After months of preparation, the Stardust @ Home treasure hunt kicks off on Tuesday, with tens of thousands of Internet users primed to look for grains of dust from beyond the solar system. The research effort adds a human touch to the grand tradition of distributed-computing projects such as SETI @ Home.

NASA

An artist's conception shows tracks of particles embedded within Stardust's aerogel-filled collector. In actuality, it won't be this easy to spot the tracks.

Beginning at 2 p.m. ET Tuesday, you'll be able to click into the Stardust @ Home Web site and start scanning the actual photomicrographs of interstellar-dust collectors from NASA's Stardust probe. Using a novel "virtual microscope," you can look for the telltale trails of bits that embedded themselves in Stardust's fluffy cubes of aerogel.

During its seven-year mission, Stardust's racket-shaped collector snagged flecks from Comet Wild 2 on one side, and perhaps 50 to 100 bits of interstellar dust on the other side. Those bits could provide new clues to our cosmic origins - but they're not easy to find. The project's amateur researchers will have to look through 700,000 or more "focus movies" multiple times in order to spot the flecks.

You'll have plenty of company in the task: Andrew Westphal, Stardust @ Home's project director and associate director of the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley, told me that 115,000 users already have signed up to participate. That's not quite as many as the roughly 500,000 active users for SETI @ Home, the search for alien signals, but if all those people join in, Stardust @ Home would still rank as one of the world's biggest distributed-computing projects.

"We think that we have a science team of 115,000 people," Westphal said.

This time, the emphasis is on the people rather than raw computing power. The project depends on people actually spotting the dust tracks and reporting them, rather than just letting a computer churn away unattended.

"It's a pattern that's very obvious to people, but it's almost impossible to program a computer to recognize it," said Amir Alexander of the California-based Planetary Society, one of the beta testers. (The Planetary Society is a collaborator in the Stardust @ Home and the SETI @ Home projects.)

Alexander said doing the search didn't seem tedious to him. "It's really kind of like a computer game - once you get the hang of it, it's pretty addictive," he told me.

Stardust @ Home / Planetary Society

This screenshot provides a preview of Stardust @ Home's "virtual microscope."

Westphal expects the project to run for many months. "The bottleneck of the project ... is how fast we can collect the interstellar images," he said. So far, 11 of Stardust's 132 collection tiles have been scanned, and another four tiles are due to be scanned every week at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

To keep the searchers interested - and to make sure they're on the ball - Westphal's team is adding simulated dust trails to the imagery. The users' skill at spotting the simulated trails (as well as the actual trails, of course) will be factored into their score. "As they go along, they will be kept up to date on how they're doing," Westphal said.

Each microscopic area will be looked at multiple times to make sure nothing is missed - and everlasting glory awaits those who are the first to spot honest-to-goodness dust grains.

Westphal said the first person to discover a particular grain has the "privilege of naming the particle," as long as the name isn't obscene or otherwise objectionable. The discoverers also "will be co-authors on any papers that we write" associated with their particular bits, Westphal said.

Everyone should start out on roughly equal footing, Westphal said. The earlier beta tests were carried out with simulated Stardust imagery. Meanwhile, the actual microscopic imagery has been seen by "nobody except us, and we've been quite careful not to look at anything too much," Westphal said.

So practice your skills with this 12-part tutorial, and prepare to begin the great stardust hunt.

A bouncing baby girl has been born to the Russian-American couple who took part in the world's first "space wedding," according to the wedding planner who helped arrange the ultra-long-distance ceremony nearly three years ago.

"And they said it won't last 6 months!" Jo Ann Schwartz Woodward wrote in an e-mail. When Schwartz Woodward set up the marriage between Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko (who was on the international space station at the time) and Kat Dmitriev (who lived in Texas, where marriage by proxy is legal), eyebrows were raised all the way from Houston to Moscow.

But the struggle against international red tape long ago gave way to the "happily ever after" part of the story, Schwartz Woodward told me.

"They just had a baby girl at the end of June," she said. "Kamilla, Mom and Dad are enjoying their family. Yuri is back and forth from Russia to Texas for training. He is hoping to go back into space sometime in the future."

Meanwhile, other couples are targeting their own space firsts: George Whitesides, executive director of the National Space Society, and his intended, Loretta Hidalgo, say they plan to spend the first honeymoon in space aboard Virgin Galactic's craft - while Cindy Cashman and Mitch Walling plan to be the first to exchange wedding vows aboard Rocketplane's suborbital spaceship.

They might want to check out the wedding dress designed for zero-G by Japan's Eri Matsui - and who knows? If this trend continues, it might be worth reviewing the past week's zero-G sex advice as well.

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Sex sells ... even when it comes to buying a ride in space. "As Laura Woodmansee, the author of "Sex in Space," put it last weekend at the NewSpace 2006 conference, sex could be "the killer app for space tourism."

Of course, it will be years before spaceships offer the right environment for romance. We still don't even know exactly how candlelight works in zero-G. But the questions surrounding how we might conduct our lives in space - ranging from birth to childhood to sex to family life to aging to death - ought to be a "killer app" for space research.

Here are some of your thoughts on the subject of space sex:

Woodmansee and other students of the subject, including author Vanna Bonta and NASA physician Jim Logan, said that hooking up in zero-G would be trickier than earthly intimacy. But Dennis McClain-Furmanski, longtime Cosmic Log correspondent as well as a longtime member of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists, was sure that love would find a way:

"As a psychologist, I am confident when I state that those things which the engineering types present as 'problems' will be, to the humans involved, only 'conditions under which.' Sweat? Uncomfortable positions which you can't seem to maintain? A 'wild flail'? Good grief, that's the conditions under which many of the 7 billion of us were created. While the engineers call for assistance devices and choreography as though it were a spacewalk, I have full confidence in the one human drive greater than the one to explore. If NASA really feels the need to provide a technological fix for this 'problem,' they can simply install the back seat out of a car. All those 'problems' occur there and are almost invariably overcome."

Xeni Jardin posted some comments about the story on Boing Boing - including this recollection:

"I went on a zero-gravity flight once with a bunch of astronauts and journalists. Also on board were two guys who won tickets on a radio contest. If memory serves, one of them worked in an auto shop. I was talking with them between floating parabolas, and one of them made a joke about sex in space, and I asked something like - are you guys thinking about that, really? Because all I could think about at the time was not vomiting or bonking my head on the roof when I flew through the air. Sex was the last thing on my mind. The two guys looked at each other and were silent for a moment. Then they burst into extended dude-laughter, and one said, 'Well OF COURSE! Guys always think about that!'"

Vanna Bonta

The "2suit" for zero-G intimacy.

Some observed that Bonta's Velcro-and-zipper design for the "2suit" is way too sensible for intimate apparel, and that there should be more of a stilettos-and-straps look to space fashion.

Bonta's presentation included a couple of other designs that were lot racier (and probably not suitable for a family publication). But you'd have to be careful with stilettos and other sharp objects in zero-G - you might poke somebody's eye out during your "wild flail."

Another Cosmic Log correspondent, T. Hays, stepped back to look at the bigger picture:

"I don't get this article. Instead of imagining how weightlessness affects sex or anything else for that matter, and also considering how detrimental weightlessness is for the human body, why aren't the space scientists figuring out how to provide gravity to people in outer space. What about something like the space station in 2001 that rotated? How hard would it be to rotate a 60-foot tube? Or two or more connected tubes, You get whatever gravity you want depending on the speed. End of problem. Duh! Or am I the idiot here?"

That was indeed the bottom line for NASA's Jim Logan: More research needs to be done on all aspects of space biology, ranging from conception to old age. Because gravity-loading appears to play an essential role in skeletal development and even post-natal neural development, zero-G might have to be an adults-only zone.

The role of gravity in the aging process is another important area for research - and John Glenn's shuttle mission back in 1998 just scratched the surface. In a reduced-gravity environment, those aging bones wouldn't ache as much, and your heart wouldn't have to beat as hard. On the other hand, zero gravity is known to lead to the loss of bone mass and muscle mass - so it's not at all clear how old folks would fare.

We don't even know how reduced-gravity environments - for example, the one-sixth gravity of the moon or the one-third gravity of Mars - would affect phases of life ranging from conception to death. That's why experiments like the Mars Gravity Biosatellite Program would be so intriguing.

If we hope to see humans living permanently on the moon, Mars and beyond - and yes, having sex and raising families - we'll have to expand space research rather than cutting it back.

Feel free to register your comments on the silly and serious sides of space sex studies - but remember, kids, keep it clean.

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Space entrepreneurs like to draw a line between "old space," referring to established aerospace firms such as the Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin; and "new space," referring to themselves. As we found during last weekend's NewSpace 2006 conference, the pioneers of new space are trying to push the envelope - and get a piece of the old-space pie in the process.

But the line between the two is getting fuzzier, thanks to alliances like the one announced this week between Orbital Sciences ("old space") and Rocketplane Kistler ("new space").

The "strategic relationship," announced Monday, was forged to support Rocketplane Kistler's bid for NASA funding under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS, which sets $500 million aside through 2010 for the development of new ways to transfer cargo and crew to the international space station.

Rocketplane Kistler

Artwork shows Kistler K-1 rocket.

Rocketplane Kistler is offering the Kistler K-1, a rocket that Kistler Aerospace had under development for years before that company was acquired by Oklahoma-based Rocketplane. About $600 million was put into developing the K-1 launch system as a means of delivering payloads to the space station, but the funds for the project dried up. As a result, the K-1 never got off the ground, even though the rocket is considered well more than halfway along the path to deployment. 

If Rocketplane Kistler is awarded some of the NASA money, Orbital will provide program management and systems integration services for the K-1 project. Orbital, which is best-known for its Pegasus air-based launch system, also would be making a "strategic investment" in Rocketplane.

"We are excited to have the opportunity to join a program that could revolutionize space launch services," David Thompson, Orbital's chairman and chief executive officer, said in Monday's news release. "Having studied the substantial amount of work that has been accomplished on the K-1 program and the planning that is already in place, we are convinced that it can be operational in a relatively short period of time."

Rocketplane Kistler and the other COTS finalists - Andrews Space, SpaceDev, Spacehab, SpaceX and t/Space - are waiting to hear by September which of them will be receiving millions of dollars from NASA for demonstrations of their flight technologies.

George French, Rocketplane Kistler's chairman and CEO, told me that Orbital's involvement should help his company hit the ground running if NASA green-lights the K-1.

"They're giving us their 'A Team,'" he said.

Orbital's know-how would also benefit Rocketplane's development of a suborbital spaceship known as the Rocketplane XP, he said. In fact, French hopes there will be more and more interplay between the suborbital and the orbital ventures - with the moon ultimately in his sights.

"For both our team and their team, COTS is the beginning, it's not the end," he said. "It's the dawn of a space program. And if we're successful, we'll give the United States a cheap, versatile launch vehicle that can launch satellites, that can send up free-fliers, that can dock with the space station and take payloads to the moon."

He made a point to mention that the Lunar Research Institute's Alan Binder, who was the principal investigator for the Lunar Prospector mission, was on Rocketplane Kistler's team. Other teammates listed in the company's presentation materials include Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, two old-space mainstays that are competing against each other to build NASA's big-ticket item, the multibillion-dollar Crew Exploration Vehicle (a.k.a. Orion).

French said it made sense for NASA to fund the COTS program as well as the Crew Exploration Vehicle.

"They're not giving as much money, so they're not going to get a Cadillac, but we will be able to drive, we will be able to go," he said.

In fact, some folks - at the Space Frontier Foundation and elsewhere - would rather see NASA rent the outer-space equivalent of a Ford Escort fleet than pay to have some Cadillacs custom-built for space exploration. Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

Looking ahead, I'll close out this month's summer space tour on Friday by revisiting the subject of sex in space. If you have any observations to help launch the discussion, go ahead and drop me a line.

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Rocket engines will be blazing away in New Mexico this October at the X Prize Cup, but as the big day approaches, rocketeers are adjusting their plans to accommodate engineering realities. Some of the vehicles will look much different from what was originally planned, and others just might have to sit this one out. It all goes to show why "rocket science" is the stereotypical term for anything difficult to do.

For instance, at one point the Rocket Racing League was hoping to present the debut of its first X-Racer, a rocket-powered racing plane that would provide the basis for flashy competitions starting next year. California-based XCOR Aerospace is in the process of converting a Velocity airplane for kerosene-fueled rocket power.

Rocket Racing League

Artist's conception shows X-Racer in the air.

The X-Racer still could be ready to go for the Oct. 20-21 event  – but the racing league's management is leaning against a rocket-powered debut at that time.

A spokesman for the X Prize Foundation, Ian Murphy, said on Wednesday that the debut might be delayed because "it looks like XCOR's a little nervous about rushing this." But Granger Whitelaw, the league's chief executive officer, said the decision had to do with business strategy rather than technological concerns.

"Everything is going fabulously with XCOR," he told me in a Thursday follow-up. "We've had five test firings, all going extremely well."

Even if the X-Racer doesn't go into the air, the Rocket Racing League would offer other goodies at the X Prize Cup – such as a static firing of the rocket engine, a display of the non-rocket-powered Velocity prototype and demonstrations of the X-Racer flight simulation software. Whitelaw said further details would be released soon.

Another X Prize highlight will be the Lunar Lander Challenge, in which teams will compete for $2 million to $3 million in prizes. The teams are working on remote-controlled, rocket-powered contraptions that would take off vertically, then fly over to a target area for landing, like NASA's lunar lander did back in the Apollo era.

The competition has been broken down into two tracks: The easier contest, now known as the Vertical Lander Challenge, calls for a 90-second flight and will provide a smooth, level landing pad. The more difficult Lunar Lander Challenge requires three minutes of flight and would force the competitors to land their craft on a sloped, uneven patch of terrain strewn with boulders as big as 3 feet (1 meter) across.

Armadillo Aerospace

The "Quad" would take off and land vertically.

That last twist led Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace to change the look of its contest entry entirely – from the conical "Vertical Drag Racer" to the squat, four-tanked "Quad" design. It turns out that the VDR just might tip over during a Lunar Lander Challenge touchdown, due to the design's high center of gravity. Something like that happened during last year's X Prize Cup demonstration. And as Firesign Theater's comics have observed in a different context, it's no fun to fall right over. It won't win a million-dollar prize, either.

Speaking of money, another question has to do with the total purse for the two challenges. This uncertainty has nothing to do with rocket science, and everything to do with political science.

NASA already has put up $2 million as part of its Centennial Challenges program. The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, was supposed to kick in still more money (the rumored figures have ranged from $500,000 to $1 million).

However, Murphy said that the Senate's version of a bill funding DARPA does not provide authorization for prize money (like, say, the $2 million purse for last year's highly successful DARPA Grand Challenge). The House version would give authorization, but just to be safe, DARPA is hanging back on its commitment until the legislative differences are worked out, Murphy said.

If DARPA comes through with its contribution to the purse, that money would go to the Vertical Lander Challenge, which could spawn down-to-earth delivery technologies for the military. NASA's $2 million would go to the Lunar Lander Challenge's purse. But if the DARPA money isn't there, Murphy said, the NASA money would be spread over both challenges - $500,000 for the Vertical Lander Challenge, and $1.5 million for the Lunar Lander Challenge.

DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker confirmed the holdup on prize money Thursday – a situation that affects the agency's Urban Challenge for robotic vehicles as well:

"We have been aware of the congressional language issue for some time. During our May 2006 Urban Challenge Participants Conference, we advised attendees of the issue, and indicated that the worst case might be that we wouldn't have the authority to award cash prizes.  We told them that it would be our plan in that case to award trophies to the winners.  We also told them that no one should spend any effort on the Urban Challenge if they needed to have cash prizes instead of trophies.

"We had also been in discussions with the X Prize Foundation regarding sponsoring the Vertical Takeoff Challenge X Prize, but have put this on hold given the current uncertainty.  At this time, DARPA will not sponsor any of the X Prize competitions."

The inner workings of the federal government figure in yet another key question: Who exactly will be allowed to compete in the rocket challenges?

Regulations require the teams to get experimental permits from the Federal Aviation Administration – and New Mexico's Las Cruces Airport, the site of this year's festivities, would need to be licensed as well.

Fortunately, the regulatory process appears to be on track. FAA environmental specialist Stacey Zee told me that the agency has received all the required applications; and that a draft environmental assessment is due for release in August for a 30-day public review. That follows the pattern we've seen for the Blue Origin rocket venture backed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. (Check the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation Web site for the document when it's available.)

Zee said this draft report would cover all the teams as well as the airport itself, and will find that "there is no potential for significant [environmental] impact."

Unless an unforeseen deal-breaker arises, it sounds as if the red tape will be cleared away just in time for the X Prize Cup's final countdown.

For updates on the X Prize Cup (including yet another NASA-backed competition, the Space Elevator Games), keep an eye out for the event's soon-to-be-relaunched Web site. And for the latest lunar lander lowdown, check in with Robin Snelson's Lunar Lander Challenge Weblog.

Update for 3:12 p.m. ET July 27: I added the comments from Whitelaw to make it clear that the X-Racer debut depended on business rather than technological considerations, as well as Walker's comments on the holdup in prize money.

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If you're a fan of SpaceShipOne, the world's first privately developed manned spacecraft, it's pretty hard to beat last year's act at the EAA AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wis., when the historic rocket plane was flown in for an appearance on the way to the Smithsonian. But today, AirVenture is unveiling a replica in its Oshkosh museum that can do something the original is no longer able to accomplish.

Don't expect the replica to zoom out of the place where it's hung in the AirVenture Museum to the edge of outer space, like its forebear did back in 2004 to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize. But the SpaceShipClone will be able to fold its wings into the "shuttlecock feather" configuration that SpaceShipOne used during its descent.

EAA AirVenture Museum

SpaceShipOne museum replica assumes the feathered position.

You can see the folding trick in the images and video offered on this museum Web page. "They plan to show a SpaceShipOne video every hour that interacts with lights on the replica as it feathers in sync with the video flight footage," spacecraft designer Burt Rutan told me in an e-mail during the buildup to today's exhibit dedication.

Rutan regards the "feathering" action of the wings as one of the project's chief innovations, since it made SpaceShipOne's "carefree re-entry" possible. And he'll use the trick again in the next-generation SpaceShipTwo that is due for its rollout a little more than a year from now. A fleet of SpaceShipTwos could start carrying paying passengers into space by 2008 or so.

Rutan said he had hoped the wings could have been folded and unfolded on the original SpaceShipOne in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

"I wanted the NASM in D.C. to feather the real ship on odd years," he wrote, "but they placed it so the tails would hit the Spirit of St. Louis."

To learn more, check out this interactive look at SpaceShipOne's tricks - and take a trip down memory lane via Scaled Composites' Web site and our own "New Space Race" special report.

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The idea behind NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS, is that the space agency would add a healthy dash of entrepreneurship to the task of keeping the international space station supplied with cargo and crew. Over the next four years, NASA plans to make $500 million available for demonstrations of new ways to service the station as the shuttle fleet nears its retirement.

That's a nice plum for the space industry's entrepreneurs - but unfortunately, COTS is creating its share of disappointments and delays as well.

For example, Oklahoma-based Rocketplane Kistler says the crush of COTS "homework" assigned by the space agency has put a crimp in its plans to begin testing its suborbital space vehicle next year. Chuck Lauer, the company's vice president of business development, said employees are having to deal with requests for more information about their proposal to supply the space station with the Kistler K-1 launch system.

The COTS-related delay, added to the usual launch slips, means that the Rocketplane XP craft - a commercial jet modified to carry a rocket engine as well - isn't expected to roll out until the end of 2007, Lauer told me at this weekend's NewSpace 2006 conference in Las Vegas. Test flights could begin in early 2008, and the craft could enter commercial service in the third quarter of 2008.

Doing extra homework for COTS is a problem Charles Miller would love to have. As president of California-based Constellation Services International, he has championed a system that would send up cargo containers designed to mate with Russia's Progress supply spaceship as well as the space station.

The idea is that a Progress craft already docked to the station could head out under robo-control, then link up with the container well before it nears the station.

Constellation Services International

In this artist's conception, a regular Soyuz craft is docked to the international space station at left, and a robotic Progress ship with a LEO Express module is docked at center, with gold-colored attachments.

"At this point, you basically have a 'stretch' Progress," Miller explained. The unmanned Progress would then bring the container back and plug it into a space station port for unloading.

Miller said the patented LEO Express system represented a low-cost solution to the station's "last mile" problem - that is, NASA's sense that bringing a totally new piece of hardware near the station would pose too much of a collision risk, a la Mir.

But when Constellation Services proposed LEO Express for the COTS program, NASA turned it down. Miller said there appeared to be three strikes against it:

• A technology that wasn't new enough. That should be a plus, Miller said, because the system relies on tried-and-true Soyuz architecture. But NASA wanted to use COTS as an opportunity to back new approaches rather than the tried and true.
• A dependence on non-U.S. technology. Miller acknowledged that the LEO Express plan had a distinctly Russian flavor, but he said that shouldn't rule out using the system. He also said Constellation Services would have worked with industry partners to Americanize the concept as the project moved forward.
• Finally, the LEO Express system was designed specifically for cargo delivery rather than crew transportation as well - an add-on that's known among the COTS applicants as "Option D."

That last strike was a particularly tough one for Miller. In a Space News article published online Friday, he complained that the rules of the COTS game had been changed to put more emphasis on the crew angle and technology development. To hear him tell it, NASA was passing up "a sure thing" for somewhat more speculative ventures.

NASA has declined any comment on the COTS finalists (and non-finalists), pending a decision on the competition's winners expected in the August-September time frame.

Despite the disappointment, Miller hasn't given up on the idea.

"Our investors are still supportive," he told me at the NewSpace meeting. "They believe that long-term, that cargo opportunity will still be there. Customers have been known to change their minds."

The problem of resupplying the space station will continue to plague NASA, and the space agency might have to take up the issue again once it ties up the COTS competition, Miller said.

Another cause for hope is that NASA isn't necessarily the only game in town: Miller said the company is also "in discussions" with Virginia-based Space Adventures on the possibility of using the system to carry space passengers' stuff to the Russian side of the space station - or even facilitate around-the-moon journeys. So stay tuned.

Here in Las Vegas, I've been gathering information for a few longer-range reports on the commercial space race - but other journalists have been blogging the blow-by-blow on a daily basis. The top bloggers include:

• Clark Lindsey at RLV and Space Transport News, who has been outlining presentations on a near-real-time basis - in addition to linking to other developments such as NASASpaceFlight.com's report on changes in the design of the space shuttle's successor.
• Rand Simberg at Transterrestrial Musings, who has provided instant in-depth reports on the conference's more interesting panels. His account of today's "sex in space" seminar - an event that I also covered - includes a new three-letter acronym for doing the deed off-planet: ECA, which stands for extraterrestrial copulatory activity.
• Jeff Foust at Personal Spaceflight, who is also including reports from Vegas in this week's issue of The Space Review. I'm the blue-and-brown blur in this photo from Jeff's Bigelow Aerospace gallery.

The next day or so could be a blur for me as well, as I head down to Texas for the final leg of my summer space tour. Again, stay tuned.

CollectSpace reports that NASA is favoring "Project Orion" as the 21st-century equivalent of Project Apollo. The name, which evokes the well-known constellation as well as the huntsman of Greek mythology, would refer to the yet-to-be-built Crew Exploration Vehicle as well as the overall effort to return to the moon - just as Apollo referred to the moon program of the 1960s and early 1970s as well as the craft that carried astronauts from Earth to the moon.

CollectSpace's Robert Pearlman figured out the moniker by doing a search for NASA's recent trademark applications. Last month, we found "Ares," referring to the launch vehicle - and sure enough, "Orion" was added to the database on July 14 (Click here and do a search for registration number 78929845). Pearlman says his NASA sources have confirmed that Orion is the name, but it ain't official till it's official.

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On a 50-acre spread in North Las Vegas, near the intersection of Warp Drive and Skywalker Way, the prototypes for future space stations are being built from strips of fortified fabric, supertough inflatable skin and lattices of metal.

Today a gaggle of journalists and space entrepreneurs got a rare look inside Bigelow Aerospace's industrial-park production facility and mission control center, just a week and a day after the company's launch of its Genesis 1 orbital test module. We were treated to three and a half hours of talk and tours, led by billionaire Robert Bigelow and his top engineers.

Alan Boyle / MSNBC.com

Security officer Wayne Leslie welcomes visitors to Bigelow Aerospace.

With the success of Genesis 1, Bigelow has become much more willing to show off the facilities he's built as part of his $75 million space investment. There are limits, of course: I had to delete one of my pictures under the watchful eye of a security guard because I pointed the camera in the wrong direction. But we ended up with plenty of pictures, and plenty of good quotes from "Mr. B" during a question-and-answer session in the company's hangarlike Building A. Here's a sampling:

Bigelow has been surprised by just how successful the Genesis 1 mission has been - a mission that was the first orbital test of an inflatable spacecraft that represents the first step toward private-sector space stations. The 4-foot-wide, 14-foot-long module was launched atop a converted Soviet-era intercontinental ballistic missile from a Russian military base, then inflated to twice its diameter, just as planned.

"I think I was the most 'doubting Thomas' in the company," Bigelow told our group of about two dozen visitors.

"I'll second that," chimed in Genesis program manager Eric Haakonstad.

Laura Rauch / AP

The Genesis team meets the press. From left: Boris Rubanovich, Mark Pierson, Jay Ingham, Robert Bigelow, Eric Haakonstad, Allison Manion, Roger Gonzales.

The day of launch was a nail-biter for the Genesis team. There was an hours-long gap between liftoff and confirmation that the spacecraft was in its proper orbit. "That's when I got nervous," Allison Manion, who led the mission control team, recalled. She was up for 23 1/2 hours on that first day.

But as the days wore on, the news just got better and better:  Haakonstad said the high-speed communication link has been working like a charm. "I believe this will be the longest TCP/IP wireless link in existence," he observed.

About 500 images have come down from orbit in the first week, said Bigelow Aerospace's Roger Gonzales. Only a few of them have been released, however.

Laura Rauch / AP

Science editor Alan Boyle is silhouetted against display screens in the darkened mission control center for the Genesis 1 spacecraft.

Now that the team has had a chance to make a detailed assessment of the spacecraft's health, engineers figure that the module could last even longer than the three to seven years they estimated before the launch. Haakonstad said Genesis 1 could hang around for as long as 13 years in orbit, providing insights into just how durable the inflatable skin can be.

The schedule calls for launching a second Genesis by the end of the year. Genesis 2 should have a better flight control system, and Bigelow said it's designed to carry about 18 cameras, as opposed to the 13 on Genesis 1. The second spacecraft will start flying other people's stuff (and sending video of that stuff floating in zero-G) for as much as $295 a shot - marking the project's first significant revenue stream.

"What we're trying to do with this first spacecraft is draw attention to the second spacecraft," Haakonstad said.

After Genesis 2, Bigelow Aerospace will step up to its Galaxy-class prototypes, which will have twice as much pressurized volume as the Genesis craft.

The aim is to work up from the one-third-scale Genesis to a full-scale, 330-cubic-meter Nautilus module that will have as much space as a three-bedroom house (and as much space as the international space station in its current configuration). Such modules can be linked together, using the same standards as those for the international space station. In fact, a Nautilus module could be hooked up to the space station if desired, said Mark Pierson, manager for vehicle integration and test.

Alan Boyle / MSNBC.com

Mission controllers Tom Londrigan and Matt Boyd monitor Genesis 1. The spacecraft passed right over Las Vegas during the tour.

Bigelow said "we feel we are ahead of schedule" on his plans to have a commercial space complex in orbit by 2015. The current projection is that a Bigelow-built orbital station could be ready in the 2010-2012 time frame, assuming that other companies can develop safe, economical and reliable rockets to put payloads and people into orbit by that time.

And beyond that, Bigelow said "we definitely have a lunar architecture in mind." Inflatable modules could be assembled en route to the moon, plunked down on the lunar surface, then covered over with moondirt to provide protection against radiation. Although such an application is probably years down the road, Bigelow and his engineers are already laying the groundwork here on Earth.

"We're going to be testing that, we hope, this year over one of our steel simulators," Bigelow said.

Alan Boyle / MSNBC.com

A full-size air bladder for a Nautilus module stands inside Building A.

We didn't get to see those simulators today, but we were treated to a tour of other Bigelow facilities by Haakonstad, Pierson and Jay Ingham, design team leader. We started out in the darkened mission control room, in a walled-off section of Building A, where two or three controllers monitored spacecraft telemetry. On the walls, giant TV screens displaying Genesis 1's ground track and not-yet-published pictures of the spacecraft interior (including a snapshot of cockroaches inside a life-support experiment).

James Oberg / MSNBC.com

Erik Haakonstad and Alan Boyle size up a Genesis-scale test module.

Then we headed out and around a corner to the other half of Building A, past a fully inflated test bladder for the future Nautilus module.

When I tried to take an overall shot of a machine shop, a security officer quickly called a halt - and insisted on watching as I hit the "delete" button for the offending image.

But it all ended with good humor and a handshake, and we had our picture taken with our arms around each other's shoulders.

Other highlights included:

• A close-up look at Genesis test modules sitting in the machine shop. One module was double-wound with straps that held a partially inflated bladder in place. When I banged my hand against the side, it thumped hard as if I were playing a drum.
• A visit to the 26-foot-deep outdoor pool where test inflatables are immersed for stress testing. The pool was only partially filled today, but the blue water looked positively inviting in the 90-degree-plus heat.
• A stop at Building B, where Bigelow maintains a museum of module mockups, artist's conceptions dating back to 2001 - and a full-scale mockup of three linked Nautilus modules. We climbed inside the complex, outfitted for three levels of living space. Each level had a lattice of straps as a floor - which would serve better than a solid floor for handholds and footholds in zero-G, Haakonstad said.

But where was the real Genesis 2? Well, Haakonstad said that spacecraft was still taking shape, and the integration facility where engineers are working on the actual items for flight is in another section of Building B - a section that was off-limits to us. Even now, some secrets have to remain secrets.

"We're trying to protect the very valuable stuff that we're working on," Bigelow told us.

Stay tuned for more about Bigelow Aerospace, once I put the rest of my notes in order. And for a look at yet another nexus of space commercialization, check out this archived report on SpaceX's rocket factory.

Update for July 21, 6:50 p.m. ET: Due to a publishing glitch, our presentation of the first videos from Genesis 1 was out of commission for the past couple of days. I just wanted to pass along the word that the video is back in service. Sorry about the initial failure to launch.

Also, you'll find additional perspectives on the Bigelow Tour from Clark Lindsey at RLV and Space Transport News, Jeff Foust at Personal Spaceflight and Leonard David at Space.com.

Today marks two crowning achievements of the space program: the 37th anniversary of the first moon landing, and the 30th anniversary of America's first successful landing on Mars. Where will the next such triumphs come from? For the next decade or so, the most interesting ventures to watch might not be at NASA, but among the emerging cadre of space entrepreneurs here in Las Vegas, where I'm attending the NewSpace 2006 conference.

First, let's celebrate the historical angles: Transterrestrial Musing's Rand Simberg and others have long believed that Apollo 11's landing on July 20, 1969, was so momentous that the day should be observed as a spiritual holiday called Evoloterra. Even if you're not ready for a Space Age seder, the date is worth marking as the first time humans ever set foot on a celestial body beyond Earth.

Check out this reminiscence by NBC News' Jay Barbree, written for the 35th anniversary. We also have a must-see series of audio slideshows on "the Voyage of the Millennium," narrated by astrophotographer Roger Ressmeyer. You'll probably see some images from the space effort's glory days that you've never seen before. To take it all in, click on over to this gallery archive and follow the links for each of the three chapters.

NASA has a wealth of material about Apollo 11, of course, and you can find your way to much of it by visiting this page keyed to the 35th anniversary. This panorama from Panoramas.Dk gives you a sense of really being there - and speaking of that, if the 3-D film "Magnificent Desolation" is playing at an Imax screen near you, go see it.

NASA is making a big deal over the 1976 Viking landings on Mars this year because of the Big 3-0. In addition to a commemorative video and a podcast, you can visit the Viking Web page and learn much, much more about the significance of the achievement.

Many of the issues that shape Mars exploration today - getting on-the-ground data from the Red Planet, asking questions about ancient or extant life, even sending twin missions to reduce the risk of failure - trace their roots to Viking. Our historical Mars slideshow includes some of the iconic images from Viking, including the "Face on Mars." To see it, go to this gallery page and click on "Mars' Greatest Hits."

And now, back to the future: Discovery's latest flight put NASA back on track for exploration, to be sure, but for the next four to eight years, the space agency will be dealing with finishing the international space station and developing the replacement for the space shuttle. If we're lucky, humans will return to the moon in time for the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11.

NASA's next unprecedented triumphs will be establishing the first permanent moonbase and moving on to leave the first human footprints on Mars. The only other contender would be the discovery of unmistakable signs of past or present Martian life by future robotic probes. Am I wrong about that?

But there's another potential source of excitement, involving private-sector spaceflight. The hullabaloo over SpaceShipOne illustrated that nongovernmental ventures could capture the public's imagination, even though some might feel a slight sense of "been there, done that." Perhaps it's because SpaceShipOne's flights - like Bigelow Aerospace's Genesis 1 launch and high-flying passenger trips to the space station (and someday around the moon?) - reawaken that '60s sense that someday regular folks will find a place on the final frontier. Also, the fact that millions or perhaps billions of dollars are at stake doesn't hurt.

That's what this week's NewSpace 2006 meeting, sponsored by the Space Frontier Foundation, is all about. We'll be hearing from billionaire Robert Bigelow and others who are taking an entrepreneurial approach to space exploration and exploitation. And along the way, I'll be receiving an award for space journalism as well.

Over the next few days, I'll keep you posted on the goings-on - depending on time and bandwidth, of course. If there's anything in particular you want me to check into, send along a comment and I'll try to follow up. 

• Take a flying leap on World Jump Day
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Researchers are working on baseball-sized robotic probes that could be thrown down by the swarmful to explore deep canyons and lava tubes on Mars - or look for disaster survivors amid ruins on Earth. The NASA-funded project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology serves as one more reminder that robotic technologies developed for space exploration come in handy on the home planet as well.

Gus Frederick / MIT

Illustration shows how the mini-probe would look.

This week's release from MIT emphasizes the interplanetary applications for the little hopping mini-probes. Each of the sensor-equipped spheres would be powered by its own micro-fuel cell. The concept envisions dropping thousands of the devices onto rugged terrain that would be impossible for rovers such as the present-day Spirit and Opportunity.

"They would start to hop, bounce and roll and distribute themselves across the surface of the planet, exploring as they go, taking scientific data samples," Steven Dubowsky, the MIT professor of mechanical engineering who is leading the research team, explained in a news release.

Even if some of the swarming probes lost their way or were taken out of commission, the others would be able to collect and correlate data to send back to the mothership.

Each probe would weigh about 4 ounces (100 grams), and would be outfitted with artificial muscles so that it could hop as much as 5 feet (1.5 meters) up to once a minute. The spherical shape would allow the probes to bounce and roll as well. A swarm of 1,000 hopping bots, which would collectively weigh no more than Spirit or Opportunity, could cover 50 square miles in a month, Dubowsky said.

Dubowsky's team is working with famed cave biologist Penelope Boston to figure out what would be required to explore Martian lava tubes, which are thought to be prime locations for seeking traces of ancient or perhaps even modern microbial life. This QuickTime video shows how the bots might make their way through a lava tube. To get Boston's side of the story, check out this interview in Astrobiology magazine.

MIT researcher James McLurkin is a pioneer of the "swarmbot" concept, and European researchers have been working on the concept as well. Dubowsky told me today that the artificial-intelligence aspect of swarm behavior is certainly "an enabling technology" for his team's approach - but that other technologies will have to come into play as well. One of the big ones is creating a micro-fuel cell small enough to fit inside the mini-probes.

Dubowski's project is being funded as a Phase 2 project for the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts. Such projects typically get up to $400,000 over an 18- to 24-month period, to develop technologies that could be applied to space missions 10 years into the future. So although Dubowski's team is developing prototypes for field testing here on Earth, there are not yet any plans to add swarmbots to the schedule for a specific Mars mission.

If the technology for hopping swarmbots is perfected, it's a good bet that they'd be deployed for earthly tasks before they invade Mars. For example, bucketfuls of bots could be dropped onto the rubble of a disaster scene to look for survivors, or they could be rolled into hidey-holes to look for terrorists. Swarmbots might also come in handy for sniffing out explosive devices buried beneath Iraqi roads.

For another example of robotic work that could have earthly as well as interplanetary applications, check out this past posting on the Mars Robotic Construction Challenge. And if you have more bright ideas for putting space robots to work on Earth, feel free to register your comments below.

Thirty years after Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci wowed Olympic judges at the Montreal Olympics, a tribute to that "Perfect 10" performance has been beamed toward the stars via the Deep Space Communications Network.

The transmission was arranged by Romanian-Gymnastics.com as a publicity exercise to mark the anniversary. Deep Space, which is based in Cape Canaveral, Fla., uses TV transmission equipment usually devoted to space coverage to beam signals up into clear space instead - in hopes that the telecast will someday come within range of an extraterrestrial civilization. So will Comaneci's performance ever thrill an alien audience?

We've discussed the Deep Space idea before, and the verdict has been that such ventures are better-suited to publicizing yourself on Earth rather than publicizing our presence to the universe. Even Deep Space estimates that the signal would extend only as far as 1 to 3 light-years before fizzling out - not even far enough to reach the next star past the sun.

And Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, told me last year that a commercial-quality TV signal would be lucky to make it out as far as a light-year, even if it were sent via the world's largest single radio antenna, the 1,000-foot-wide Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

In a news release issued today, Romanian-Gymnastics.com editor Victor Dumitrescu stressed the symbolism of the transmission: ""We were looking for a unique way to celebrate one of the unique and truly perfect achievements in human sport. With DSCN's help, we pointed to space and let if fly. We have honored Nadia's achievement for all of time and space, symbolically and literally."

Deep Space general manager Jim Lewis, meanwhile, said there's always hope that a stray E.T. will be tuning in.

"We can only continue to send messages and hope someone or something sees them and understands we have something valuable to offer the universe," Lewis said in the news release. "The way we see it, if there is someone out there receiving radio waves from this planet, Earth is getting some pretty bad press. Basically, they'd be seeing what we're seeing on the evening news: war, famine, strife and struggle. Perhaps now they will see there is also unmatched beauty and grace on our little green ball as well."

By the way, time hasn't stood relativistically still for Comaneci. She's married to fellow gymnast Bart Conner and just last month gave birth to the couple's first child. Check out this Wikipedia dossier for more on the past and present "Perfect 10."

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After the shuttle Discovery landed today, I asked NASA Administrator Mike Griffin a rather flip question: Doesn't an admittedly unemotional space agency chief feel even a little bit of emotion over such a successful space mission? In response, I got an answer that wasn't flip at all, but instead sounded like a heartfelt rationale for taking on the risks of human spaceflight.

For the benefit of all those who have been debating the merits of space exploration, here's Griffin's answer, plus some comments in the same vein from Discovery commander Steve Lindsey. After you've read them - or after you've seen the video versions - feel free to weigh in with your own comments.

I started out by alluding to Griffin's earlier comment that "it's a thrill and a pleasure to be here again, especially under these circumstances ... in fact, it's such a great day that I don't think even a press conference can spoil it."

"You said that you really 'don't do emotions,'" I said, "but it sounded like you were doing a little bit of emotion at the top of the show here," I said. "Do you feel like a weight has been lifted, or can you try to do a little bit more emotion?"

"Please forgive me if I showed any emotion. It was an oversight," Griffin replied with a smile. Then he continued:

"I certainly do not feel like a weight has been lifted, other than to recognize, as I continually do ... I think the words 'routine' [and] 'human spaceflight' don't go in the same sentence. Every one of these things is, if not frankly experimental, right on the edge of that.

"A comment that I'm fond of, and I've made before, but some of you may have forgotten so I'll make it again: I was a teenager, or a very young engineer,  when we were flying the X-15 - and we flew 199 flights with that vehicle. And ... of course, its performance envelope was a small fraction of what the shuttle achieves. Nobody ever thought that that was anything other than an experimental vehicle - and that's what we have here.

"I think I also said, not terribly long ago, that if you think about it ... it took Western Europeans, and then North Americans, 1,000 years from being able to put Viking ships out into the open ocean to get to the point where nowadays we can load up cargo in an oil tanker and sail it halfway around the world, and almost every single time we do that, it gets there. But it took us 1,000 years to learn how to do that.

"We've been doing this stuff for 50 years. I think that is the perspective that we have to get. The enterprise is eminently worth doing. It's part of what makes us human. It is crucial that this nation does it. But we should recognize where we are in the process. We are just learning. And that's what you see us doing here today."

Later, Lindsey was asked how he would explain the importance of continuing with the shuttle program and finishing the space station to a neighbor who was concerned about the Middle East situation and $3-a-gallon gasoline.

"What I would say is that spaceflight is an investment in our future. We invest in universities for research, to make technological advances that make our life better here on earth. When you go after a task that's difficult - and spaceflight is difficult, it's hard, it's challenging, it's dangerous - when you go after a task that's difficult, and you have to use new technologies and new operational concepts to get there, inevitably you learn a lot of things about yourself, and you learn a lot of things that have applications in your own world ... that you would never think of before.

"If you look back to all the things that have come out of the space program, there's probably not an activity you do at any time during the day where there isn't something that [came about] as a result of investing in the space program. So I think it's a great investment in our future. If a company spends no money in research and development, then their product stands still and eventually that company dies. We all know that, and they invest a certain amount of their earnings in future technologies.

"I think the space program is the same thing. What we're doing right now is a little too expensive for a corporation to take on. And so I think it's a useful role for government in this case, to do that and go after those hard tasks. And it's also an inspiration to people.

"I rarely get a negative comment about the space program. I usually always get a positive comment. If you really want to know, go to a school. Go with us when we go talk to kids at a school. I've never been at a school that wasn't just absolutely, totally enthusiastic about the program - about the advances, about the science, about their opportunity to participate in the science."

British-American astronaut Piers Sellers chimed in with an extra bit of perspective:

"... What does the space station, what does the space program do for us as humans? An important insight is that it's about peace. It's about international cooperation, nations coming together to do stuff. It's about the future, it's not about the past. That's where we're going."

There wasn't much talk about what astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has said are the three drivers for the great works of civilization: defense (let's build the Great Wall!), financial gain (let's take over the New World!) or praise of power (let's build the Pyramids!). Is that a problem?

Now it's your turn to keep the discussion going, by sending in your comments.

Another couple of images from the world's first private-sector space station were released today, signaling that we could expect a stream of fascinating snapshots from orbit, just as the company behind the Genesis 1 inflatable spacecraft promised. And it's just as fascinating to read the stream of reports about Genesis 1 and Bigelow Aerospace, including claims that the company could be seen as privately funded "mini-Skunk Works" for NASA's exploration efforts.

Bigelow Aerospace

The curving Earth can be seen in the background of this Genesis 1 self-portrait. On the left side of the image, sections of the spacecraft's inflatable skin are visible. An edge-on solar array also appears in the picture.

Today's images are still not quite ready for prime time, but one of them does show the blue curve of Earth in the background for the first time. That's the one you see here. Another picture provides a clearer view of part of Genesis 1's inflatable skin. To see that additional picture, as well as others that may well be posted in the days ahead, bookmark this page on the Bigelow Aerospace site.

In one sense, the Bigelow venture is the creation of real-estate billionaire Robert Bigelow - part of his grand plan to offer orbital facilities for use as hotels or laboratories within a decade. But in another sense, Genesis 1 and the Bigelow spacecraft have come to represent the realization of a dream that had its genesis at Johnson Space Center. In return, NASA could conceivably adapt the technology for future moonbase modules. Clark Lindsey's RLV and Space Transport News provides a snippet about the "mini-Skunk Works" angle from this week's issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology.

This week's online issue of The Space Review also provides a big-picture perspective on Bigelow's space effort. And if it's a podcast you're looking for, Clark is linking to an audio interview with Genesis project manager Eric Haakonstad, offered by Boston's Museum of Science.

Bigelow Aerospace has released the first image taken by cameras aboard its Genesis 1 orbital spacecraft, showing the exterior of the inflatable module itself in flight. Future snapshots may be prettier, but there's nothing like that first baby picture - especially when the baby is "happy and healthy."

Bigelow Aerospace

Genesis 1 sent back this self-portrait.

Genesis 1 was launched on Wednesday from Russia's Dombarovsky missile base, and imagery is coming back to Earth from at least some of the 13 cameras mounted on the interior and exterior of the spacecraft. Some of the thumbnail images showed up in the background of a video piece aired by KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, where Bigelow Aerospace is based - but the company held back on publicizing the pictures because of the relatively low quality.

Today, the billionaire backer of the private space effort, Robert Bigelow, decided to go ahead and provide an initial, somewhat overexposed image.

"We have extracted from early quick look data a low-resolution thumbnail image of the Genesis 1 vehicle, which verifies the success of vehicle inflation and solar array deployment," Bigelow said in a statement. "At this point in time, the vehicle is happy and healthy."

The image shows the spacecraft with its walls of layered composite material fully inflated to a diameter of about 8 feet.  The perspective is distorted because the picture was taken from one end of the spacecraft. Solar arrays hang down from the top of the image, and another set of the yellowish solar arrays can be seen peeking out from the far end of the craft.

If you look at the right spot in the sky at the right time, you just might be able to see Genesis 1 yourself. Follow the instructions at the end of this earlier item to get coordinates and sky maps.

Update for 2:15 a.m. July 15: Bigelow Aerospace's Steve Pellegrino and Chris Reed provide this behind-the-scenes perspective on the Genesis 1 launch. Tip o' the Log to Clark Lindsey at RLV and Space Transport News.

Thar's gold in them thar comets - fool's gold, that is, also known as iron sulfides. Thar's also clay and chalk, which are far more interesting to the scientists behind the latest effort to figure out the recipe for a comet.

Observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, gathered during last year's Deep Impact encounter with Comet Tempel 1 and reported this week in Science Express, have turned up a couple of surprise ingredients in the recipe. To explain the presence of clay and chalk, researchers have bought into a theory that may be unorthodox - but isn't at all foolish.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / UMD

A colorized image shows the plume of ice and dust thrown up from Comet Tempel 1 during the Deep Impact encounter.

Chemists have thought that such clays (smectite) and chalky material (carbonates) are formed only in the presence of liquid water. To be sure, Tempel 1 and most other comets have plenty of water, but it's either bound up as ice or liberated in the form of water vapor.

The head of the Spitzer observation team, astronomer Carey Lisse of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, told me today that there could be another mechanism for a comet's water-based chemistry. If the material making up the comet spent a lot of time within the inner solar system, billions of years ago, it could have reacted with the water vapor there ... er, here ... to create the telltale compounds.

That fits in with findings from NASA's Stardust mission, which found crystalline silicates in samples brought back to Earth from Comet Wild 2's coma. The only way scientists can explain those silicates would be if the stuff making up Wild 2 spent some time relatively close to the sun - then congealed in the solar system's chillier zone.

Tempel 1, which also contains crystalline silicates, appears to have resulted from the same recipe, Lisse said.

"In the same body, you have material formed in the inner solar system, where water can be liquid, and frozen material from out by Uranus and Neptune," he said in a Johns Hopkins news release. "Except for the lightest elements, the total abundances of atoms in the comet are practically the same as makes up the sun. It implies there was a great deal of churning in the primordial solar system, with high- and low-temperature materials mixing over great distances."

Lisse told me that Stardust's findings provide important "ground truth" for Spitzer's observations from a distance. Stardust's scientists haven't yet detected the presence of clays or carbonates in their samples - but Lisse is betting that they'll eventually be found. Literally.

If the Wild 2 samples eventually yield evidence of carbonates, Lisse said Stardust team member John Bradley will owe him a six-pack of beer. "It's a gentlemen's agreement," he said.

When I asked Bradley about Lisse's wager, the researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory laughed heartily. "Ask him when the Guinness will be delivered," Bradley said. On a more serious note, Bradley said "the jury is still out" on the detection of carbonates.

In addition to the clays and carbonates, there's yet another intriguing ingredient detected by the Spitzer Space Telescope: polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. These are carbon-containing molecules that are also found on Earth in, say, barbecue grills or automobile exhaust.

"I think we have the first definitive detection of PAHs in a comet," Lisse said.

Although PAHs are generally thought to arise through organic chemistry, Lisse said the molecules aren't necessarily indicative of life. After all, they've been detected before in the interstellar medium, around young stellar objects and in the enigmatic Allan Hills meteorite from Mars.

"To me, PAHs can easily be made through inorganic processes," he said. "I think that's a very common process."

One reason scientists study comets is to determine whether they might contain chemicals that served as the ingredients for life. Lisse said the evidence indicates that building blocks are there, but in the form of "very, very basic components" such as methanol or formaldehyde. So far, DNA or amino acids haven't been found in comets (though meteorites may be a different story).

Lisse said he's not surprised to see the basics of organic chemistry show up in comets. It takes a lot more than those raw ingredients to come up with a recipe for life, he explained.

"Given something that's the size of an Appalachian mountain, that weighs about 10¹⁴ kilograms, if .001 percent of that is more exotic, or more complex, it's possible you could get something more complicated that might lead to life," he said. "But it's a helluva lot easier if you dumped all those ingredients on Earth, and let all that stuff react on Earth."

There's a certain school of thought that suggests life or its building blocks originated elsewhere in the universe, then came to Earth on comets or asteroids. Does that make sense to you, or is it mere foolishness? I'd love to see your comments on the subject.