting to see what happens next year, when the Mars Society is due to stage a simulated four-month mission - not within the comfy confines of a laboratory, but amid the frozen wastes of the Canadian Arctic.

The society's president, Robert Zubrin, confirmed last week's reports that his organization was forgoing its annual simulated mission on Devon Island this year, and concentrating instead on next year's Arctic expedition.

"Essentially we're saving the money from this year so we can do something bigger next year," he told me today.

Zubrin got the society steering committee's go-ahead last week for a project that would send a crew of seven up to Devon next year in the April-May time frame, when temperatures are still below zero Fahrenheit (-20 degrees Celsius) - and keep that crew there until the end of August.

During the Mars Society's past campaigns, crews rotated in and out for stints of one to four weeks at a time, during the warmest part of the Arctic summer. As in the past, next year's crew would go out in simulated spacesuits to conduct biological and geological surveys of the Marslike surroundings.

"They're going to be doing a sustained program of field exploration, while in isolation and amid a certain amount of dangerous situations," Zubrin said. "No one's ever done anything like this."

The risks include some factors that could play out on Mars - including extreme cold and the unpredictability of communication and supply links - and some that you're unlikely to see on the Red Planet, such as polar bears.

Zubrin said that the specifics for the expedition would be drawn up in time for this year's Mars Society convention in Washington this August, and that an "open call for volunteers" would go out after that. The crew candidates should have a blend of technical skills, wilderness skills, mechanical aptitude and a "strong commitment" to the eventual human exploration of Mars, he said.

There's already a pool of about 300 potential candidates: veterans of the Mars Society's past expeditions to Devon Island and the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. Other volunteers would be accepted for support roles, he said.

"To the extent that space exploration can be democratized, this is it," Zubrin said.

Zubrin said it was time for the Devon Island operation to move beyond the shorter-duration stints. A a four-month expedition will be more costly than the usual summer field season, but he said he was certain enough funding would be available. "The question is how much we do in those four months," he said.

NASA and European Space Agency personnel have participated in past Mars Society simulations, producing exploration-oriented research as a result, and Zubrin said he hoped the coming expedition would do the same.

As I mentioned last week, the NASA-supported Haughton-Mars Project is already ramping up for its 10th field season on Devon Island. That project isn't so much geared toward reproducing the feel of a space mission - for example, the Haughton-Mars researchers aren't as religious about staying "in sim" and using fake spacesuits.

There are precedents for long-duration isolation exercises - including, of course, the real-life isolation of the international space station. NBC News space analyst James Oberg has suggested that the station be given the name "Endurance," which also happens to be the name connected with Sir Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic ordeal in 1915-16, and one of the names being considered for the Mars Society's expedition.

Russian experiments on the ground have reportedly gone as long as 220 days, and a 500-day isolation mission is in the works (although the schedule for that experiment has reportedly slipped into 2007). There's also the fascinating tale of Stefania Follini, whose body clock was knocked out of whack during her four-month solo stay in a New Mexico cave in 1989.

If you need more information about the upcoming expedition or the Mars Society's August convention - or if you have another suggestion for the expedition name - you can send an e-mail to info@marssociety.org. And feel free to share your reactions, concerns or name suggestions in the comments area below.

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Some of the contenders in the commercial spaceflight race are more hush-hush than others - and virtually no one is more secretive than Blue Origin, the space effort funded by Amazon.com's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos. Most of what's known publicly about Blue Origin has come from the rare interview or public-record filing - or from just skulking around.

Fortunately, there's a new public record that provides lots of detail about what Blue Origin is up to - an almost mind-numbing 229 pages' worth. Page for page, it's probably the biggest assortment of Blue's clues yet.

The details are contained in a draft environmental assessment filed with the Federal Aviation Administration, and released by the agency a couple of days ago (PDF file). The FAA says the document will be the subject of a public hearing July 25 in Van Horn, Texas, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of the launch site on Bezos' sprawling 165,000-acre Corn Ranch.

The launch area itself is just a small portion of that property - 18,600 acres - but it will house a processing facility, a launch complex and test stand, a separate landing and recovery area, a training center for paying space passengers and other support facilities. The acreage also has at least two archaeologically significant sites, a bat cave, snake lairs and other features of environmental concern - but based on the document, it sounds as if Blue Origin should be able to handle those concerns.

FAA

The FAA report includes a drawing of a vertical-takeoff rocket, but Blue Origin says it hasn't yet finalized its vehicle design.

As previously reported, Blue Origin is developing a reusable, vertical-takeoff-and-landing rocket ship called the New Shepard - a name that commemorates the late astronaut Alan Shepard and his 15-minute suborbital space jaunt in 1961. It would be capable of flying three or more passengers to the edge of outer space and back, under the control of on-board computers.

The FAA report sports a picture of a vertical-takeoff rocket on its cover, but Blue Origin says that the vehicle design has not yet been "finalized."

The cone-shaped craft would consist of a crew capsule sitting atop a propulsion module, equipped with engines that would run on kerosene and hydrogen peroxide.

A typical flight would run just 10 minutes from launch to landing. Passengers would ride straight up to an altitude of more than 62 miles (100 kilometers) - allowing them to see the black sky of space above a curving Earth, and to feel a few minutes of weightlessness.

The sights passengers might see would include open, flat desert and ranchland, the nearby Delaware Mountains and the "rugged and more picturesque Sierra Diablo," in the words of the report. But don't expect much in the way of monuments: The report notes that the "most significant man-made feature of the area from a visual-aesthetic perspective is State Highway 54, a two-lane blacktop that connects Interstate 10 to State Highways 62 and 180."

FAA

This is the view from a ridge on the proposed launch site on Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos' Corn Ranch, looking west toward the Sierra Diablo mountains.

On the way down, there are two possible scenarios: Either the spacecraft would land with the crew capsule still attached to the engines - or the propulsion module would break away and land on its own, with the crew capsule floating back down to Earth beneath parachutes or a similar drag system.

If there were an emergency - either detected by the onboard computer or by controllers monitoring the flight from the ground - the crew capsule would separate and parachute to safety.

The environmental assessment represents just one step in a regulatory process that Blue Origin hopes will result in the necessary permissions for testing and commercial operations - including experimental permits and licenses for the New Shepard as well as the launch site.

Blue Origin has just moved into its new office/production facility in Kent, Wash., south of Seattle, and it plans to send its first demonstration vehicle down to Texas for testing sometime this year. That would be an unmanned rocket set-up capable of going no higher than 2,000 feet (610 meters), with a mission time of less than a minute.

Over the next couple of years, the capability of the unmanned demonstration vehicles would be increased. "Eventually, Blue Origin proposes to perform multiple flight tests of the actual operational New Shepard RLV system carrying Blue Origin personnel before commencing commercial operation," the document says.

Blue Origin aims to start commercial operations in 2010, building up to an average of one launch per week. Most of the flights would take place during the day, but some may occur at night. The company projects that 20 to 35 full-time employees would be traveling to the site during its operational phase.

There's no mention of how much the 10-minute space jumps might cost - and that sort of speculation might be premature anyway, considering that it'll be four years before the rides are available, and that other suborbital spaceflight providers may already be testing price points by that time. (Virgin Galactic and Rocketplane, which may be in operation by that time, have named prices in the $200,000 range.)

But Blue Origin is already thinking ahead, as evidenced by the FAA report's discussion of traffic impacts.

"The potential does exist for sightseers to crowd Highway 54 during launches," the report says. "Recent private space launch attempts associated with the X Prize attracted numerous sightseers, in part due to widespread pre-launch publicity. Given the small population density and remoteness of the site, and the fact that Blue Origin does not plan to actively publicize launch times, the Blue Origin site is not expected to attract as many sightseers as do some other launch sites."

Blue Origin is also planning for a guard station and miles and miles of fences - so although I don't expect security to be as tight as, say, Area 51, it won't be as open as Disneyland either. Which is probably what you want in a place where things could blow up.

Feel free to take a look through the FAA document, check out Clark Lindsey's posting at RLV and Space Transport News, then let me know what you think.

It may not be as heady as the X Prize, but the Space Frontier Foundation is planning what you might call the B Prize for space-related business plans. The payoff for the best pitch? Entrepreneurial glory ... plus a $1,000 poker chip, awarded by an investor at the foundation's annual conference in Las Vegas next month.

XCOR Aerospace's Rich Pournelle, a guy who is well-versed in the world of space entrepreneurship, sent along the call for entries for the NewSpace 2006 Business Plan Competition.

Pournelle emphasized that the entries need not be restricted to rocket ships.

"It only has to be space-related," he told me. "For example, if it's a rocket-powered car, we would consider the business plan. Or materials science, or solar power technology that might be used in satellites, or remote sensing, or any kind of life support systems. Any of that kind of stuff, we would consider."

Here's the language from the call for entries, which will be posted on the Space Frontier Foundation's Web site as well:

"Entrepreneurial space companies who are interested in participating in this rewarding competition are asked to submit a 1-3 page executive summary of their plan by July 10 to amaresh.kollipara@gmail.com.  Amaresh Kollipara is an entrepreneur and a former Accenture executive who will screen the entries.  Entries should have some relation to space-related markets such as space transportation, space robotics, space-related entertainment, remote sensing, space communications, materials sciences, life support, green technologies, etc.  Companies selected to present will be asked to submit a 10-minute presentation in advance of the competition. A guideline for presentations can be found at [this link]. Special thanks to Mark Zetter of Golden Capital Network for the templates and formats we will use for this competition.

"All selected finalists will have the opportunity to present their plans at a special event during the conference on Friday, July 21 at

For the 10th year, researchers are journeying up to the Canadian Arctic to test tools and techniques that could be used during future Mars missions. And now there's a new destination nearby: Arctic Europa, a stand-in for a moon of Jupiter that may harbor ice-covered oceans and even life.

Starting in 1997, the NASA-backed Haughton-Mars Project has used chilly, barren Haughton Crater on Devon Island in Canada's Nunavut territory as a stand-in for the Red Planet. Some of the pictures from that northern clime look eerily Marslike. The 10th field season is about to get under way, and you can check the HMP Web site for updates.

This summer, the nonprofit Planetary Society is sponsoring an expedition to Ellesmere Island, just next door to Devon, to conduct astrobiology experiments that someday may come into play on Europa. Check out the fascinating report on Borup Fiord Pass at the Planetary Society's Web site, and keep posted on developments by following Emily Lackdawalla's Planetary Society Weblog.

Still more researchers are working on Arctic Mars analog experiments at a site in Norway's Svalbard archipelago - check out this Astrobiology magazine article for the full story.

Meanwhile, NASA Watch has reported that the nonprofit Mars Society is forgoing its own summer expedition to the Canadian Arctic this year, but CNN said today that the society is planning a four-month Arctic expedition next year.

Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking may speak out on global warming and space settlement as well as string theory, but his reputation really rests on his work on the frontiers of space, time and black holes. For scientists, then, the real buzz is over his latest research paper, which asserts that our universe is actually the result of fuzzy quantum interference involving a multitude of possibilities - including, just for instance, universes where Hawking rules the world.

Hawking doesn't mention his hegemony in the paper, titled "Populating the Landscape: A Top Down Approach" and accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review D (PDF file). I just made that up. But the idea is that the current state of the cosmos arises from the sum of all possible histories. Some of those possibilities might have Hawking (highly improbable) or Hitler (slightly less improbable) in charge. But the result would tend to follow the mostly likely branchings of cosmic cause and effect.

It all sounds pretty metaphysical, but Hawking and his co-author, Thomas Hertog of the European CERN research center, say that a detailed analysis of imprints from the universe's infancy - such as the cosmic microwave background or primordial gravitational waves - might turn up characteristic fluctuations that would support their "top-down" hypothesis.

The paper has generated notices in Physics News Update, on Nature's Web site and in New Scientist magazine (where the concept has been dubbed the "Flexiverse").

In an e-mail, I asked Hertog whether the current state of the art - the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (for the cosmic microwave background, or CMB) and the Laser Interferometry Gravitational-wave Observatory (for gravity waves) - could provide the evidence that he and Hawking were looking for. The alternative would be waiting for a space-based gravity-wave detector known as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA.

Here's Hertog's e-mailed response:

"The details of the fluctuation spectra will depend on the theory.

"First we calculate (in a given theory) what is the dominant history that leads to a universe like the one we observe. The observed CMB fluctuations, as well as the spectrum of primordial gravitational waves, arise from small quantum fluctuations around this dominant history.

"The precise shape of the fluctuation spectra can be computed, and depends on the history. This, as you say, provides a way to test the top down approach.

"However, to carry out these calculations in all their detail, we need a better understanding of the potential `landscape' of string theory.

"At present, therefore, we are only able to predict certain generic features of the fluctuations, some of them have been observed by WMAP.

"As for gravitational waves, LISA will be required."

The bottom line? Don't hold your breath, but keep your eye on the "landscape" debate.

• 'Nova' on PBS: 'Supersonic Dream' 
• The Economist: To catch a gravitational wave
• The Engineer: Robot dogs evolve their own language (via Slashdot)
• Scotsman.com: 1,000 toga-clad skeletons found in Rome catacombs

Lewis Geyer / Times-Call

Malcom Buckley, 4, plays underneath a full-scale mockup of SpaceDev's Dream Chaser spaceship on display Wednesday at Centennial Airport in Englewood, Colo.

Even as one NASA team prepares for next week's shuttle launch, another team is taking a hard look at six alternative visions for low-cost successors to the shuttle. NASA officials are keeping a low profile, but the six finalists involved in the agency's $500 million commercial space competition are giving way more visibility to those future spaceship visions.

The idea behind NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS, is that the space agency would purchase services on privately built spacecraft to send crew members or cargo back and forth between Earth and the international space station. The concept has been compared to renting a truck from U-Haul rather than maintaining your own fleet of moving vans and buses.

It so happens that NASA is working on the equivalent of a moving van as well - a whole new spaceship called the Crew Exploration Vehicle at an estimated cost of $18 billion. The CEV could do the station supply job, of course. But if COTS works, the cost of keeping the space station running would be much less.

"The CEV is overkill for the station," explained Elon Musk, the founder of California-based SpaceX, one of the COTS finalists. Because the Crew Exploration Vehicle and its rocket are really meant for moon missions, using that system to go into low Earth orbit would have a high "financial drag coefficient," he told me.

Theoretically, the spaceships developed for the COTS program could be used for private-sector missions as well - including space tourism jaunts and point-to-point rocket transport. In fact, NASA is banking on the hope that the spaceship companies won't be relying on the space agency as their sole client. (Can you imagine U-Haul making a profit on government business alone?)

Because COTS is all about cost, competitiveness and commercial strategies, NASA has declined to provide status reports about the negotiations with the finalists. When word first emerged last month about the finalist round, the space agency declined to confirm publicly who was in or out. All the information had to come from the companies themselves or sources who were familiar with the competition.

Since then, the finalists have become increasingly open about their proposals.

California-based SpaceDev, for example, publicly unveiled a full-scale mockup of its proposed Dream Chaser mini-shuttle on Wednesday, the second anniversary of SpaceShipOne's historic private-sector spaceflight. SpaceDev says the Dream Chaser, which is modeled after a 1980s-era concept known as the HL-20 lifting body, could carry up to six people and/or cargo to the station and land like an airplane on almost any runway in the world.

In addition to unveiling the mockup at Centennial Airport in Englewood, Colo., the company and its recently acquired space hardware subsidiary, Starsys, unveiled their partners in the COTS proposal: Adam Aircraft, The Aerospace Corp., Emergent Space Technologies, Oceaneering and BAE Systems National Security Solutions.

The company's chief executive officer, Mark Sirangelo, said Wednesday's event was a preview for a NASA site visit that's under way today and tomorrow. During that evaluation, space agency representatives would "see and touch what you're seeing and touching today," he told the invitation-only attendees.

If NASA give the go-ahead to the Dream Chaser concept, the mini-shuttle could fly into orbit from existing spaceports in Florida and Virginia, SpaceDev founder and chairman Jim Benson told me. The craft could also be used for suborbital spaceflights, like the one SpaceShipOne flew two years ago.

"We intend to do our suborbital flights out of New Mexico," Benson said.

You can check out the press reports about the Dream Chaser's unveiling from the Denver Post and the Longmont Daily Times-Call - and get a load of this new SpaceDev animation of the future spacecraft in flight.

All six of the finalists told me today that they would proceed with their spaceship visions even if they didn't get the COTS cash for demonstration flights - but they said NASA's backing would definitely accelerate their plans and make it easier to recruit additional private investors. Here are updates on the other five finalists:

• Spacehab: The Houston-based company says it was the first of the finalists to host a two-day NASA site visit. NASA's evaluators visited Spacehab's Florida operations on June 5-6, company spokeswoman Kimberly Campbell told me.

"We felt like it was a very successful two days," she said. NASA officials also wanted lots of supporting documents for the Spacehab bid, and Campbell said the company "felt we've provided all the deliverables."

Spacehab and its partners are proposing its Apex spacecraft concept, which was unveiled almost exactly a year ago. Campbell said "Apex is a big part of our strategic plan," and numerous parties have voiced interest in using one of the selections in the Apex small-medium-large product line. "At this time, we have one customer that has committed funds," Campbell said. She declined to identify the customer.

• Andrews Space: The Seattle-based company's co-founder, Jason Andrews, declined to discuss the status of the COTS negotiations, other than to note that his team was proposing an updated version of the crew/cargo spaceship system it had studied under the terms of three earlier NASA contracts in the 2000-2003 time frame.

COTS is different from those earlier efforts, in that this time NASA knows it has to come up with an affordable replacement for the shuttle system. "Before, NASA had confidence in the shuttle. ... There was never a critical mass to go forward with hardware development or service procurement," he told me.

This time around, NASA assumes that private companies won't need public funds for the entire development cost of a new spaceship. Considering the space agency's funding limitations, "that's probably the right approach to take," Andrews said. However, the vision assumes that there will be other markets for orbital space travel - and Andrews noted that "the only market in existence today ... is NASA."

• t/Space: The Virginia-based consortium's president, David Gump, told me he was "breathing a sigh of relief" after providing NASA with another 24 pounds' worth of supporting documents for their bid - but he declined to say anything else about the status of t/Space's proposal.

In addition to seeking NASA support, t/Space is going after private backing for its spaceship concept. "We are a good way down that path of raising additional funds, and we think we'll have everything we need if we win a COTS award," he said.

• Rocketplane Kistler: The Oklahoma-based company is offering an updated version of the Kistler K-1 concept for orbital operations, at the same time that it's building its Rocketplane jet-rocket hybrid for suborbital flights. "We have a broadly based commercial market for our two vehicles," said David Urie, Rocketplane's executive vice president.

He declined to provide specifics on the status of the COTS negotiations, other than to say the company was "involved in the process" of providing documentation and hosting site visits.

• SpaceX: Musk confirmed reports that all the finalists would go to Washington in mid-August to make their final pitch at NASA Headquarters - and it was his understanding that NASA would make a public announcement on the one, two or perhaps three recipients of COTS funding "no later than September."

He said it would be challenging for any company to create an orbital space program like SpaceX's Dragon supported only by the $500 million that NASA has set aside for a four-year COTS demonstration program.

"It is a pretty tall order to accomplish what's being asked for in COTs," he told me. "It would be hard to imagine how an amount of money that is 2 to 3 percent of the shuttle budget for a year could support a whole lot of people."

Musk noted that SpaceShipOne developer Burt Rutan has said creating an orbital spaceflight program would cost a billion dollars or more. "And that's a man who knows how to stretch a buck," Musk added.

Despite those wonderings about the bottom line, Musk said the COTS program was crucial to NASA's success as it makes the transition from the space shuttle era to the next stage of human spaceflight.

"It's far more important than the 1 percent figure would indicate," he said. Musk noted that NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has been "fighting hard" for COTS - "and he's not fighting hard merely to placate the entrepreneurial sector."

• New Scientist: Hubble's key camera stops working 
• Phrenopolis: Hydrogen atom scale model (via Monkey Bites)
• EurekAlert: Why are uniforms uniform? 
• The Guardian: Don't drink and write

The science team behind the Cassini mission to Saturn have put together a silent-film festival you can enjoy from the comfort of your computer screen. The mostly black-and-white featurettes show the graceful movements of Saturnian moons against the background of the planet and its rings.

Although the show may not be as action-packed as "Superman Returns," I'd still give it a five-star rating.

NASA / SSI

Rhea passes across Saturn's disk in silhouette.

The easiest way to catch the quintuple-feature is to click on over to the Cassini Web site's latest videos and graze through the views.

• One movie shows Pan, a walnut-shaped shepherd moon, skimming around the edges of Saturn's rings. Pan measures a mere 16 miles (or 26 kilometers) across.
• Another features a minuet involving three moons: Dione and its much smaller sibling satellites, Janus and Epimetheus.
• A third movie captures the movement of a silhouetted Rhea across Saturn's shadowed, butterscotch disk, with a dark ring crossing through the geometric scene. 
• An "orbital ballet" shows Mimas and Enceladus seemingly slipping just above and below Rhea - although in actuality, the moons are hundreds of thousands of miles apart.
• My favorite of the bunch focuses on Epimetheus as it passes in front of Titan and Dione, with Saturn's nearly edge-on rings slashing through the frame.

As a bonus, the Cassini team has also posted a fresh snapshot of Saturn's most newsworthy moons, Enceladus and Titan.

As Cassini nears the halfway point of its four-year primary mission at Saturn, the imagery and orbital positions of the moons help navigators at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory keep the bus-sized spacecraft on track. For more views from Cassini, check out NASA's Web site, the imaging team's home page at the Space Science Institute, or our own gallery of greatest hits from space.

The next time someone tells you that scientists never get the big bucks, point that person toward the Web site for the $1 million Shaw Prize. Today's prize-winners include a trio of astronomers who are being honored for discovering something  - even though they don't know what the heck it is.

Those three researchers - Saul Perlmutter of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley, Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute, and Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University's Mount Stromlo Observatory - will share the million-dollar astronomy prize for their roles in detecting the influence of dark energy back in 1998.

Dark energy is a mysterious factor that appears to contribute to a "cosmic speed-up" in the expansion of the universe - perhaps due to an as-yet-unknown property of our space-time continuum. Whatever it is, it accounts for 70 percent of the universe's content.

"We still don't understand it very well," Riess said in a Johns Hopkins news release.

He and other scientists are working with NASA and the Energy Department to explore the possibility of a Joint Dark Energy Mission (PDF file), equipped with instruments that could help unravel what the National Academy of Sciences has called "the deepest mystery in physics."

Xiaodong Wang, a biochemist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, was awarded the million-dollar prize in life science and medicine. The Hong Kong-based Shaw Prize Foundation said he was being honored "for his discovery of the biochemical basis of programmed cell death, a vital process that balances cell birth and defends against cancer."

David Mumford of Brown University and Wu Wentsun of the Chinese Academy of Sciences will share the million dollars in the math category. Mumford is being honored "for his contributions to mathematics, and to the new interdisciplinary fields of pattern theory and vision research," while Wu is being recognized "for his contributions to the new interdisciplinary field of mathematics mechanization."

This is the third year for the Shaw Prize program, which some have called "the Nobel Prize of the East." The three prizes were established by Run Run Shaw, a philanthropist and longtime leader in the Hong Kong film and TV industry. This year's presentation ceremony is scheduled Sept. 12. 

Update for noon ET June 22: I sent an e-mail to Adam Riess on Wednesday evening, congratulating him on the prize and asking what he intended to do with his share of the money. Here's what he wrote back early today:

"Good question. It's a bit like dark energy: I haven't quite comprehended it yet, and I don't know what I will do with it."  

• Popular Science: The supersonic shape-shifting bomber
• Christian Sci. Monitor: Monitoring human rights? Get a satellite
• Univ. of Mich.: Was the 'earliest hominid' really just an ape?
• Crop circles and more from Sub Rosa magazine

Warner Bros. Pictures

Could a real-life Superman leap into outer space? Not with the humanoid body he has in the comic books and the movies - even if he was born on Krypton.

Hollywood is reviving the saga of the Man of Steel in a big way this month – and that serves to revive the debate over just how scientifically impossible Superman's powers are. As usual, there are grains of truth beneath the Hollywood hokum.

"Superman Returns" is having its invitation-only world premiere on Wednesday, leading up to the movie's nationwide release on June 28. Over the next week or so, we're likely to be inundated with articles analyzing the superhero's human side.

But what is Superman if not a Space Alien of Steel? From the start, the creators of the Superman saga clothed their hero's superpowers with an astrobiological explanation. For example, Superman is supposed to be so much stronger than mere humans because his anatomy is supposedly accustomed to the much stronger gravity of his home planet, Krypton.

That's what makes Seth Shostak eminently qualified to give the Superman saga a reality check. As senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., Shostak helps direct the real-life search for extraterrestrial intelligence  - and also muses on the shape of aliens to come in books such as "Sharing the Universe."

Shostak sees Superman as a great example of what not to look for in the search for alien life: "The fact that he's very humanoid in his appearance and behavior is of course a conceit that's adopted not only by the comic books, but also by Hollywood. ... If Superman looked like a typewriter, you'd end up having very little sympathy for his inner torment."

Some scientists, such as Simon Conway Morris, assert that the same basic body plan that has served so well on Earth would probably turn up on other planets where life takes root. If this sort of cosmic evolutionary convergence is the norm, it may well be that intelligent life elsewhere would look more like the fictional Superman than like Shostak's typewriter. But even then, Shostak sees plenty of reasons why Superman couldn't live up to his superpowers.

• "He still walks upright, and that suggests that the high-gravity environment wasn't too high," Shostak said. "If the gravity's really high, you're probably down on all fours, or all sixes." And obviously, there's no way a human-looking musculature would be capable of leaping tall buildings. "The only way he can do that is if he's built in fundamentally different ways."
• Then there's the energy requirements for all those feats of strength. "It takes a lot of energy to hurtle a 200-pound guy around," Shostak said. The Man of Steel would have to spend most of his time consuming some pretty high-octane fuel to run faster than a speeding bullet.
• As for Krypton, the physical factors of planet formation dictate that a planet significantly more massive than Earth would be a gas giant, with an atmosphere of methane or ammonia. "He would spend a lot of time sniffing the chemicals used for cleaning bathrooms," Shostak joked.

By now, you're probably protesting that "Superman Returns" is only a summer action movie, with no pretense of being a documentary. So there's no sense in complaining too much about fictional physics. In fact, professors such as the University of Minnesota's James Kakalios have been using superhero science as a teaching aid for years.

For example, Kakalios' students used Superman's leaping ability to calculate that Krypton would theoretically have been six times more massive than Earth. They also theorized that Krypton could have been made from the super-dense, unstable material found at the core of neutron stars - which would explain why Krypton blew up.

In a sense, Superman's creators "got the science right by accident," Kakalios said back in 2002. It turns out there's even a kernel of truth to the idea that Krypton orbited a red sun.

Similarly, Superman's powers have their parallels in real-life technologies, ranging from bulletproof vests (to stop that speeding bullet) to thermal imaging and T-ray vision (which is much more revealing than X-ray vision in real life).

And even before its official release, the new Superman movie has sparked a spirited discussion of special relativity as it applies to the Man of Steel's sojourn back to Krypton (slight spoiler alert). Anything that gets comic-book fans thinking about Einstein can't be all bad.

So go ahead and revel in the science of Superman - or have a laugh over insultingly stupid movie physics. Either way, I'd love to see your comments about the highs and lows of superhero science.

Don't you just hate it when you've kept up with an online auction for that bauble you've been lusting after, only to see it fall instead to a out-of-the-blue bidder in the final moments? If you're not armed with the software to put in a last-second bid, the practice of "sniping" or "bidnapping" hardly seems fair.

But hey, who said science had to be fair?

That's right: Research published in the June 6 issue of Physical Review E confirms that sniping is "a rational and effective strategy" for winning eBay auctions. In fact, the researchers - I. Yang and B. Kahng of Seoul National University in South Korea - propose a "master equation" that links the frequency of bidding with the likelihood of actually winning the item. One key equation goes something like this:

"The successfully transmitted bidding rate by the k-frequent bidder is likely to scale as q_k(t)~k^–1.4, independent of t for large t."

The American Physical Society discusses the study in its latest Physics Tip Sheet:

"... The model confirms previous statistical studies of winning bidders that show that people who refrain from bidding at all until the very last seconds are much more likely to win than people who take part in earlier incremental bidding. Although snipers miss out on occasion (if their late bids are not registered in time for the auction close) they are usually successful. Unless online auction companies adjust their rules to extend bidding deadlines when large, last-second bids come in (as live auctioneers do), you're going to be better off sniping if you really must have that rare Pokemon card or Chia Pet planter."

You can mark this off as another case of scientists confirming what most of us learned back in the mists of the Beanie Baby era.

• Cornell: Earthrise on Mars (via Bad Astronomy)
• National Geographic: Rare 'rainbow' spotted over Idaho
• Defense Tech: Look out, Pyongyang? Rail gun in the works
• N.Y. Review of Books: Religion from the outside

Nothing makes a better headline than the phrase "Missing Link Found" - and last week's report about the 110 million-year-old bird fossils found in China served as a prime example. The researchers themselves accepted the idea that the ancient Gansus yumenensis represented in a missing link between the age of dinosaurs and the modern age of birds.

It's certainly thought-provoking that fossils dating from that far back - only a few tens of million years after the time frame for Archaeopteryx - look so much like present-day waterfowl, right down to the webbed feet. But what really got folks in a tizzy on both sides of the Darwinian debate was the use of the term "missing link."

For example, here's what Jason Rosenhouse said on EvolutionBlog:

"Of course, there is a fair amount of imprecision here, as typically happens in media accounts of scientific discoveries. There is no such thing as 'the' missing link. In fact, scientists tend to avoid the term 'missing link' altogether. What we can say is that these fossils have features that are transitional between those of ancient birds and those of modern birds. The idea that modern birds are the product of evolution becomes far more likely given the discovery of these fossils."

And here's part of a posting from The Panda's Thumb:

"One of the problems with press stories about science is that most of the time they add a 'hook' about the significance of the story that is misleading in some way. In particular, the phrase 'missing link' implies the mistaken idea that certain kinds of creatures have some special transitional status. But that is not true. Every fossil find is a link between earlier and later creatures, and they are all missing until they are found. The phrase 'missing link' implies, especially to that part of the public that has doubts about evolution, that somehow the particular find in question is of a special creature whose existence somehow now 'proves evolution.'

"This is exceedingly simplistic: no one in science has ever claimed that 'the enigma of bird evolution,' or any other aspect of evolution, has been 'solved'; nor does anyone in science believe that any one find will 'prove' evolution. The fact that evolution has occurred has been established by the accumulation of many, many thousands of pieces of individual evidence, of which this find is just one more. ..."

On the other side of the fence - in an item headlined "How Can They Call This Duck a Missing Link?" - Creation-Evolution Headlines says using the L-word is "scandalous":

"The news media should be ashamed of themselves.  What should have been interpreted as the falsification of common notions about bird evolution has been twisted into support for evolution. ..."

This tongue-lashing over "missing links" is enough to make me swear off the term from now on - even if the researchers themselves use it, or even if other news outlets apply the term to Gansus or past finds such as the Tiktaalik "fish out of water."

That sentiment would probably be seconded by the readers who sent in their comments on the story. Here's a selection.

Doug Smith: "So they find a bird that coexisted with dinosaurs …and they call that a link?  A link would be a cross between a dinosaur and a bird, with several transitions in bone structure, skin to feathers, etc.  Instead they have a ready-made bird living in the same time frame.  I believe scientists are really stretching when they call 'coexistence' a link."

Edward Verner, Pittsburgh: "I believe in the theory of evolution, but I am quite fascinated, amazed and surprised that such an old fossil looks so modern and appears not to be contemporaneous with the evolutionary track of other fossils of that era but so far ahead of them.
 
"I would be more comfortable, as I am sure many people would be, if a more transitional set of remains were to be found so that we could see gradual evolutionary changes occurring, rather than on one end a series of remains that more closely resembles an Archaeopteryx and on the other end a set of ancient remains that resembles modern birds in the form of the Gansus find - but a huge evolutionary gap in between. Just what does this really tell us, other than evolution occurred rather dramatically before 110 million years ago but then seems to have slowed down considerably since then - at least as far as birds are concerned? If that is true, why?
 
"Also, I wish someone would explain just what was the evolutionary reason for feathers. Surely the earliest feathers could neither keep a dinosaur warm nor could it allow it to fly, so why stay on a path that would take a substantial amount of time to provide an evolutionary advantage?"

Matthew Vezina: "It states in this article that it is possible that birds evolved in water rather than on land.  If that was indeed the case then may I suggest why birds evolving in water gained the use of flight.  If the flightless ancestor to this species spent most of its time in the water, then flight would have to develop as a response to predation and not hunting.  That is to say that the ancestor would develop flight as a means to escape aquatic predators, of which there were many very fast and dangerous examples. The means of propulsion that they developed for underwater hunting would adapt very easily to growing feathers to be used on the water for quicker evasion and ultimately leading from short hops along the surface to able flight."

David: "You should use different language. This only links birdlike creatures in the past with similar-looking birds in the present. It is not a 'missing link' in the Darwinian sense, as such sense has largely been abandoned outside of the media. As a 'missing link,' this loon is underwhelming. As a very old bird, it's cool."

Michael: "Fascinating stuff.  Beware! Every new link implies a transitional form both before and after each link, thereby doubling the number of 'missing links' for every one found.  Those pesky anti-evolutionists will thereby dream up twice as many objections than they could lay their hands on, than they had before the discovery of each new link.

"For them, the more dots one can connect in a straight line, the more gaps between dots.  Then they say each gap implies another weakness in the connection, rather than each dot implying greater continuity.  It takes a great deal of faith to detect uncertainty where you need it!  Ironic, isn't it?  Better and better proof can justify more and more doubt, if you just have faith!"

Sean: "Different 'missing links' seem to appear very frequently right now in the news. Ten or 20 years from now, I wonder how many of them will be the fanciful dreams of yesteryear. One doesn't need to look very hard to find many of the so-called 'missing links' in our children's textbooks, that we have known for some time to be mistakes or even frauds. Sadly, many of these mistakes have been purposely left in the curriculum for decades. I'm rarely surprised to see a new 'missing link,' but what would be a surprise is for the same bold print from the media in the form of a retraction when the 'missing link' turns out to be something else."

Jim: "What a bunch of quackery!"

Jason French: "Why do people continue to make fools out of themselves? Every single link to date has turned out to be something else upon further examination, and all of the bird link evolution fossils from China to date have been man made hoaxes. Haven't you learned your lesson? Why not investigate properly before breaking the 'big story' that is not?"

Bill Wright, Manahawken, N.J.: "Links, in and of themselves, are puzzle pieces.  Each time we find a new piece, we say ... AH HA ... and are enthused to look for the next piece. 

"Likewise, each time [we find] an individual of a supposedly 'departed' species...the Laotian Rockrat and the 'God Almighty' woodpecker are two that come to mind ... we are encouraged to save one more chunk of unspoiled (if not virgin) land and look for the next wonder.

"And all this sure beats the heck out of assuming some omniscient old guy with a white beard and a stentorian voice created everything."

Alan C. Bean, M.D.: "I don't buy it.  The 'loonlike' bird is just that: a bird. The 'upright great ape' is also just that: an ape!
 
"Archaeology is one of the most unscientific forms of 'science' there is.  Instead of gathering the data and then looking for a reasonable forensic explanation of the facts (real science), they have their collective minds already made up in favor of evolution and then interpret every piece of data in light of that hypothesis.  That is simply not science! 
 
"Archaeology should be performed much like a forensic murder investigation: gather the data - without prejudice - and then figure out how the data collected can most likely be reconciled."

Dan Walker, Ph.D.: "Quite frankly, this concept of missing links being found every other day is absurd. Any dodo can see this fossil is a species of duck. Ducks have webbed toes. Does that mean the modern duck is a link between dinosaurs and birds? Duh. The evolutionists have been put in such a corner by intelligent design, that they are trying to flood the news with new 'proofs' for evolution. No intelligent person is buying. What about the lie that all scientists believe in evolution? I don't and I know many others who don't.
 
"The other thing you are never told in these stories about stupendous Chinese fossils is that the Chinese have gotten quite good at manufacturing fossils, putting various parts together. Now, I am not saying that this one is fake, but you'd better have good proof when you are reporting something that was not found and authenticated by Western scientists.
 
"Don't believe everything you read, especially about missing links."

Charles: "As an environmental scientist working for CalEPA, I do not see an intensive scientific study in this news article.  There is absolutely no evidence indicating these fossils found in dry mud to be more than a few thousand years old.  Any geologist knows that the rock holding the fossils would be made of extremely hard sandstone if the material is older.  Also, the feathers and fleshy web feet indicate the ducks were caught in a major flood - possibly the Genesis Flood at the time of Noah's Ark. I took a remote sensing class in 1972 at UC Riverside and saw the Ark via U-2 high altitude photos on Mount Ararat at about 14,500 feet.  In 1985, I went on an expedition with Col. Jim Irwin (astronaut) to climb Mount Ararat.  Our team was turned away by the Turkish army due to terrorist on the mountain, but we found the anchors Noah used, and saw a piece of the ark that a Turkish guide had extracted.  The information in this article is pure speculation - all creation scientists (thousands of Ph.D.s) know that there are no missing links."

Evan Birkby, Plano, Texas: "The so-called researchers are simply pushing their weak theories of evolution and not considering the real facts about these new bird finds.

"I really wouldn't be surprised at all if a live specimen were found and had them continue to insist that it is a missing link. These birds had feathers and beaks, not arms and teeth, so why are they being called a missing link? They were clearly birds from the start, and not some descendant from other non-flying reptiles.

"If you want a scientific approach to research, don't quote the extremist evolutionists that don't see the possibility of intelligent design."

Feel free to add your own comments below.

NASA file

A "fish-eye" lens captures astronaut Pamela Melroy at the pilot's station on the forward flight deck of the space shuttle Atlantis during a mission in October 2002.

Pamela Melroy is due to become the second woman to command a NASA space mission, based on today's announcement of the crew for the STS-120 mission.

STS-120 is to deliver and install a key piece of the international space station: Node 2, a connecting module that will allow for the attachment of European and Japanese laboratories during later flights. The hardware was built for NASA by an Italian-led consortium, in exchange for the space shuttle's delivery of the European Space Agency's Columbus lab.

Melroy, an Air Force colonel, is following in the footsteps of Eileen Collins, who became NASA's first female commander in 1999 when she helmed the shuttle Columbia's mission to deploy the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Collins also commanded last year's "return to flight" mission, but left the astronaut corps in May.

Melroy's path to the shuttle's left-hand seat included stints in the right-hand seat in 2000 and 2002 as shuttle pilot - essentially equivalent to the co-pilot of an airplane. Marine Col. George Zamka, a first-time shuttle flier, will serve as Melroy's pilot. Other crew members include veteran spacewalker Scott Parazynski and three other space rookies: Army Col. Douglas Wheelock, Navy Capt. Michael Foreman and Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli.

Parazynski's presence clears up a bit of a mystery: Last month, NASA had said Parazynski was being taken off one mission for reassignment to another one, and I speculated that the unnamed mission might involve a visit to the Hubble Space Telescope. Today's announcement proves me wrong.

Although the official announcement doesn't specify exactly when STS-120 will fly, NASASpaceFlight.com's manifest lists the mission in August 2007, with Atlantis designated as the orbiter. The Hubble servicing mission is penciled in for April 2008 on Discovery.