The multimillion-dollar Automotive X Prize is finally rolling up to the starting line after more than a year of tinkering. Draft rules for the competition, aimed at encouraging the development of "production-capable" cars that get the energy equivalent of 100 miles per gallon, will be unveiled next week at the New York Auto Show. The X Prize Foundation is targeting a race between the prize finalists in 2009.

The rules are due to come out during the auto show's press preview, which begins on Wednesday, and will be put out for a 60-day public comment period before they're set in stone, said Mark Goodstein, the executive director of the Automotive X Prize program.

"You only get one chance to release the final rules for a competition, and we want to make sure they are right when they are final," he told me on Thursday. "This is an attempt to reach out to folks worldwide who would like to compete ... or have done this kind of thing before and know about the hidden land mines."

Many of the details surrounding the rules are being held back until next week, but Goodstein said they won't lend themselves easily to a quick sound bite. "Fifty pages is nothing to sneeze at," he said.

Why do the rules have to be so complex? It's a tall order to create a contest that will truly reward breakthroughs in what's already one of America's biggest economic sectors.

The organizers don't want to rule out any technology that can produce more efficient cars, whether that's biofuels, hydrogen, plug-in power, solar or just a better breed of fossil-fuel power. For that reason, the basic metric is the energy equivalent of 100 miles per gallon of gasoline, or 100 mpge, in a combination of city and highway driving. Defining how that will be measured, particularly for alternate energy sources, can get tricky.

The vehicles have to be marketable as well - so the ability to create a "production-capable" (as opposed to "production-ready") car will be factored into the rules. If you have a brainstorm that involves driving mice around in a tinfoil-covered lifting body, or flying people around in dirigibles, you'll want to think again. Not that there's anything wrong with lifters or dirigibles, of course.

For months, Goodstein and his colleagues have been struggling over whether the goal of the X Prize should be to reduce emissions, or reduce America's dependence on foreign oil, or increase energy efficiency. Here's how he encapsulated the Automotive X Prize's purpose this week:

"This is a goal to inspire a new generation of super-efficient vehicles that will break our addiction to oil and stem the effects of planet change. That really is it. Those two goals have been the tent poles as we've done our thing. ...

"The industry is stuck, and it's not anybody's fault. That's just the dynamic. ... Everyone points their fingers behind closed doors. We need to introduce a bright spotlight in a different location and get everyone to rush over there."

Goodstein, a veteran of dot-com and e-commerce ventures, dared to use a chemistry metaphor - comparing the automotive industry to a supersaturated solution that's just waiting for a little push to churn out cool new stuff.

"One little thing can be put into it, and thkk!" he said.

Of course, the Automotive X Prize won't be just "one little thing." In the past, Goodstein has said the competition's purse might have to be even larger than the $10 million spaceflight X Prize that was won back in 2004. This week he said his team wasn't yet ready to announce how big the purse will be, other than to say it will involve a multimillion-dollar payout.

"The purse is not insubstantial for the smaller teams, but they're really doing this for the exposure," Goodstein said.

If the program develops the way Goodstein expects, that exposure would reach its height in 2009, when the X Prize Foundation would "stage races to test the work of these teams in a very high-profile way."

The Automotive X Prize is just one of the foundation's follow-ups to the original space prize - standing alongside the annual X Prize Cup, the $2 million Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, the $10 million Archon X Prize for genomics and other projects that are still percolating. But if the automotive contest lives up to Goodstein's hopes, it could be the foundation's biggest world-changer. What do you think? Feel free to leave your comments below, and watch for updates in MSNBC.com's automotive news section.

Sometimes all you have to do is point to a couple of items, then stand back and wait for the messages to roll in. I'm hoping that will be the case with these items.

• We're running this Associated Press story about the worries that NASA officials and members of Congress have about the "spaceflight gap" - the period between 2010 and 2015 when the space shuttle fleet is retired and the next-generation Orion spaceship is not yet ready for launch. The worry is that NASA might have to rely on (gasp!) the private sector or other countries to provide space services. To be sure, the United States should have its own spacefaring capability, but I'm betting that some people might say the best thing for NASA to do is to leave the spaceship-building business to the private sector. Others might say that the government has to take the leading role in such a risky business. What do you say?
• I was struck by this comment from John in Kansas: "I want to thank you for the occasional postings of amateur astronomy tools - if you could do more of that, I might be more prepared for next year, when I take my kids out to rural Kansas for the first time to look at the moon, planets and stars. So if an astronomy expert has some sound advice on the best (affordable ... which is subjective, I know) available tools and gadgets for seeing craters on the moon, keep 'em coming!" Now if that's not an invitation for feedback, I don't know what is. Do you have any suggestions for John? Leave them below - and if I think of anything, I'll do the same.

• Archaeology: Pyramid in New England | Bigfoot shocker!!
• Gizmodo: U.S. military considers UFOs; Cylons next?
• Duke: Feeling red-faced and foolish? That's a good sign
• Wired: April Fool's pranks for nerds 

Celebrities from TV's classic "Star Trek" and America's space program are due to take a posthumous trip to the final frontier – and back – on April 28, when an UP Aerospace suborbital rocket carries the cremated remains of "Star Trek" actor James "Scotty" Doohan, NASA astronaut Gordon "Gordo" Cooper and more than 200 others on a memorial spaceflight.

The flight - organized by Celestis Corp., a subsidiary of Houston-based Space Services Inc. - has been in the planning stage for more than a year. Here's how it works: Ashes from the dearly departed are placed in metal capsules about the size of lipstick tubes, then put aboard the rocket for launch from New Mexico's Spaceport America to an altitude of about 70 miles, just beyond the internationally accepted boundary of space. The payload then falls back to earth for recovery.

"We will take those capsules, and we'll mount them on beautiful plaques, and they will be a keepsake for the families," Susan Schonfeld, a spokeswoman for Space Services, told me today.

A memorial ceremony will be conducted on the eve of the flight at Alamogordo's New Mexico Museum of Space History, Schonfeld said.

Doohan and Cooper are the best-known names on the flight list:

• Cooper orbited Earth 22 times during his Mercury 9 flight in 1963, becoming the last American to fly alone in space until SpaceShipOne's private-sector astronauts did it in 2004. Cooper was also the command pilot for Gemini 5 in 1965. He died in 2004 at the age of 77.
• Doohan played Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott on the classic "Star Trek" TV show in the 1960s, and reprised that role in several "Trek" movies. His portrayal of "Scotty" was the highlight of a TV and film career that spanned more than 50 years. He died in 2005 at the age of 85.

Among those attending the launch will be Doohan's widow, Wende C. Doohan. "While 'Scotty' lived this, Jimmy lived for this," she said in a Space Services news release. "I will be there, to see the launch, knowing that Jimmy is participating in an industry which he loved so very much."

If this flight is successful, it would mark the first true space foray for Connecticut-based UP Aerospace. The venture's maiden launch ended in failure last September, but the company says it has resolved the aerodynamic problems that prevented the earlier Spaceloft XL rocket from getting up to space.

It would also mark the first real space mission for Spaceport America, which is seeking support from local taxpayers in an April 3 ballot. That vote could well determine how quickly the New Mexico spaceport moves ahead with its plans for a $198 million suborbital space tourism complex.

This week, the spaceport authority announced agreement on the terms of a future lease with billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic - and on Friday, the spaceport is planning a spacecraft integration ceremony for the UP Aerospace flight. All this activity seems aimed at raising the spaceport's visibility in advance of next week's vote.

"We're all breaking new ground," Rick Homans, chairman of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority and cabinet secretary for the New Mexico Economic Development Department, was quoted as saying in Space Services' release. "We're in this for the long term, developing new businesses and new technologies."

Celestis offers space-themed memorial packages ranging from $499 (for a suborbital-and-back flight) to $12,500 or more (for a one-way trip beyond Earth orbit).

"Space remains the domain of the few, the dream of many," Charles Chafer, chief executive officer for Celestis and Space Services, said in the release. "With Celestis, the dream of spaceflight, and the desire to take part in the opening of the space frontier, can be realized - and is available to everyone."

Next month's flight won't necessarily mark the final trip to the final frontier for Doohan and Cooper: Samples of their ashes are also due to fly as part of Celestis' secondary payload aboard SpaceX's next Falcon 1 flight, Chafer told me last week. That launch is scheduled for September.

This week's story about the bungling of a plea agreement in a multimillion-dollar tax evasion case put a spotlight on defendant Walter Anderson's seemingly opulent lifestyle - and even his taste for airport hamburgers. But there wasn't much emphasis placed on the one-time telecommunication tycoon's space connection, and that's how I knew him best.

Anderson was the principal financial backer of MirCorp, the company that kept Russia's Mir space station in orbit for an extra year and once had aspirations of building private-sector space stations. In that, he anticipated the work currently being carried out by billionaire Robert Bigelow. Anderson also backed other space ventures ranging from the Space Frontier Foundation to Rotary Rocket and Orbital Recovery Corp.

As I've mentioned before, the last thing I heard from Anderson was that he was done with his "15 minutes of fame" - but that was before he had his current bout with infamy.

• Tech Review: Robo-amoebas developed for search and rescue
• New Scientist: 'Inspector Gadget' stars in space tether test
• ESO: Telescopes gang up on a double asteroid
• Science @ NASA: First steps to Mars

The millionaire behind the maverick SpaceX rocket venture, Elon Musk, says the verdict on last week's partly successful Falcon 1 rocket launch is "looking increasingly positive" now that his team is getting a close look at the data. Before its second-stage engine cut off prematurely, the Falcon flew to a height of 180 miles (289 kilometers) - a performance not quite good enough to reach orbit, but good enough for Musk to declare the end of the rocket's test phase and the beginning of its operational phase.

The assessment came in a post-flight data review published Tuesday on SpaceX's Web site. Musk said the engine cutoff was traced to overly vigorous sloshing of liquid oxygen in a propellant tank - a bad spin that was exacerbated when the first stage bumped into the second stage's engine nozzle during separation.

The slosh cut off the flow of propellant to the second-stage engine - and that triggered a shutdown of the rocket, just 90 seconds prematurely, Musk said. "For those that aren't engineers, imagine holding a bowl of soup and moving it from side to side with small movements, until the entire soup mass is shifting dramatically," he wrote.

If you depended on sucking a continuous flow of broth through a straw that was stuck into that bowl, you'd run into trouble - and that's sort of what happened to the Falcon 1.

Musk said his team was already working on a fix: 

"We definitely intend to have both the diagnosis and cure vetted by third party experts; however, we believe that the slosh issue can be dealt with in short order by adding baffles to our 2nd stage LOX tank and adjusting the control logic.  Either approach separately would do the trick (eg. the Atlas-Centaur tank has no baffles), but we want to ensure that this problem never shows up again.  The Merlin [first-stage engine] shutdown transient can be addressed by initiating shutdown at a much lower thrust level, albeit at some risk to engine reusability. Provided we have a good set of slosh baffles, even another nozzle impact at stage separation would not pose a significant flight risk, although obviously we will work hard to avoid that."

Last week's $7 million test mission, paid for by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, carried an experimental payload consisting of equipment that might be used to monitor future launches. Musk said the next Falcon 1 mission would be for real, with a U.S. Navy satellite called TacSat 1 due to be placed in orbit. The launch window for that mission opens in September. The mission after that, scheduled for November, would put the Malaysian Razaksat telecommunications satellite into orbit.

Some observers have wondered whether SpaceX was rushing things, considering that Falcon 1's first launch ended with the rocket dropping into the sea and the second launch didn't reach orbit. Musk addressed those wonderings head-on:

"There seems to be a lot of confusion in the media about what constitutes a success.  The critical distinction is that a test flight has many gradations of success, whereas an operational satellite mission does not.  Although we did our best at SpaceX to be clear about last week's launch, including naming it DemoFlight 2 and explicitly not carrying a satellite, a surprising number of people still evaluated the test launch as though it were an operational mission. 

"This is neither fair nor reasonable. Test flights are used to gather data before flying a 'real' satellite and the degree of success is a function of how much data is gathered.  The problem with our first launch is that, although it taught us a lot about the first stage, ground support equipment and launch pad, we learned very little about the second stage, apart from the avionics bay.  However, that first launch was still a partial success, because of what we learned and, as shown by flight two, that knowledge was put to good use: there were no flight critical issues with the first stage on flight two.

"The reason that flight two can legitimately be called a near complete success as a test flight is that we have excellent data throughout the whole orbit insertion profile, including well past second-stage shutdown, and met all of the primary objectives established beforehand by our customer (DARPA/AF).  This allows us to wrap up the test phase of the Falcon 1 program and transition to the operational phase, beginning with the TacSat mission at the end of summer.  Let me be clear here and now that anything less than orbit for that flight or any Falcon 1 mission with an operational satellite will unequivocally be considered a failure. 

"This is not 'spin' or some clever marketing trick, nor is this distinction an invention of SpaceX - it has existed for decades.   The U.S. Air Force made the same distinction a few years ago with the demonstration flight of the Delta 4 Heavy, which also carried no primary satellite.  Although the Delta 4 Heavy fell materially short of its target velocity and released its secondary satellites into an abnormally low altitude, causing re-entry in less than one orbit, it was still correctly regarded by Boeing and the Air Force as a successful test launch, because sufficient data was obtained to transition to an operational phase.

"It is perhaps worth drawing an analogy with more commonplace consumer products.  Before software is released, it is beta tested in non-critical applications, where bugs are worked out, before being released for critical applications, although some companies have been a little loose with this rule. :)  Cars go through a safety and durability testing phase before being released for production.  Rockets may involve rocket science, but are no different in this regard."

Will further analysis bear out the preliminary conclusions about this month's flight? Will Musk's company "make it out of beta" on SpaceX's current timetable? Stay tuned...

• Scientific American: The science of lasting happiness
• The Guardian: Darwin was delayed by huge workload
• Improbable Research: Chemistry not enough sexy?
• The Onion: Milestones in private spaceflight

What's the deepest cosmic puzzle for the next 20 years? After a Seattle talk that touched upon multiverses, branes and 10-dimensional physics, string theorist Brian Greene says his candidate would be figuring out exactly what the underlying fabric of space and time is really made of. In a couple of weeks, Cambridge cosmologist Stephen Hawking will get his own shot at the question from the same Seattle stage. In the meantime, what's your candidate for the deepest question?

There's been a succession of theories about what constitutes reality - starting with the four elements of the ancient Greeks and moving on to atoms and molecules ... then electrons, protons and neutrons ... then a menagerie of subatomic particles, including quarks and leptons ... and now the teeny, tiny vibrating strings that are the focus of Greene's theoretical work.

But Greene says strings by themselves are not the end of the story. In his view, the multidimensional strings resonate in the structure of the space-time continuum, somewhat like musical notes resonate differently in an oboe or a tuba. In fact, the various possibilities for the structure of space and time may dictate how different universes work, with different physical laws in each universe.

"The really big problem in cosmology that I don't think we've cracked is a full understanding of what space and time actually are. ... We don't know what the 'atomic structure' of space and time really is," he told a questioner at Monday night's talk.

The question about what lies beneath our perception of space-time has been debated for millennia, of course, and some scientists say the answer may well be unknowable. Others, such as the Perimeter Institute's Lee Smolin (author of "The Trouble With Physics"), have proposed that the geometry of space-time arises from underlying "spin networks," with particles and fields defined by nodes and lines on the network. Here's a Scientific American article that goes into Smolin's proposed theory, known as loop quantum gravity.

All these ideas are consistent with the view that our universe is following just one of many possible cosmic scenarios, and that there could be other universes just next door that we cannot perceive. Greene noted that this concept has often been compared to "a big cosmic bubble bath," with each universe representing just one bubble in the foam.

Another metaphor compares our universe to a single slice (or "brane") in an expanding loaf of raisin bread. Greene referred to yet another comparison, to a block of Swiss cheese with each hole standing for a universe. "As a vegan, somehow this metaphor is starting to make me feel a little bit sick," he joked.

Could it be that, in a sense, we each create our own universe? In a recent essay, stem-cell researcher Robert Lanza signed onto that idea, which resonates with some interpretations of quantum theory as well as new-age thought. But Greene wasn't buying it. "My own view is that the observer is highly overrated in quantum mechanics," he said.

Many of the seeming puzzles in the relationship between the microscopic quantum world and the macroscopic classical world can be explained by a phenomenon called decoherence. "You can really take the experimenter out of the equation," Greene said.

So what would Hawking list as the deepest unanswered question of the next 20 years? Greene's questioner quoted Hawking as saying there'd be no unanswered questions left by that time, since he intended to "answer them all." But Hawking might have a different take when he's actually on stage on April 9.

Hawking didn't have time to address the deep questions we sent in a couple of months ago, but he did answer five questions from The Seattle Times - including a question about the title of his talk, "The History of the Universe Backwards."

The good doctor said the cosmic tale is best told backwards "because the universe doesn't have a fixed initial state. Instead, the initial state is determined by the final state." This is an encapsulation of his brain-twisting "top-down" approach to cosmology - and I'm looking forward to hearing more about that in April.

This week we found out at least a partial answer to a somewhat less deep question: How much are people willing to pay to fly with Hawking on a zero-gravity adventure? Based on a recently concluded online charity auction, the answer is at least $75,100, as reported by New Scientist's Kelly Young and "Rocketeers" author Michael Belfiore. I suspect, however, that that's not the final word on the charity seats. Stay tuned ... and keep those deep questions coming.

• Way cool Space Access video from Armadillo Aerospace
• N.Y. Times (reg. req.): Robots that slink and squirm
• Gizmodo: Make coffee with a laser (via GeekPress)
• Univ. of Washington: 'Smart' sunglasses change color

New Mexico officials today revealed the details of a pact with the Virgin Galactic suborbital space venture as they geared up for a crucial spaceport tax vote next month. The memorandum of agreement calls for Virgin Galactic to pay about $27.5 million over 20 years to lease facilities at Spaceport America in southern New Mexico.

"Today was one of the big milestones for developing the spaceport," Rick Homans, chairman of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority and cabinet secretary of the New Mexico Economic Development Department, told me after today's signing in Las Cruces.

The spaceport is 45 miles northeast of Las Cruces and notched its first launch last September.

Virgin Galactic, which is part of British billionaire Richard Branson's business group, intends to make New Mexico its global headquarters and start offering suborbital space trips from Spaceport America in late 2009 or 2010. However,  the state has said it will take $198 million to build the facilities needed by Virgin and other space operators.

State lawmakers said they would kick in $100 million toward that capital outlay - on three conditions: The cost estimate for building the spaceport had to come in at $225 million or less; the state had to reach a lease agreement with an anchor tenant; and a license had to be awarded by the Federal Aviation Administration. That last condition is still up in the air, but New Mexico hopes the FAA's OK will come through by the end of this year. 

In addition to the $100 million in state funds, another $25 million or so is expected to come from the federal government. Local tax levies would fill the remaining gap. The first vote on local-option taxes is due to take place April 3 in Dona Ana County - and the outcome of that election could well determine whether the spaceport plan rises or falls.

"I know it's a very important vote, and there's a lot at stake," Homans told me. "I think that it will probably be a very close vote. From the beginning of this project, we've had a lot of hurdles, and we've approached each one with a high degree of optimism - and there's no reason to change our strategy now."

Today's agreement could provide some extra assurance to voters that Virgin Galactic's space venture isn't just pie in the sky, although some might still wonder why millions of tax dollars are being spent to build facilities for a billionaire. (Incidentally, the same question might be asked about sports stadiums.) To address that concern, the Economic Development Department points out that Virgin Galactic is spending more than $200 million to develop its SpaceShipTwo system, plus the $27.5 million in lease payments and other fees yet to be determined.

Will Whitehorn, president of Virgin Galactic, was quoted as saying today's agreement "represents a significant commitment by Virgin Galactic to be the anchor tenant at Spaceport America, and to help New Mexico grow a thriving new industry around commercial space companies."

Among the other space companies setting up shop in New Mexico are Starchaser Industries, UP Aerospace, the Rocket Racing League and the X Prize Cup.

Here are the key points of today's memorandum of agreement, which sets the conditions for the formal facilities lease:

• Virgin Galactic will locate its primary launch and operational activities at Spaceport America and its global headquarters in New Mexico.
• Virgin Galactic will lease about 83,400 square feet of space, including office space; customer service facilities; medical facilities and sleeping quarters for space fliers; hangars for maintenance and storage of aircraft; a mission control center; and a staff clubhouse.
• The spaceport authority will provide common facilities including runways and a control tower, multipurpose training facilities, emergency facilities, fuel storage and delivery systems, restaurants and concessions, and visitor viewing areas. Virgin Galactic and other tenants will pay user fees, yet to be determined, to use these facilities.
• Virgin Galactic's lease payments would be $1 million a year for the first five years of occupancy, then $1.5 million a year for the following 15 years. Virgin Galactic can extend the facilities lease for up to 10 years.
• The spaceport authority will establish an advisory committee, consisting of Virgin Galactic and other tenants, to advise and work with the authority on operations, budget, capital improvements, maintenance, marketing and branding.
• Virgin Galactic will get "preferred status" for the use of the airfield, launch facilities and airspace for certain periods of time.

Homans said the agreement would serve as a model for other spaceport tenants.

"It lays the foundation for some significant precedents at the spaceport, related to ground rent, user fees and development of a spaceport-tenant advisory committee to participate in decision-making," he told me. "All of these issues lay the groundwork for the operation of the spaceport."

• Science News: Ticket to ride ... to the moon?
• Los Angeles Times: One giant heap for mankind 
• The New Yorker: Einstein, the valiant Swabian
• Thumbs down from historian on '300' | Thumbs up from geeks 

Rumblings from online and offline grapevines are filling in the gaps in three sagas of space ventures: The usually secretive Blue Origin conducted what's said to be a successful test of its vertical-launch rocket system. ... The usually wide-open SpaceX is providing further details about its own almost successful orbital test launch. ... And Rocketplane Kistler has provided some additional hints about Bigelow Aerospace's not-yet-public plan for setting up an orbital tourist destination by 2012.

• Blue Origin, the rocket venture created by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos, gave notice to the Federal Aviation Administration about its time frame for the latest launch of its prototype rocket ship, which takes off and lands vertically in the middle of Bezos' 18,600-acre West Texas test site. Blue Origin conducted a successful test in November - which Bezos waited until January to publicize - but air traffic controllers said there was no launch during a follow-up test window in December.

Since then, the FAA has been directing the flow of media inquiries back to Blue Origin, which tends not to say much. "As you may recall, Blue Origin's policy is not to comment on or confirm whether any test flights are scheduled or conducted," company spokesman Bruce Hicks told me in an e-mail today.

However, secondhand reports indicate that a test launch on Thursday was successful, with the rocket rising higher than it did back in November. When you add in the fact that the FAA's original notice to airmen is no longer in the agency's active database, that's pretty good evidence that the test did indeed take place.

• SpaceX put its low-cost Falcon 1 rocket into space for the first time this week, but the second stage didn't make it to orbit as hoped. Just after the test, the California company's millionaire founder, Elon Musk, said the mission was 95 percent successful. A couple of correspondents sent in dissenting views, however:

Greg: "Seems like the title of your SpaceX article should be loss of roll control and more spin control.  Five minutes of flight and not getting anywhere close to the point of being able to insert the payload into the proper orbit hardly qualifies the Falcon 1 as being anywhere near a measure of success in my book.  Whatever happened to the standard of trying to achieve mission success anyway? Forgive me, this must be an 'old space' measure that SpaceX will undoubtedly continue to push aside for now.  How many years' late and how missed milestones has it been now?  If the military's primary measure of success is mission assurance and the ability of becoming more responsive … then I would say that it will be a very, very long time before SpaceX has any chance of becoming a serious contender. Do you know of anyone who is jumping up and down to put their satellite on the Falcon 1 given their poor track record?  And however can the cost be anywhere near what has been advertised?  Just more spin and smoke and mirrors.  Perhaps you should write about that!   I guess in the end, as the saying goes … you get what you pay for."

John Wickman: "Take a look at the Falcon launch video right at staging. You will see the first stage hits the second-stage engine exit cone. In slow motion, you can see the first stage lip hang up on the outer lip of the second stage exit cone before sliding free. The hit was so strong you see the second stage move dramatically. After the second stage engine comes on, you can see the lip on the end of the exit cone loosen, and then right before jettison of the payload fairing, the exit cone lip comes off completely. Looks to me like they have a staging problem."

SpaceX

The Falcon 1 rocket lifts off Tuesday from SpaceX's Omelek Island launch pad.

Now SpaceDaily quotes Musk as saying that the first stage did indeed bump the second stage during the separation, although there was no damage done. He told SpaceDaily that the "bump will obviously need to be addressed." Musk also reported that the potentially reusable first stage was not recovered from the Pacific, because the GPS locator device mounted on the stage was not working at launch. (Even before the launch, SpaceX reported that the Falcon 1's GPS navigation system was flaky and might have to be turned off.)

There's a backup sonar beacon and light on the stage, but the recovery ship couldn't get to the projected splashdown site in time to see any sign of the hardware, Musk told SpaceDaily.

Although recovering that first stage isn't crucial to SpaceX's financial model, "long term, getting this right matters a lot for cost reduction," Musk is quoted as saying. SpaceX says Musk will issue a more detailed status report late today or perhaps on Saturday - and I'll update this item with any new information.

• Bigelow Aerospace is gearing up for a big announcement next month at the National Space Symposium in Colorado, but the veil was raised just a bit today by George French III, representing Oklahoma-based Rocketplane Kistler. French, who is the son of Rocketplane's chairman and chief executive officer, told attendees at the annual Space Access conference that his company has signed a letter of intent with Bigelow to carry passengers to a Bigelow-built orbital "hotel" by 2012.

This fits right in with the vision of the company's founder, Nevada billionaire Robert Bigelow, who wants to develop a commercial operation to take tourists as well as researchers into orbit. Bigelow has said he'd like to get the private space station, or stations, going by 2012 so that he can turn his attention to farther-out space outposts.

French declined to say much more about the deal, for fear of stealing Bigelow's thunder. But Rocketplane's revelation makes perfect sense, and there are other potential spaceship operators as well. Bigelow has already made a development deal with Lockheed Martin. SpaceX is another possibility, considering that Musk (like French) is already working on a capsule and rocket capable of resupplying the international space station.

Is Bigelow Aerospace getting into the orbital hotel business, or is the company instead positioning itself as a general contractor for space structures? My bet is on the latter - but stay tuned for further updates.

Speaking of updates, there's plenty more about commercial space ventures coming out of the Space Access '07 conference in Phoenix. The bad news is that I'm missing out this year. The good news is that my brother bloggers are covering the event morning, noon and night. Here's the lineup:

• RLV and Space Transport News, helmed by Clark Lindsey, provides the blow-by-blow commentary, traditionally followed by a comprehensive summary of the whole conference.
• Transterrestrial Musings features color commentary by "recovering" aerospace engineer Rand Simberg, seasoned with a little politics.
• Personal Spaceflight gives space consultant Jeff Foust's take on the conference. Jeff is juggling two blogs at this event, so you'll want to watch Space Politics for reports on governmental angles (such as NASA's plans for rocket development).
• Why Homeschool broadens its horizons to present Henry Cate's in-depth reports from Space Access.
• Ian Kluft provides photos and notes from Space Access.

Update for 10:40 p.m. March 24: I corrected the reference to George French III after seeing the comment posted below. As I read the conference reports, I confused him with his dad, Rocketplane CEO George French. Sorry about that, George! 

• Discovery Channel: 'Planet Earth'
• 'Nova' on PBS: 'The Perfect Pearl'
• National Geographic Channel: 'Galapagos'
• History Channel: 'The Dark Ages'

The longest-running online market for political prognostication is up and running - and there are already a couple of front-runners. Clinton and McCain? Nope. For now, it's Obama and Giuliani. By the way, if you're the speculative type, you could have made a profit on John Edwards by buying low and selling high.

The idea behind the Iowa Electronic Markets is relatively simple, if unorthodox: You trade contracts in the various candidates or parties as if they were offerings on a commodities market, at prices ranging from zero to $1. After the election, each contract pays off $1 if you predicted the correct outcome - and nothing for the losers.

"We like to say this is not rocket science, it's just a case of putting your money where your mouth is," said George Neumann, an economics professor at the University of Iowa and one of the market's inventors.

Neumann and two other Iowa professors - Bob Forsythe and Forrest Nelson - developed the market back in 1988, without the benefit of online trading. "It was held together with chewing gum and baling wire, but it seems to have worked," Neumann joked.

Since then, the market trends have predicted the outcome of every presidential election - although you'd have to read the fine print for the 2000 election, which had Al Gore barely beating George W. Bush. "We pay off on the winner of the majority share of the two-party vote - we had to tell people to go back and read the prospectus," Neumann said.

Neumann estimates that 3,000 people or so use their online accounts for the presidential contract-trading. When it comes to anticipating the actual results of the election, he said the market does "much better than polls, because it gives people the right incentives to answer."

For one thing, traders are investing real money - usually more than $2 million during an election cycle. Also, the people participating in the market tend to be far more knowledgeable than your typical poll respondent.

"The more knowledge they have, the more predictive power there is," he said.

As you'd expect, students and political junkies are the biggest players. "Our biggest customer, as judged by domain name, is WhiteHouse.gov," the professor said. Participants are limited to $500 each to keep the market from spiraling out of control.

The Republican-vs.-Democrat market has been active since last June, and the Democrats have had the upper hand for pretty much the whole time. It gets more interesting when you look at the party nominee markets, which opened up just this month.

After some initial volatility, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been leading the GOP nominee market by a significant margin, leaving U.S. Sen. John McCain back in the pack with Mitt Romney. In fact, the "rest of the field" category - which would include folks such as Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee - has recorded an uptick over the past couple of days.

On the Democratic side, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are neck and neck. Obama is currently in the lead, even though Clinton has built up a huge advantage in the fund-raising race. John Edwards, meanwhile, is trailing the "rest of the field."

Speaking of Edwards, the past 24 hours have seen some wild swings in his standing, no doubt caused by the speculation over how his wife's health would affect his campaign. On Wednesday, the value of his contracts dwindled to 5 cents a share. But when it turned out that he was staying in the race despite the return of his wife's cancer, the value spiked upward - if you can call 12 cents a spike.

Could someone have made a profit by buying Edwards' contracts on Wednesday night and selling them today? "Yeah, you could do that," Neumann said. No one's going to get rich, due to that $500 limit - but this could be just the thing to spice up all that political punditry we'll be hearing over the next year and a half. I'd love to see Chris Matthews, Tim Russert and the rest of the crowd rated based on the rise and fall of their political predictions.

If you're looking for a political-market tip sheet, you'll have to add Politics.MSNBC.com to your list of favorites. Slate provides a frequently updated ticker of political futures, including Intrade's trading levels as well as Iowa's - and that ticker shows Clinton with an edge over Obama.

Predictive markets and politics are made for each other, but the market paradigm is good for other applications - even Super Bowl prognostication. The University of Iowa's operation runs academic markets projecting economic trends and even the box-office returns for the movie "300."

"Next week, we'll open up the avian flu market," Neumann said. That market, which is restricted to medical personnel, is actually aimed at making a real-world difference. Health-care experts will combine their projections on where bird flu may strike, using a market model - and if the model proves to be valid, the system could be used to project where resources should be concentrated to stop an outbreak before it starts.

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Former astronaut Rusty Schweickart is to asteroids what Al Gore is to global warming, and Schweickart is none too pleased with NASA's latest strategy for coping with potential threats from the sky.

Those plans came out this month in the form of a report to Congress, laying out an analysis of the various methods for detecting and dealing with potentially hazardous asteroids and comets. It's all part of NASA's legislative mandate to find 90 percent of such near-Earth objects, or NEOs, wider than 460 feet (140 meters) by the year 2020. An asteroid that big could devastate a city-sized region if it were to hit Earth.

Schweickart, who flew on Apollo 9 in 1969, set up the B612 Foundation to raise awareness about NEO threats - and he's organizing a series of workshops under the aegis of the Association of Space Explorers to develop an international plan for dealing with them.

"Not to make it sound overly dramatic, but you're not dealing with just science, you're dealing with public safety issues," he told me today. "You're dealing with the survival of life."

That's why he's taking the new report so seriously. NASA's official view is that the most efficient way to divert a potentially threatening NEO is by setting off a nuclear bomb nearby, to nudge it into a safe orbit. "The implication is that it is the preferred way to go to deflect essentially any near-Earth object," Schweickart complained.

In contrast, Schweickart argues that the so-called "nuclear standoff" option should be used only as a last resort. He contends that 98 percent of the potential threats can be mitigated by using less extreme measures. For example, he favors the development of a "gravity tractor" - a spacecraft that would hover near an asteroid for years at a time, using subtle gravitational attraction to draw the space rock out of a worrisome path.

To kick it up a notch, Schweickart said a threatening NEO could first be hit with a kinetic impactor - say, a scaled-up version of the Deep Impact bullet that hit Comet Tempel 1 back in 2005 - and then the orbital track could be fine-tuned using the tractor. Navigational sensors aboard the tractor would check to make sure the NEO was on a completely safe path.

"This combination is obviously the way to go," he said.

NASA sees it a different way, however. The report said the gravity tractor concept and similar techniques would be the "most expensive" ways to divert an asteroid: "In general, the slow push systems were found to be at a very low technology readiness level and would require significant development methods," it said.

Schweickart said NASA must have "misunderstood or mischaracterized" the gravity tractor concept. And he worried that the report may make things tougher for researchers working on kinder, gentler ways to head off killer asteroids.

"It may be harder to continue with that research," he said. "The irony is that NASA ought to be doing that research.

"But beyond that, there is also the issue that people are beginning to wrestle with this question on a much larger basis internationally," he said. "The idea that the only way you can protect Earth from these things is to compromise all your principles about nonproliferation would be shocking to anybody else. Almost anytime the United States is going to say anything about this, eyebrows are going to go up."

Schweickart already has written a 13-page retort to the report, as well as a letter to NASA Administrator Michael Griffin asking him to reconsider the agency's policy. Both are available from the B612 Foundation press page as Word documents. Schweickart is also calling on NASA to release more of the background analysis that went into the final report.

"I just felt that it was inappropriate that this stand unchallenged - not only unchallenged, but unsupported," he said.

He feared that his anti-nuclear stand might make him "persona non grata" in NASA circles - but astronomer Donald Yeomans, the head of NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said Schweickart's idea of combining kinetic impactors with gravity tractors had merit.

"That's an interesting concept if you wanted to do non-nuclear," Yeomans told me.

He pointed out that the NASA report was merely aimed at outlining the viable options for dealing with potentially threatening NEOs, and that the nuclear standoff explosion would be a "viable option for almost anything." (NASA isn't crazy about planting a nuke right on a NEO, a la "Armageddon," because of the risk of breaking the object into hazardous pieces.)

The kinetic impactor, perhaps combined with a gravity tractor or monitoring device, would be the most straightforward way to head off a NEO threat - and would probably be preferred for the smaller-scale threats.

"You really don't have one technique that fits all - except for this standoff blast, perhaps - but I don't think anyone is comfortable with this nuclear option," Yeomans said. "I think nuclear is there and available, but it's sort of a last resort. That's my own opinion. ... It's politically a tough sell, and it gives most people the willies."

One thing that nearly everyone agrees on is the need to devote more resources to hunting NEOs in the 460-foot-and-up range. The NASA report suggested two options for complying with Congress' requirements: either building a new ground-based telescope facility dedicated to the asteroid search, or putting a new infrared telescope into a Venus-like orbit. Unfortunately, NASA says it can't afford either option for the time being. 

"The decision of the agency is we just can't do anything about it right now," Lindley Johnson, program scientist for near-Earth object observations at NASA Headquarters, told The Associated Press.

The Venus-orbit telescope may sound expensive (with a price tag in the range of $1 billion to $1.2 billion, compared with $800 million to $1 billion for the ground-based facility), but Schweickart said he'd put a "very big plus sign" on that option. Yeomans noted that a similar mission called NEOCam had been proposed in the past, with the L1 gravitational balance point between Earth and the sun serving as the telescope's vantage point.

"If what you're interested in is just the letter of the law, then there are a number of options," Schweickart said. "But if what you're really interested in is being prepared to deal with the threat, then that infrared telescope in Venus orbit is much more valuable - because without it, you're relegated to looking at things from the surface of the Earth. And it's very difficult to pick up things that are largely inside Earth's orbit."

For example, the asteroid Apophis spends nearly all its time inside Earth's orbit, and that location is what's making it hard for astronomers to figure out whether or not it will hit Earth in 2036. Yeomans said that, for now, the odds of collision are still set at 1 in 45,000 - but that may change once additional analysis from the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy is added to the mix.

Astronomer Dave Tholen is reportedly still working on the analysis, which should become available soon. "He's so good that it's well worth waiting for," Yeomans said.

Will Apophis be crossed off the list of threatening asteroids? Or will we have to wait until 2013 to get the final answer? Stay tuned, and keep an eye on NASA's list of cosmic threats.

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NASA / ESA / Univ. of Ariz.

These images from the Hubble Space Telescope, showing Titan and its shadow passing over Saturn's disk, were taken in 1995 and processed to produce a movie. Click on the image to watch three videos narrated by MSNBC's Alan Boyle.

The Hubble Space Telescope isn't exactly a movie camera - but just add a little special-effects software, and you can turn Hubble's still images of Saturn into some pretty cool mini-documentaries. Three movie clips released today show Saturnian moons zipping around the ringed planet in scenes that rival the chariot race from "Ben-Hur."

We see two sides of Saturn in this trilogy: The first couple of clips date back to 1995, when the planet's rings were last seen edge-on from Earth. These views highlight the racetrack moons, starting out with Titan (and its shadow) passing over the planet's pastel-colored disk. Another moon, Tethys, appears as a white speck on the backstretch. The second clip shows Enceladus neck-and-neck with Dione and Mimas, passing in front of Saturn, with Tethys passing behind.

The third clip fast-forwards to 2003, when the rings were at their maximum tilt as seen from Earth. This perspective gave astronomers their best view of Saturn's southern hemisphere, with banded cloud patterns spinning around the globe at a rate of one revolution every 10 hours. Centralized storms show up as blue and white dots on the disk.

Because Saturn orbits the sun every 30 years, these extreme edge-on and ring-tilted perspectives are visible only every 15 years. In each case, Hubble snapped only about a dozen time-lapse photos of the planet and its moons, over periods ranging from 10 hours (for the edge-on views) to 24 hours (for the ring-tilted view).

As explained in today's image advisory, the telescope's science team fed those images into a computer program that filled in the missing frames to produce the smooth-running, sped-up movies.

Any good movie should leave you hungry for more - and fortunately, Saturn has a rich filmography. For example, there's "The Perfect Storm," a time-lapse view of a hurricane at the planet's south pole. More recently, the Cassini imaging team put together a highlights reel that includes short clips as well as "feature films." One of the classics, titled "The Great Crossing," was released just this month.

If it's photos you're looking for, we have a few slide shows that should fill the bill, including the greatest hits from Hubble, Saturn and the Cassini orbiter. And for the latest on Hubble and Saturn, you should keep tabs on HubbleSite for the former, and NASA's Saturn home page for the latter.

Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos, has gotten clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration for another test launch in Texas sometime between Thursday and next Tuesday. (Thanks to Clark Lindsey's RLV and Space Transport News for the pointer.) The venture's first up-and-down test of the Goddard prototype rocketship made a huge splash back in November, but the second test opportunity apparently ended up going nowhere. In the past, Blue Origin has revealed the results of its tests on its own timetable, so we may not hear much about how this upcoming test turns out. But we'll keep our ear to the ground anyway - and feel free to pass along anything you hear.

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NASA / ASU / USGS

This series of pictures shows seven proposed cave skylights. Clockwise from upper left are Dena, Chloe, Wendy, Annie, Abbey and Nikki, and Jeanne. Arrows signify direction of solar illumination (I) and north (N).

Researchers say pictures from a Mars orbiter show holes the size of football fields that may be the entrances to subterranean caverns. If the claims prove to be true, such caves would be prime targets in the search for extraterrestrial life and prime real estate for future human settlements.

The possibilities are raised in a research paper presented last week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas, an annual gathering of experts in fields ranging from moon exploration to asteroid detection and astrobiology. The research hasn't yet appeared in a peer-reviewed publication, but the presentation - highlighted in news reports from Nature and the BBC - has already created a buzz among the experts.

Martian caves have long been considered the best potential havens for life, since they would be sheltered from the harsh radiation hitting the surface, as well as wild temperature shifts and brutal dust storms. The researchers acknowledge in their paper that they're talking about something of more than academic interest:

"Besides general geological interest, there is a strong motivation to find and explore Martian caves to determine what advantages these structure may provide future explorers. Furthermore, Martian caves are of great interest for their biological possibilities because they may have provided habitat for past (or even current) life.

"Preserved evidence of past or present life on Mars might only be found in caves, and such a discovery would be of unparalleled biological significance. ..."

The big question: Are the things the researchers spotted on Mars really, truly caves?

The paper's authors - Glen Cushing, Timothy Titus and J. Judson Wynne of the U.S. Geological Survey, plus Phil Christensen of Arizona State University - base their claims on an analysis of pictures from the Thermal Emission Imaging System aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. The imager, also known as THEMIS, spotted seven weird-looking black features in an area on the flanks of the Arsia Mons volcano.

That area is prone to geological phenomena known as collapse pits, in which surface material falls into a depression or subsurface void that is generally created by seismic activity. Chains of such pits have been spotted on Mars many times before. But the researchers say these seven dark features are different, because they don't appear to have sunlit walls or floors. They say the features don't look like impact craters, because there aren't any raised rims or blast patterns. And they say that the way the black spots retain heat appears to rule out the idea that they're merely surface features of a different color.

Putting all this together, the research team concludes that the seven black spots are actually "skylights" - areas where the surface has collapsed to reveal a chamber below. But these are no bathroom-size skylights: The diameters range from 330 to 825 feet (100 to 252 meters), and the chambers below are estimated to be at least 240 feet (73 meters) deep.

The "seven sisters" have been given informal names: Dena, Chloe, Wendy, Annie, Abbey, Nikki and Jeanne.

The researchers admit that they can't determine whether the skylights are simply vertical shafts or the entrances to much larger subterranean caverns. But they did use readings from THEMIS to determine that one of them, Annie, stays warmer than the shadowed areas of nearby collapse pits during the Martian afternoon - and that it retains more heat during the night. They estimate that Annie's floor is at least 425 feet (130 meters) beneath the surface.

Such a setting would thrill any armchair Mars explorer. But when I asked Christensen about the study today, he was more circumspect - in part because it will require many more observations to determine the true nature of the seven sisters.

"Any sort of new observation is fun when you're thinking about what the nature of the caverns underneath could be," he told me. "Anything novel is always interesting. It forces you to think about new possibilities."

He said the first avenue for further observations could be provided by NASA's latest Red Planet probe, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The spacecraft's high-resolution camera could take a closer look at the seven sisters - including sidelong glances that might show whether the features open up into wider chambers beneath.

Ground-penetrating radar readings, sent back by instruments on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter or the European Space Agency's Mars Express, also might determine what lies beneath, Christensen said. But it's not yet clear whether the resolution would be good enough to produce a map of the caverns. And even if such a map can be made, that wouldn't resolve all the mysteries surrounding the seven sisters.

"I can't think of any great way to explore then other than to physically go down and explore them on the ground," Christensen said. That might require a human mission - or at least advanced robotic missions with "cliff-bots" capable of rappeling down into a hole in the ground.

Researchers have already been exploring caves on Earth with an eye toward such future missions on Mars.

"Anyplace on Mars where a hole exists - where you could get, who knows, 50 meters beneath the surface - is pretty interesting," Christensen said. "These caverns could have ice in them. They could have liquid water, who knows. I think that would be a very exciting mission.

"What you would find is anybody's guess," he said. "But that's what exploration is all about."

Update for 6 p.m. ET: Penny Boston, a biologist and self-described "born-again caver" at New Mexico Tech, says the latest report meshes well with what she's been studying over the past couple of decades. "I believe that we have been seeing what these guys have reported in many, many places on Mars - and we're building a catalog," she told me.

Boston said the types of features described last week are consistent with what geologists see in lava tubes on Earth. She said the idea that such tubes are present on Mars as well "might have been an exotic concept when we first started publishing about this a decade ago," but no more.

On Earth, the walls of collapsed lava tubes can hold deposits of permanent ice or even microbial communities. "The potential, we believe, for having collapsed lava tubes on Mars that are essentially time capsules makes them hot targets for future mission opportunities," Boston said.

The most interesting caves for Boston would be the ones that have been closed off rather than the ones that have been opened up. "They can contain things, and the fact that they have been sealed away from the ravages of the Martian surface environment makes them even more attractive," she said.

But she said the open caves would provide the best conditions for human settlements - and to her mind, the idea of building glass-bubble domes on the Martian surface is hopelessly out of date. "That's mostly ignorance on the part of the people doing the thinking," she said.

You can tell from all this that she's not an entirely disinterested observer. In fact, one of the researchers behind the latest study is a collaborator of hers on other projects.

"I'm excited about their results," she said. "It's a continuation of what we've been working toward, and I'm looking forward to collaborating with them in the future. ... On to Mars!"

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It's been more than five years since I took a DNA test to look for my Irish cousins, and the bad news that I'm still looking. But the good news is that my genetic quest has linked up people around the world who didn't know they were related.

Getty Images file

The secrets of your family heritage lie in the molecules of your DNA.

The genetic gambit represents my effort to break through what genealogists call "the brick wall" - the dead end you reach after you've digested all the records you can get your hands on.

Using the Internet as well as written records, I managed to track down all the branches of my Boyle family tree leading back to my great-grandfather, Michael Boyle, who came to Iowa from County Clare during the depths of the Irish potato famine. I even found a rare set of records proving the connection between Michael Boyle's wife, Ellen Howe, and the present-day Howe homestead in County Clare - which I first visited back in 1999.

I got to know so much about the Boyles in that area that I was certain genetic testing would confirm a family relationship - but when the results came back, I was surprised to find that the most likely candidates weren't at all closely related to me.

That was only the beginning of my sleuthing. Since then, I've taken an even more involved DNA test, offered through the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation. I've entered my profile into a variety of databases, such as the Genographic Project, Ybase, ySearch and Relative Genetics. I've even taken charge of my own Boyle surname project at Family Tree DNA, with 14 people tested so far. In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I'll be updating my own genetic genealogy database over the weekend.

One of the possible "cousins" I met during the first visit to Ireland, John Joe O'Boyle, passed away a couple of years afterward. But when I returned to Clare in 2003, I met his son, Kieran O'Boyle, and brought a DNA sample swabbed from his cheek home with me for testing. For good measure, I arranged yet another test for another Boyle who traced his family back to Clare - Noel Boyle, an Australian who became an occasional e-mail correspondent of mine.

Now I had two more chances to find a connection to my own family tree. I was also prepared to learn that there was no relationship at all.

There was yet another surprise in store, however: Neither Kieran nor Noel were related to me. But they were related to each other. Their genetic profiles were identical!

Although there's a teeny-tiny chance that two unrelated people with the same surname could have the same DNA markers, Noel himself confirmed the connection in a follow-up e-mail: "I did not know at the time that I had a connection, but when I checked further I found out his name. Kieran O'Boyle."

On the other side of the sea, Kieran had no idea that Noel existed until I called him in Ireland today - and he's looking forward to the contact information I'll be passing along this weekend.

But wait ... there's more: Both Noel and Kieran appear to be related to yet another mystery cousin in Michigan. James Boyle's genetic profile is identical to that of the other two, even though James was always under the impression that his Irish ancestors came from County Donegal, not County Clare.

James told me today that he's been working on his family tree off and on for years, tucking all the records away in a box. "That's my treasure box," he said. "Nobody's allowed to touch that box except for me." But nothing in the box was able to show a link to particular people living on the Emerald Isle. It took a DNA test to do that.

So far, that triple play is the only match I've turned up through the Boyle surname project, but it's a doozy. And as time goes on, more people are likely to get tested and add their results to the database. (There's yet another Boyle project under way at Relative Genetics, coordinated by Bonnie Boyle Harvey.)

Someday, I'm sure there'll be a perfect match for my genetic profile - and that could solve at least some of the riddles surrounding my family tree. Just as Internet databases helped me map all the connections leading to Michael Boyle in the mid-1800s, DNA databases will likely help me (or my descendants) write the earlier chapters in the family saga.

Obviously, you don't need to be Irish to benefit from genetic genealogy (though you could argue that everyone's Irish on St. Patrick's Day). Just this week, NBC's TODAY show highlighted the case of a black woman who expected to trace her lineage back to Africa, but discovered through DNA that she was also related to a white Missouri cowboy.

Genealogy is said to be the country's second most popular hobby, right behind gardening, and you can see that popularity in the numbers and varieties of Web sites out there: RootsWeb is a fantastic resource that pulls together many links and databases, and Cyndi's List offers a comprehensive directory of Web sites related to genetic testing and family history.

You can learn more about the science and history behind family trees by clicking into our "Genetic Genealogy" section here on MSNBC.com. If you're interested in the more traditional techniques for genealogical research, this archived article is a good place to start.

Do you have a family saga with a genetic twist? Feel free to tell your tale in the comments section below.

Insiders say California-based SpaceX is gearing up once again for a Falcon 1 rocket launch from its Pacific island pad, in the wake of a static-fire test on Thursday. The Pentagon-funded test mission could go up as early as Monday. However, SpaceX's millionaire founder, Elon Musk, has never been shy about calling off a launch if something doesn't look right - and the company says it's still reviewing a minor issue that turned up during the test.

SpaceX's plans are a good illustration of the saying "Once burned, twice shy." The Falcon 1's maiden launch ended in fiery failure a little more than a year ago, due to a corroded nut that caused a fuel leak. This time around, the rocket will be carrying experimental payloads as well as sensors designed to record how the Falcon flies.

If SpaceX is successful with the Falcon 1, the company could become a low-cost competitor to the aerospace giants. A trouble-free liftoff also would give SpaceX a boost in its longer-range efforts to develop a new spaceship for space station deliveries - and eventually move on to interplanetary flight.

Update for 1 p.m. ET March 19: The countdown is still on for 7 p.m. ET Monday, SpaceX reports. Here's the Sunday night update from Musk, as reported on the company's Web site:

"The flight readiness review conducted tonight shows all systems are go for a launch attempt at 4 p.m. California time (11 p.m. GMT) tomorrow (Monday). The webcast can be seen at www.spacex.com/webcast.php and will start at T-60 minutes. Please check back for updates, as the launch will be postponed if we have even the tiniest concern."

The launch window should last about four hours, and if there is a postponement, liftoff could still take place later this week.

Update for 7:59 p.m. ET March 19: As Alan Sheets notes below, the launch attempt was aborted with just a little more than a minute to go. Gwynne Shotwell, vice president for business development, said the problem apparently had to do with "range source telemetry" - either telemetry was not being sent back from the Pacific range, or mission control was not receiving some data that was needed. Once the dust settles, we'll have a story up in the space news section.