NASA

An artist's conception from 1971 shows an orbital fuel depot in action.

The panel reviewing NASA's long-range plans is giving a new boost to the old idea of setting up orbital fueling stations for spaceflight. If the space agency and the White House go down that route, it would mark a dramatic change in direction for future journeys beyond Earth orbit.

Some would say that's just what the nation's space effort needs.

The idea of setting up a permanent infrastructure for travel in deep space was floated on Thursday during a hearing in Cocoa Beach, Fla., conducted by the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee.

Panel members who have been focusing on future travel beyond Earth orbit spoke favorably of the fuel-depot idea, and it's likely to appear as one of the options in a final report that's due by the end of August. It will be up to NASA and the White House to decide which option to pursue and how much money to spend. (The current ballpark figure is $80 billion over 10 years.)

Basically, here's how a fuel-depot system would change the spaceflight situation:

Spaceships currently have to carry all the fuel they'd need for an entire trip at once. That was the case for the Apollo-Saturn missions of the 1960s and the space shuttle missions of the past 28 years.

If fuel depots were built in orbit, however, spaceships coming up from Earth's "gravity well" could fill 'er up and continue their journey with a full tank of gas (or, say, liquid oxygen and hydrogen). Alternatively, you could design a different sort of transfer vehicle, optimized for making the trip from one orbital spaceport to another rather than launching and landing. 

That would lighten the load for launch vehicles leaving Earth, since they wouldn't have to carry all the fuel for a long trip at once. And it might reduce the need to develop a new heavy-lift vehicle like the Ares V. You could get by instead with a smaller booster, launched empty and fueled up in orbit.

"It really is a game changer," Jeff Greason, chief executive officer of California-based XCOR Aerospace and a member of the review panel, was quoted as saying in a New York Times report on the hearing.

The idea has been floated before. As the Apollo program was winding down, planners at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama touched upon orbital fuel depots as a key piece of space infrastructure for deep-space flights. At the time, the space shuttle was little more than a twinkle in the space agency's eye.

"An orbital modular propellant storage depot, supplied periodically by the space shuttle or Earth-to-orbit fuel tankers, would be critical in making available large amounts of fuel to various orbital vehicles and spacecraft," NASA said in 1971. (The artwork above conceptualized how the system might look.)

NASA's space ambitions didn't pan out the way those planners planned. The cost of building the infrastructure for those deep-space trips was deemed too high, with too little payoff. As a result, no manned spacecraft has gone beyond Earth orbit since Apollo was shut down.

Five years ago, when President George W. Bush announced a new goal of returning to the moon by 2020, NASA turned to an "Apollo on steroids" approach that passed up orbital refueling. The plan did call for a maneuver that would link up moon-bound crews with their fueled-up transfer vehicles, however.

Now the Bush-era vision is being reviewed by Obama-era officials, and many of the previously laid plans are open for discussion again. Panel members laid out five scenarios for future trips beyond Earth orbit (which I previewed earlier this month):

• Lunar base: Basically the current return-to-the-moon plan, which calls for setting up a permanent base.
• Lunar global: No manned base, but a combination of quick visits to the moon ("sorties")  plus robotic missions.
• Moon to Mars: Lunar landings conducted primarily as rehearsals for Mars landings.
• Mars first: Just focus on eventual Mars landings, don't return to the moon.
• Flexible path: Start out by sending astronauts to platforms that are at stable points spread from Earth orbit to lunar orbit to Martian orbit (on Mars' moons, for example), plus near-Earth objects. Then send robots from those manned platforms to the surfaces of other worlds (down into the "gravity wells"). Don't send astronauts down onto the moon or Mars right off, but see how things go.

The last option sounds most conducive to the fuel-depot approach, and it also meshes best with the international space station's current role. In fact, Transterrestrial Musings' Rand Simberg suggests that using the space station as a fuel-depot test bed is such an attractive idea it might be worth the cost of changing the station's orbit.

Simberg also links to a host of other commentary about the panel hearing in general and the fuel-depot idea in particular. One of the best links goes to a white paper at Selenian Boondocks discussing how the concept could boost American industry and commercial space development. You'll find still more to sink your teeth into over at RLV and Space Transport News as well as the Space Coalition Blog.

For a skeptical view of the fuel-depot idea, check out Rob Coppinger's comments on the Hyperbola blog.

In addition to the "how" and "where" questions surrounding human spaceflight, the panel members took on the question of "why" - something we've talked about in the past. (You do remember the five E's, don't you?)

Here's how MIT aerospace professor Edward Crawley answered the "why" question during Thursday's hearing:

"Our ultimate objective should be viewed as the exploration and eventual extension of human civilization within the solar system. We have to keep our eye on the big prize. This will take a long time, but the time has come. The political alignment is here to allow this to be a goal for our nation, and it's a goal worthy of a great nation."

XCOR's Greason added a kicker to that comment, according to Irene Klotz's account for Discovery.com: "I know this sounds terribly ambitious and dramatic, but if that is not the point of human spaceflight … then what the hell are we doing?" Greason asked.

What the heck should we be doing in space? I'm going to be a bit out of the loop this weekend, discussing this subject and many others at the SpoCon science-fiction convention in Spokane - but if you leave a comment below, I'll try to add it to the mix as soon as I get a chance.

Mike Solontoi / Univ. of Washington

A long-period comet called 2001 RX14 (Linear) streaks across the sky in an image captured in 2002 by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey's telescope in New Mexico.

The black eye that Jupiter suffered this month has sparked a host of questions for astronomers as well as for the rest of us: What exactly hit the giant planet, and why didn't we see it coming? Why is Jupiter's bruise expanding? How often do these things happen, and how vulnerable are we to a similar cosmic pummeling? Astronomers are closing in on the answers - and helping the public get a better sense of perspective.

The first question is a toughie: What was it that caused Jupiter's "Great Black Spot," which was first noticed by an amateur astronomer in Australia back on July 19? "I'm not sure we'll ever know precisely," said Glenn Orton, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who is a member of the team studying the impact and its aftermath.

Orton addressed the "whatdunit" mystery on JPL's Weblog and expanded upon the subject in a phone interview. The best guess is that the impactor was a comet that measured perhaps a quarter of a mile (half a kilometer) wide. Why a comet and not an asteroid? "Almost everything in that part of the solar system is icy," Orton noted.

A comet that small might not have been noticed from Earth, particularly if it came directly at Jupiter from the outer reaches of the solar system, essentially hitting the giant planet from behind. That would explain why any observers who were watching Jupiter at the time missed seeing the impact.

"The impact almost certainly appeared on the far side in the preceding 10 hours," Orton said.

By the time the impact area came into view, all observers could see was a darkish cloud in Jupiter's dense atmosphere. You could call it a scar, or a bruise, or a black eye. On the Unmanned Spaceflight Web forum, some folks have used the term "astrobleme" - coming from the Greek words for "star wound."

H. Hammel (STScI) / NASA / ESA / Jupiter Impact Team The black-and-white picture at left provides a wide-angle view of Jupiter. The white box outline shows the area taken in by the color picture at right.

Over the past week, the wound has widened, and Orton said that's due to wind shear at different cloud levels. "The upper part of the scar is moving westward, and the lower part is moving eastward," he told me.

As time goes on, astronomers can use those darkish particles to trace the flow in Jupiter's atmosphere. That's something they couldn't do nearly as well 15 years ago when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke up into scads of pieces and smashed into Jupiter. The multiplicity of impacts made it difficult to figure out which material was going where. In the current case, there appears to have been just one piece, which makes the tracing job much easier.

In weeks to come, astronomers will be analyzing the chemical composition of the material left behind by the cosmic smackdown, the composition of the material dredged up from the depths of Jupiter's atmosphere, and the way all that material diffuses into the clouds.

That means Orton and his colleagues are in for a hectic few weeks. "My days and nights are filled with asking for telescope time, and pulling data down from telescopes," he said.

Virtually every day, astronomers have been posting pictures of Jupiter and its Black Spot on forums such as Unmanned Spaceflight, the Planetary Virtual Observatory and Laboratory, ALPO and ALPO-Japan.

Could it happen here?
Meanwhile, the impact has led many to wonder about the chances that something similar might hit Earth instead. Fortunately, Jupiter is so much larger than our own planet that it acts as a gravitational attractor for cosmic debris. That makes Jupiter "our friendly big brother," Orton said.

It so happens that research newly published by the journal Science provides more data on the likelihood of killer comets - specifically, the chance that a shower of long-period comets might be pushed toward Earth.

The bad news is that computer simulations indicate such a comet shower is indeed possible. The good news is that the same simulations suggest Earth should experience a comet shower only once every 500 million years.

Long-period comets are among the wild cards in a thick deck of cosmic threats. In contrast with short-period comets, such as Comet Halley and Comet Tempel-Tuttle, long-period comets trace insanely eccentric orbits that range out beyond Neptune, Pluto and the Kuiper Belt to a little-understood region on the solar system's edge known as the Oort Cloud. The best-known example is Comet Hale-Bopp (which pays us a visit every 4,200 years).

University of Washington researchers Nathan Kaib and Thomas Quinn ran computer simulations of solar system interactions to see how long-period comets could be knocked loose from the inner Oort Cloud, a region that spans the zone between 1,000 and 20,000 AU away from the sun. (One AU, or Astronomical Unit, is equivalent to the distance between Earth and the sun - that is, 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers).

The outer Oort Cloud goes from 20,000 AU to as much as 100,000 AU, or nearly halfway out to the next star. Astronomers have long believed that comets could be jarred loose from the outer Oort Cloud by a passing star. But some of them thought the solar system was structured such that comets came only rarely from the inner Oort Cloud, in deadly bursts.

In the Science research, published online today, Kaib and Quinn report that comets from the inner Oort Cloud can indeed "penetrate Jupiter's orbit via a largely unexplored pathway" and are a "significant, if not the dominant, source" of long-period comets.

That might sound like bad news. The UW researchers see it differently, however: They say the simulations actually suggest there are fewer comets in the entire Oort Cloud, inner plus outer, than astronomers previously thought. Demystifying the inner Oort Cloud has the effect of making the whole region seem somewhat less dangerous.

"For the past 25 years, the inner Oort Cloud has been considered a mysterious, unobserved region of the solar system capable of providing bursts of bodies that occasionally wipe out life on Earth," Quinn said in a UW news release. "We have shown that comets already discovered can actually be used to estimate an upper limit on the number of bodies in this reservoir."

Back to the Black Spot
The simulations indicate that Jupiter and Saturn should be able to catch most of the long-period comets coming our way, like goalies catching soccer balls. Even in the worst-case scenario, only about two or three big comets would slip through and hit Earth, the researchers said.

Kaib and Quinn go so far as to suggest that the only time this happened in the past half-billion years or so was during a minor extinction event in the late Eocene geologic period, 33 million to 40 million years ago. It's thought that the late Eocene was marked by cometary impacts in present-day Chesapeake Bay and Siberia.

"If the late Eocene episode was caused by a comet shower, it was likely the most powerful shower since the Cambrian Explosion, implying that comet showers are unlikely to account for other observed extinction events," the researchers wrote.

The calculations published in Science make the specter of killer comet storms look a little less threatening. It's important to remember, however, that Kaib and Quinn are talking purely in terms of statistical analysis. The case of Jupiter's Great Black Spot illustrates that statistics can take you only so far.

Fifteen years ago, astronomers said Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's collision with Jupiter was an exceedingly rare occurrence. Now we know that's not necessarily so. "The 1-in-a million chance of seeing one of these per century is clearly off," JPL's Orton said.

For years, JPL has been keeping track of potential cosmic threats as part of its Near-Earth Object Observation Program. Now the subject has spawned a brand-new Web site titled Asteroid Watch, which offers blog entries and a Twitter link as well as an asteroid widget. I suspect the Great Black Spot had something to do with all this.

For even more perspective, check out our "Close Encounters of the Asteroid Kind" interactive, and conduct your own search for asteroids and comets on msnbc.com.

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Francois Xavier Marit / AFP - Getty Images

Germany's Paul Biedermann edges out American Michael Phelps in the men's 200-meter freestyle final on Tuesday at the FINA World Swimming Championships in Rome. The outcome added to a yearlong controversy over swimsuits.

This month's crackdown on slick swimsuits marks a rare retreat in the technological arms race (and legs race) that has dominated international sports - but it doesn't mean the multimillion-dollar quest for a high-tech edge is over.

"We've already started to think about what kinds of things we'll be doing for 2012," said Rick Sharp, an exercise physiologist at Iowa State University who has played a key role in the swimsuit wars. Then he added with a chuckle, "I can't tell you what those are."

Sharp was part of an outside team of experts - also including NASA engineer Stephen Wilkinson - who helped Speedo develop its full-body LZR Racer ("laser racer") swimsuit for last year's Beijing Olympics. Swimmers wearing the bodysuit (including Olympic superstar Michael Phelps) broke records galore, and that led competitors to ask angrily whether using the suit amounted to "technological doping."

Swimsuit tech has been making headlines for almost 10 years, starting with the "Fastskin" suits introduced by Speedo for the 2000 Olympics. The idea was that the suits' V-shaped ridges, modeled after shark scales, would cut down on drag and let the swimmer slide faster through the water.

Sharp's specialty is testing the claims for improvements in sports performance. For instance, did shaving body hair have a measurable effect on a swimmer's performance? (Yes, it did.) OK, so did wearing that sharkskin suit have a measurable effect? (Um, no, not really.)

"Because of that work, yeah, Speedo came to me and asked me to help with research and development," Sharp told me on Tuesday.

With an assist from Sharp and his colleagues, Speedo tested a variety of drag-reducing designs and fabrics to come up with a suit that would have a measurable effect. "Basically, it's a matter of having a garment on that will reduce the water resistance as much as possible," Sharp explained.

Part of the challenge is the kind of material you use, and where you use it. The Speedo team came up with a design that put panels of polyurethane over parts of the body that produce the highest drag. Another part is the suit design: You don't want a suit that traps water as it flows around the swimmer. Yet another innovation is to use material that squeezes and slims down swimmers "so the skin doesn't wobble around as they go through the water," Sharp said.

NBC News

Click for video: After Michael Phelps' defeat, TODAY hosts talk to sports broadcaster Rowdy Gaines about whether his swimsuit played a part.

Pieces of fabric were put through wind-tunnel tests to check for drag. Programmers used computational fluid dynamics to model the suits' aerodynamic qualities, as if they were trying to figure out how a brand-new jet will fly. Then, swimmers put the designs to real-world tests in tanks and pools.

The results at the Beijing Olympics were jaw-dropping: Twenty-three world records were broken by the swimmers who wore LZR Racer suits, compared with only two that were broken by the swimmers who didn't. Speedo said 89 percent of all the medals in swimming (including 94 percent of the gold medals) were won by LZR Racer swimmers.

First came the complaints. Then came the escalation: Italian swimsuit makers Arena and Jaked both came out with suits that one-upped the Speedo by using pure polyurethane. "It was relatively obvious to some companies to say, 'Well, let's just make the whole suit out of this stuff,'" Sharp said.

World records once again started dropping like cannonballs off the high-dive. And that only deepened suspicions that pockets of air were somehow being trapped between the polyurethane and the swimmers' skin. If that were the case, the added buoyancy would give those swimmers an unfair advantage.

That's just the kind of issue scientists might be able to settle, but Sharp said he's not aware of any data on the buoyancy question. "This has only been around since about June, so there hasn't been any time for studies to be done," he told me.

He's pretty sure, however, that buoyancy wasn't as much of an issue with the Speedo suits. "We didn't make the whole suit out of polyurethane, we just used patches in a sense," he said. "Some of the new suits ... are completely impermeable to water."

Last week, the governing body for international swimming, known as FINA, decided to ban full-body suits and set stricter standards for their composition. Polyurethane is out. The suits will have to be made exclusively from textiles.

There's another catch, however: FINA's new rules won't go into effect until as late as next spring, which implies that the super-slick, Speedo-beating suits will continue to be worn and records will continue to be broken.

Tony Gentile / Reuters

Germany's Paul Biedermann celebrates in his Arena X-Glide bodysuit after setting a world record in the men's 200-meter freestyle.

On Tuesday, the situation came to a head when Michael Phelps (wearing a Speedo) came in second to Germany's Paul Biedermann (wearing an Arena X-Glide). The unexpected defeat led Phelps' coach to declare that the world's best-known swimmer probably won't swim in international competitions until the rules change.

"It has to be implemented immediately," coach Bob Bowman said of the polyurethane ban. "The sport is in shambles right now, and they better do something or they're going to lose their guy who fills these seats."

Sharp agreed that the next few months could get rocky. "It's going to be a free-for-all until then," he told me. But then what? Will it be 1999 all over again?

Sharp is certain that the swimwear manufacturers won't just dust off their old designs. "I know they're thinking and talking, and maybe hypothetically designing as we speak," he said.

Speedo has said developing the LZR Racer suit cost several million dollars, and there's no reason to think that kind of spending will stop just because the development effort has to go in a new direction. There's also no reason to think that the $550 price tag for an Olympic-ready swimsuit will be trimmed back as much as the bodysuit itself. You can bet that the shorter swimsuits dreamed up for the London Olympics in 2012 will be touted as the latest and the greatest, as well as street-legal.

The gears inside Sharp's head are already turning.

"I don't think we've exhausted all the possibilities in thread-based materials," he said. "They can still work more on fit, making sure something isn't scooping water and acting as a parachute as they go through the water. But all these things will be within limits, and I think that's progress."

FINA officials will likely be working along with swimsuit manufacturers to make sure the revised rules leave room for new high-tech twists.

"They don't want to stifle innovation completely, but at the same time they don't want to have equipment that enhances performance beyond what the swimmer's natural ability is," Sharp said. "We maybe won't 'enhance' their performance, but we can impair it less."

Then Sharp lets loose with that chuckle again. "You might call that spin doctoring," he said.

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Odyssey Moon via X Prize

This artist's conception shows Odyssey Moon's lunar lander touching down.

Forty years ago, moon landings were exclusively the province of superpowers - but today, commercial ventures are trying to turn lunar missions into profitable businesses. Do such dreams represent one small step for high-tech entrepreneurship, or do they require an overly giant leap of faith?

Ramin Khadem, a veteran of the telecom satellite industry, thinks there's definitely money to be made on the moon. That's not surprising: As chairman of Odyssey Moon Limited, he's in charge of one of the ventures planning to deliver commercial payloads to the moon - not 40 years from now, but sometime in the next five years.

"The moon is almost like an eighth continent," Khadem told me. "It's within the planet Earth's own economic sphere ... Our approach has been to explore this eighth continent. Just as explorers went to the new world and found all sorts of great things, we think there are opportunities there."

The only problem is, we've known for the past 40 years that the "eighth continent" is within reach - but nothing has come of it. In fact, "Right Stuff" novelist Tom Wolfe argued around the time of this month's Apollo 11 anniversary that the fate of lunar travel was sealed once the moon race was won.

Today's NASA would never take the risks that NASA did in 1968 and 1969 by sending astronauts on just-barely-tested spacecraft to the moon - primarily because there's no longer any Cold War-scale reason to do so. Nothing has been done on the moon's surface, by humans or by robots, since 1972 (except for crashing).

So why should the economic equation be any different five years from now?

'The next stage'?
Khadem, who once served as chief financial officer for the Inmarsat telecom consortium, is feeling as if it could be deja vu all over again.

"I've been in the satellite business for many years," he said. "If you look back 40 years or so, the satellite business was in its infancy. Now, we've got a huge business at 34,000 kilometers in space - a multibillion-dollar business which is actually a huge benefit to mankind."

The benefits of the commercial satellite revolution - ranging from better weather forecasts to globe-girdling communication links - came "as the result of some risk taking" in Earth orbit, Khadem said.

"We think the moon itself is the next stage," he said.

Like 18 other teams, Odyssey Moon is working to put a rover on the moon by 2014 to win a big piece of the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize. But the venture is also lining up customers for lunar delivery services as well.

"We've got a number of customers already," Khadem said. "When we last put out an RFI (request for information), we got 27 responses, and there are a number of responses that are still outstanding."

Khadem estimated that Odyssey Moon had enough payload potential to fill up its first launch. "We can fill up the second launch as well, and we've only scratched the surface," he said.

If all those plans come to fruition, the prospects for profits are good. That's a big "if," however. Khadem said he recognized that rocket science is an inherently risky business. "The model that we know in the satellite business and telecom can be applied here," he said.

Just this month, Odyssey Moon announced that it was bringing a "dream team" of corporate partners into its venture, including banking specialists (Near Earth LLC), marketers (The Brand Union / WPP), insurance experts (Aon) and lawyers (Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy).

Odyssey Moon is working as well with other partners that have experience in the spacecraft business, such as NASA's Ames Research Center (which is developing the lunar lander); prime contractor MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (the Canadian company behind the robotic arms on the space shuttles and the international space station); and Paragon Space Development (which is working on the lander and its thermal control system as well as a mini-greenhouse for the moon).

The moon market
Who are the customers? Khadem won't go much beyond generalities. "Our main business is simply carrying payload for customers, whoever they may be, and obviously for peaceful purposes of all kinds," he said.

A study conducted by Futron Corp. for the X Prize Foundation estimated that the 19 teams chasing the Google Lunar X Prize could serve a market of $1 billion or more in the next decade.

"We examined a wide range of markets that teams could address, both those that exist today and those that could be enabled by low-cost commercial lunar exploration," Futron senior analyst Jeff Foust was quoted as saying. "If one or more teams are able to win this prize competition, they will be able to serve markets potentially far larger than the prize purse."

For now, the primary payoff would come in the form of technology and scientific data: How will a gizmo designed for NASA's future moon missions actually work in the lunar environment? How much more can be learned about the moon's makeup, or about potential lunar resources? What kinds of observations can be made from the moon?

"Associated with this business there will be marketing and advertising," Khadem said. That could take the form of corporate logos plastered on the spacecraft. More ambitious schemes might call for setting up an exclusive video feed from the moon, for use in TV shows, movies or video games. You could let tourists take a spin around the lunar landscape via virtual reality. One company even says it will use a specially tracked rover to trace out advertising messages in moondirt (although the current launch prospects are uncertain).

If samples could be returned from the moon, that could open up yet another type of market. Apollo-vintage moondust and moon rocks are valuable commodities on Earth, strictly controlled by NASA, and even meteorites from the moon can sell for six figures, lunar scientist Paul Spudis noted last week on his "Once and Future Moon" blog.

Looking ahead
In the longer run, lunar operations could conceivably supply an outpost with raw materials ranging from solar power, drinkable water and breathable oxygen to building materials, as outlined in an essay written by Spudis and two other moon-watchers. And in the even longer run, some people suggest the moon could yield beamed energy or fusion fuel.

All this eventually gets back to the original question: If there are profit possibilities on the moon, why have they been neglected for all this time?

The biggest missing piece in the commercial moon puzzle is having a reliable, affordable launch vehicle that can reach the lunar surface. That challenge is something that the Google Lunar X Prize could well address.

California-based SpaceX, for example, is offering a 10 percent discount on launch costs for X Prize launches to the moon - a factor that the X Prize Foundation took into account when the rules for the challenge were written. "We tried to write it so that it was just barely winnable on a Falcon 1," said Will Pomerantz, the foundation's senior director for space prizes.

At least one X Prize competitor, Romania's ARCA team, is developing its own rocket for a future moon mission. The Helen launch vehicle, which is designed for launch from a high-altitude balloon platform, is due to be tested in August or September.

In their essay, Spudis and his colleagues argue that small steps leading to lunar settlement - including new breeds of reusable launch vehicles, new processes to take advantage of resources on the moon and new opportunities for private enterprise - could succeed where another Apollo-style giant leap just might fail:

"It is clear to us is that we are neither doing the right things in space nor are we are doing things right. Frankly, we do not think that it is possible to do much worse. The United States spends more money on space through our government than all other governments put together and we get less results on a dollar for dollar basis. Day by day more bad news about slipped schedules, enormous cost overruns, and lost capabilities make it into the news. It is beyond time to change the way that we conduct spaceflight, and if we choose to make this spaceport/settlement a reality, we will completely transform our aerospace industrial system. This rearrangement will save taxpayers billions of dollars while increasing our operational capabilities."

What do you think? Will commercial robots be on hand to greet the first astronauts returning to the moon, or will moon missions remain the exclusive domain of government space programs for the foreseeable future? Feel free to add your comments below.

More about the Apollo 11 anniversary:

• Your moonshot memories
• Next giant leap reconsidered
• Moonwalk video gets a makeover
• Apollo 11: Where are they now?
• Where were you when Apollo flew?
• On the Web: Moonshots on your computer
• On screen: Apollo on rewind
• In print: Apollo in sharper focus
• More space history on msnbc.com

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. If you really want to be friendly, ask me about my upcoming book, "The Case for Pluto."  You can pre-order it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders.

Carolin Cardamone and Sloan Digital Sky Survey

A "Green Pea" galaxy, at left, isn't like the typical galaxy at right.

Galaxy Zoo's legions of mouse-clicking citizen astronomers have chalked up another discovery: "Green Pea" galaxies that look more like garden vegetables than the traditional spiral galaxies we all know and love. Read more about the research, to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, in this announcement from Yale University posted to the EurekAlert Web site.

I'm out of the office today, putting the finishing touches on "The Case for Pluto" and dealing with other matters, but here's more must-see science to peruse while I'm semi-gone:

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H. Hammel (SSI) / NASA / ESA / Jupiter Impact Team

The Hubble Space Telescope's brand-new Wide Field Camera 3 took this picture of the expanding black spot on Jupiter on Thursday.

Even though it's in the middle of a post-makeover checkout, the Hubble Space Telescope was turned toward Jupiter this week to capture a picture of the bruise left behind by a comet or asteroid - and it's a real beaut of a shiner.

Hubble's view, captured by its brand-new Wide Field Camera 3 on Thursday, is the sharpest visible-light image of the impact site, which was first seen by Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley on Sunday and has been changing day by day. The picture also represents Hubble's first science observation since it was upgraded during May's final servicing mission by the space shuttle Atlantis' crew.

"This is just one example of what Hubble's new, state-of-the-art camera can do, thanks to the STS-125 astronauts and the entire Hubble team," Ed Weiler, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in an image advisory released today. "However, the best is yet to come!"

The team behind the observations was led by Space Science Institute astronomer Heidi Hammel. In the advisory, Hammel said the imagery "has revealed an astonishing wealth of data" about the impact site.

"By combining these images with our ground-based data at other wavelengths, our Hubble data will allow a comprehensive understanding of exactly what is happening to the impact debris," she said. Hammel was also part of a team that made mid-infrared observations of the Great Black Spot earlier in the week, using the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii.

I. de Pater (Berkeley) / H. Hammel (SSI) / T. Rector (U. of AK-Anchorage) / Gemini Obs. This mid-infrared image of the impact site on Jupiter was captured by the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. The yellow arrow points to the "bruise."

Astronomers don't yet know what caused the impact, but it was almost certainly a comet or asteroid. The bruise left behind looks strikingly like the scars created 15 years earlier by Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's famous smash-up in Jupiter's atmosphere.

Amy Simon-Miller of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center noted that the plume of dark debris emanating from the impact area is lumpy, due to turbulence in Jupiter's atmosphere.

The Great Black Spot is currently about 6,000 miles wide, or twice as wide as the European continent. (This picture provides a length scale). Simon-Miller told me that the object causing the bruise was probably a couple of hundred meters (yards) wide - not as big as the biggest fragment from Shoemaker-Levy 9, but still pretty big. The Hubble team says the force of the explosion was thousands of times more powerful than the Tunguska impact, which devastated 500,000 acres of Siberian forest land in 1908.

One big question about the impact is: Why didn't we see this coming? What does this say about our ability to detect potential killer asteroids or comets before they hit Earth?

NASA and other agencies are spending millions of dollars to find and track thousands of near-Earth objects (including potentially hazardous asteroids). Less attention is being devoted to tracking the thousands of near-Jupiter objects (including Trojan asteroids).

Professional and amateur astronomers keep a close watch for asteroids or comets that wander into our celestial neighborhood, but they can't see everything at a distance. Some of the smaller asteroids pass right by us before they're spotted. "The reality is, if something is really dark, it's going to be hard to see," Simon-Miller said.

The good news is that Jupiter acts as something of a gravitational vacuum cleaner, sucking in deep-space impacts that might otherwise whack Earth. The bad news is that much more needs to be done to detect potentially harmful space rocks, and draw up a plan to protect our planet when (not if) we find one. In that sense, Jupiter's black eye serves as a warning that we better put up our dukes.

In addition to Hammel and Simon-Miller, the Jupiter Impact Team includes Keith Noll and Michael Wong of the Space Telescope Science Institute, John Clarke of Boston University, Imke de Pater of the University of California at Berkeley, Glenn Orton of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Agustin Sanchez-Lavega of the University of the Basque Country in Spain. Discretionary time for the Hubble observations was allocated by STScI director Matt Mountain.

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Duane Hoffmann / msnbc.com

Open-source communities may suffer from "an overabundance of connections," an information policy researcher suggests in the journal Science.

Are geeks guilty of groupthink? A network expert argues that less social networking would produce more radical innovation on the Internet.

"An overabundance of connections over which information can travel too cheaply can reduce diversity, foster groupthink, and keep radical ideas from taking hold," Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, director of the Information + Innovation Policy Research Center at the National University of Singapore, writes in this week's issue of the journal Science.

That may be one of the reasons why much of the open-source software currently being produced is rarely altered in anything more than an incremental manner, Mayer-Schönberger says.

"The basic point that I'm trying to make is ... how do we get to the next stage of the Internet, the new-generation Internet, the radical innovation, rather than another dot release on the Firefox browser?" he told me today.

Mayer-Schönberger is focusing on the open-source software community because the perils of groupthink are well-known in the commercial world. Once a complicated piece of software catches hold in the market, there's often a "lock-in effect" that freezes out radical changes in that software.

"Every radical change gives the users the opportunity to make a switch to a potential competitor's product, and as a vendor, you don't like that - except if you're Apple," Mayer-Schönberger said. (Apple can rely on a dedicated following that will be quick to adopt radical innovations, such as the iPhone, he explained.) 

Open-source software - like the Firefox Web browser, for example, or the Linux operating system - can be freely modified and redistributed by anyone, which would seem to encourage innovation. But Mayer-Schönberger invokes network theory to contend that the open-source community is so interconnected, using the very tools they helped develop, that fresh ideas don't have as much time to develop before they're assimilated (or disposed of) by fellow programmers.

Companies such as Apple, Google, IBM and Microsoft (which is a partner in the msnbc.com joint venture) get around the groupthink trap by creating incubators for research and innovation, modeled after Lockheed Martin's storied "Skunk Works." The key is to have limited linkages between the idea incubators and the larger enterprise, Mayer-Schönberger said.

The payoffs from the innovations that are allowed to hatch outweigh the costs of maintaining the incubators. Mayer-Schönberger said examples of such payoffs range from the original IBM PC and Apple Macintosh to the atom bomb (which was created through a government-funded incubator known as the Manhattan Project).

When there's no incentive for developing unorthodox products or services, and when the network in charge of creating the main product remains highly interconnected, the lock-in effect is more likely to take hold.

The locked-in Internet ... and Facebook
"The most prominent example is not commercial software, but the Internet, or more precisely the protocols underlying this dominant network infrastructure," Mayer-Schönberger wrote in his Science policy paper. "It is too costly and risky for a commercial competitor to create and market a set of radically improved, but incompatible protocols. This is true for the peer-producing, open-source community as well."

Facebook's rise illustrates the pluses and minuses of open source, he told me. "By opening the API (application programming interface) they created a lot of room for experimentation," he said. "That sealed the fate of MySpace and pushed Facebook forward."

Today, there's an entire software ecosystem that relies on Facebook's open API (including Mafia Wars and "25 Random Things"), and that could lead to the lock-in effect. "Changing the API is much harder now because it has an ecosystem that lives off it," Mayer-Schönberger said. "So it's a double-edged sword, in a way."

There's a rule of thumb that says a network becomes more valuable as it adds more connections, but Mayer-Schönberger said that trend could bog down innovation. "It would be terrible if we reach a basically steady state in the open-source community where we have version 11.5.17 and we change to 11.5.18, and everyone thinks it's a step forward," he said.

The prescription for geek groupthink
So what is to be done? On one level, the National Science Foundation is already fostering a "Skunk Works" Internet by supporting next-generation network development programs known as NetSE and GENI.

Mayer-Schönberger said governments could go further by offering incentives for the creation of smaller, competing development teams. This would reduce "their connectedness to the thinking of the status quo through their social networks," he said. The idea sounds a little bit like an X Prize for information infrastructure.

Another strategy, aimed specifically at the open-source community, would be to break a big project into smaller components, and then let separate teams compete to deal with those components. "That is what propelled Firefox into the forefront," Mayer-Schönberger told me. "When they broke (the browser program) into small modules, then they had competitive open-source projects on all those subcomponents."

Mayer-Schönberger was reluctant to extend his analysis to individual behavior, but he said it might be worth your while to take a look at your own social networking. "Think hard about whether those 1,125 Facebook friends are really friends. Think about how many are hangers-on or chance encounters - and perhaps take them off," he said.

You can build diversity into your own social networking by keeping a division between the various aspects of your life - for example, by using LinkedIn for professional contacts and Facebook for personal contacts.

"We now tend to converge our personal and professional lives, and that's not necessarily a good idea," Mayer-Schönberger said. "Having multiple and slightly overlapping networks is better than having one large converged network."

Reality check
Does Mayer-Schönberger's view make sense? I asked one of the pioneers in network science, Northeastern University's Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, for a reality check. He told me the idea of reducing connectedness to encourage innovation was intriguing and provocative.

"I think many people sympathize with the idea that if you could start from scratch, you would have a much different Internet, and a better one," he said.

However, the reality is that the present-day Internet has so much critical mass that there'd have to be a radical reason for introducing radical change. Maybe a nuclear war. Maybe a totally new communication medium. In any case, it'd have to be something big, Barabasi said.

"If you were to ask me, I think we will be using this Internet for quite a while," Barabasi said. "If there will be a new Internet, it's not going to emerge from a private company, because the Internet is just too big for that. ... It may require serious social engineering to get away from the status quo."

10 years of network theory
In the same issue of Science, Barabasi traces the research that's been conducted into the nature of the Internet, the World Wide Web and other scale-free networks over the past 10 years. (That's how long I've been writing about Barabasi and his colleagues.)

"I think the big thing that has happened is that networks are everywhere now. ... They have pretty much invaded all fields of inquiry," Barabasi told me. Other articles in Science discuss how network theory has been applied to cellular biology, biodiversity, economics and social-ecological systems, how technologies (and diseases) spread, how to fight terrorists and how to get along.

The amazing thing is that researchers are finding strong parallels between the workings of the cell and the workings of the Web. "Because they ended up being so similar to each other, the results that were obtained by studying the World Wide Web could be transferred to the study of the cell," Barabasi said.

One of the questions surrounding the past decade of network theory may well be why scientists didn't notice even earlier how much different types of networks had in common. "In a way, the computer made it possible to get large enough data sets to see these features," Barabasi said. "It was the Internet that allowed biologists to share with each other so we actually had maps."

Today, network theory can be applied to a wide range of questions: How do we avoid geek groupthink? Who will be our future business competitors? How does the brain work? Why does Ashton Kutcher have so many Twitter followers? (I think the last question is the biggest mystery of all.)

"I could not imagine 10 years ago how big networks would become," Barabasi told me. "Which is probably a good thing."

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Galileoscope.org

The Galileoscope kit costs $15, plus shipping, and requires some assembly.

Low-cost Galileoscopes are making their way to buyers after months of buildup. So is the view worth the wait? The answer is "yes ... but."

The concept behind the Galileoscope is as noble as it gets: To commemorate the International Year of Astronomy and the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's groundbreaking telescopic observations, a few astronomers, engineers and educators decided to offer a good-quality telescope modeled after Galileo's design - only more powerful and priced at just $15.

Thanks to sponsorships, connections and a lot of volunteer labor, the project got off the ground in February (with a few online-ordering hiccups along the way). It took months for the plastic-and-glass telescope kits to be manufactured in China and then shipped around the world for distribution. As of today, 60,000 kits have been delivered and another 25,000 are en route, said Rick Fienberg, the chairman of the Galileoscope Task Group.

About 25,000 more kits are in production, in anticipation of further orders, "so we will have produced 110,000 and delivered them by the end of the summer," Fienberg told me today.

I just got my kit a couple of days ago and put it together within about 15 minutes. That's no small feat for me. I'm notorious for assembling home projects with parts upside-down or backwards, or taking out the wrong screwdriver for the job.

Fortunately, no tools are required to assemble the Galileoscope. The trickiest part was putting together the itty-bitty compound lenses for the telescope's eyepiece - a job that's probably more suited for a fine-fingered 10-year-old than a farsighted (and nearsighted) 54-year-old.

The kit comes with a one-sheet assembly guide, but the project's Web site offers a more detailed seven-page set of instructions that may save you some grief. You can also watch a YouTube video that shows you how the telescope is assembled.

The fact that there's something to put together actually adds to the sense of accomplishment you feel once you've snapped the eyepiece together and attached the final plastic rings.

Then it's time to look through the eyepiece. And here's where the "buts" enter the picture.

Steadying the Galileoscope
I was warned in advance that you need a mount to steady the telescope, and now I can testify to that firsthand. Sure, you can catch an upside-down glimpse of distant landscapes just by using the Galileoscope like a spyglass. But without a mount, the 25x magnification makes everything you see look as if it's shaking in a magnitude-10 earthquake. Viewing astronomical objects, or sharing your view with a friend, is pretty much out of the question.

The down side is that the mount could more than double the $15 price tag if you have to go out and buy one. The up side is that the telescope should fit virtually any proper tripod or camera mount you have sitting around.

Another tricky part has to do with the telescope's focusing barrel. Because the barrel is just one tube of plastic inside another tube, fine-tuning the focus isn't always a smooth operation. It helps if you use a screwing motion to pull or push the barrel into the right position. 

The Galileoscope is made for looking at the moon, Jupiter and Saturn. Because the moon is in its new phase, and Saturn is low in the sunset sky, Jupiter loomed as the prime target for my late-night viewing test. At the standard 25x magnification, peering through the light-polluted summer skies of a Seattle suburb, I could see that Jupiter was a disk but saw absolutely no detail. I tried to steady the scope on a car roof, but the picture still jumped around. I could just barely make out the suggestions of Jupiter's four biggest moons.

The kit includes a make-it-yourself Barlow lens that basically doubles the telescope's power to 50x - but at that power the unmounted telescope is too shaky to be usable. (You can also use the Barlow lens' optics to create a 17x view that simulates what Galileo was able to see 400 years ago.) 

Cheap vs. costly
All this led me to lug my 8-inch Dobsonian telescope out of the garage for a better look - and once I had the mount lined up, I could clearly see the bands of clouds on Jupiter and the pinpoints of its moons (but no comet blast, unfortunately). A $330 telescope gave me a better view than a $15 telescope. Who would have thought it!

Now that I've scrounged up a mount and tripod for the Galileoscope, I can see more clearly - not only when it comes to looking at the sky, but also when it comes to understanding how the low-cost scope fits into the stargazing spectrum.

"It's a fantastic, inexpensive starter scope," said Scott Kardel, public affairs coordinator at California's Palomar Observatory. "People are pretty overwhelmed, actually."

The observatory has ordered boxes and boxes of the telescopes, and Kardel said they're being given away to some of the students who visit Palomar. Once the telescope is hooked up to a mount, it's a perfect way for beginners to familiarize themselves with the moon, the planets, the Milky Way and other wonders of the night sky.

As summer turns to fall and winter, the Pleiades star cluster and the Orion Nebula should loom as popular targets, Kardel said. The Galileoscope team has prepared a 20-page observing guide that helps you use the telescope to best advantage in any season.

A good-quality telescope, designed by professionals who don't care about making a profit, with the full support of the astronomical community? Kardel thinks $15 for all that is a great deal. "Compare that to the cost of any video game, right?" he asked.

Kardel noted that the $15 price point is within the range of most household budgets. "You then have an opportunity to see if this is a real interest for somebody or not," he said. If it's a dud, then you can put the darn thing up for sale, or donate it to your local school. But if the telescope stirs a passion for stargazing, then you can start looking through the telescope buying guides.

As I mentioned above, the Galileoscope is still available for online ordering - but once the 25,000 kits in production are all spoken for, the team behind the project is "going to evaluate the future of the program," Fienberg told me today.

If production is restarted, the price will almost certainly rise, he said, and the operation might have to be put on a more commercial footing. Fienberg said the small team that put together the project for the International Year of Astronomy is "neither interested in nor capable of carrying this thing into the future."

So if you're thinking of giving the Galileoscope a try, you might not want to wait until Christmas.

Update for 10:25 p.m. ET July 23: Stephen Pompea, manager of science education for the National Optical Astronomy Observatory and a leader of the Galileoscope effort, sent along an e-mail with more about the project's status:

"The light collecting area of Galileoscopes delivered to date and currently en route (85,000) exceeds the collecting area of the two Keck 10-meter telescopes in Hawaii. (167 square meters for the Galileoscopes versus 157 square meters for the two Keck telescopes).

"The 85,000 people looking through their Galileoscopes at the moon, Jupiter and Saturn will have stimulated their imaginations in the same way as the wonderful discoveries made with the world's largest telescopes that explore (in the words of astronomer Sandra Faber) 'the River of Time back toward its source.'"

In a phone call, Pompea told me that the project is starting to build up its own momentum: Some users are translating the assembly instructions into more languages, while others are trying to figure out whether they can use cell phones to take pictures of the sights seen through their Galileoscopes. And speaking of pictures, this Flickr photo site has been set up for the telescope's users. Stay tuned for further word about contests and other coming events.

Update for 12:50 a.m. ET July 27: I've taken the Galileoscope out with a proper mount and tripod since this item was originally posted, and the add-ons make a world of difference: You can indeed see the moons of Jupiter and craters on the moon (which is now visible in evening skies). I've gotten used to sighting my target with the 25x eyepiece, then switching the lenses to include the doubling Barlow lens for a 50x view.

Now the big drawback for me is the focusing tube: It's still a bit too sticky for my taste - but hey, I can live with that in a $15 telescope (plus mount and tripod). Once I have the tube set for the proper focus with the Barlow lens, I can leave it there when I turn to the next target (right now it's just Jupiter vs. the moon), sight the target out of focus with the 25x configuration, then pop the Barlow lens back in for a sharper look. Do you have any other observing tricks or suggestions? Feel free to add them below.

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CERN

A worker makes preparations for closing up one of the sectors in the Large Hadron Collider's underground tunnel.

The scheduled restart of the world's biggest particle accelerator has been delayed another few weeks, until mid-November, due to vacuum leaks in two sectors of the Large Hadron Collider's underground tunnel.

Word of the fresh delay came on Monday via the CERN Bulletin, which is published by Europe's particle-physics center. And if the past year is any guide, this may not be the last postponement.

CERN has been working on repairs to the 17-mile-round collider ring on the French-Swiss border for the past 10 months. Amid international fanfare, scientists started sending beams of protons through the $10 billion machine last September. However, less than two weeks afterward, the LHC had to be shut down for an estimated $29 million in repairs - due to a wiring problem that caused a helium leak and did significant damage to the machine's underground magnet assemblies.

CERN officials initially scheduled the machine's restart for the spring of this year, then for September, and then for October. On Monday, the Bulletin said that the repairs and testing were "proceeding well," but that vacuum leaks were detected last week in two tunnel sectors that had already been sealed off and chilled down for operation.

Repairing the leaks will require warming up those sectors of the tunnel back to room temperature, then cooling them down again. "It is now foreseen that the LHC will be closed and ready for beam injection by mid-November," the Bulletin said.

The cold temperatures and hard vacuum are required for proper operation of the magnet system used to accelerate the LHC's proton beams to near the speed of light. Eventually, the LHC's proton beams will be smashed together in experiments aimed at unraveling the mysteries surrounding dark matter, the origins of the universe and perhaps the Higgs boson, a not-yet-detected particle that theorists believe plays a role in imparting mass to subatomic particles.

Some have voiced fears that the LHC could create globe-gobbling black holes or other catastrophic phenomena, but the best experts in the field say there's essentially no chance of that happening. A lawsuit seeking suspension of operations at the LHC on safety grounds was thrown out by a federal judge last year. That case is still on appeal, however, at the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco.

For much, much more about the LHC, check out our special report.

Piyal Adhikary / EPA

Indian scientists check their telescopes on the grounds of a science museum in Patna, on the eve of this week's total solar eclipse. Prime time for viewing the event on the Web is 8:45 to 10 p.m. ET Tuesday.

Ninety years ago, a total solar eclipse provided the first solid confirmation that Albert Einstein was right about a little thing called general relativity. Today, eclipses may not be as much of a draw for astronomers as they were in the days before sun-observing satellites, but they still serve an important scientific purpose. Looking beyond the science, there's something elemental, even spiritual, about experiencing totality.

Nothing can take the place of seeing today's Asian eclipse in person, but if you can't be in Shanghai or Bhopal, scientists are still willing to bring you a taste of totality via the Internet. Here's a mini-guide to the Webcams, plus some pointers to the science behind the spectacle:

• Live-Eclipse.org: The Japan-based "Live! Universe" team has been doing eclipse Webcasts for years, and it sounds as if they have a great show in store this year. Viewing positions have been set up in the Chinese city of Jiaxing, southwest of Shanghai, at two locations in Japan (Nakanoshima and Amami City) and on Marakei Atoll in the Pacific. The broadcast, streamed using Flash and Silverlight, is due to be on the Web from 8 p.m. ET to midnight.
• University of North Dakota SEMS: Scientists from North Dakota are set up for observations in Wuhan, west of Shanghai on China's Yangtze River. Their servers will be dishing up video for Windows Media Player as well as for the VLC video plug-in. Coverage begins at 8:14 p.m. ET, with maximum totality due at 9:26 p.m. There's also a blog and a Java-based chat room.
• Saros Group: This expedition has also set up for observations in Wuhan, but there's not much advance information about how the Webcast will play out. You can assume that the choicest time frame will be similar to the University of North Dakota's sweet spot, in the 8:45 to 10 p.m. ET time frame.
• Taiwan Webcast Group: Observers have scheduled their Webcast from China from 8:20 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET. You need to run the Windows Media Player browser plug-in to see the show.
• Chinese Astronomical Society: A network of observation stations have been set up in the Yangtze River region, and the project's organizers will select the best views for airing on the Webcast. Seeing the video requires a browser plug-in, and it's hard to predict in advance how the system will perform. Peak viewing should be in the 8:45 to 10 p.m. ET time frame.
• Eclipse-TV.com: Here's something different .... Germany-based AstroNative Technologies and Eclipse-City offer an HD video stream of the eclipse from Yangshan Island, south of Shanghai. The coverage begins with the partial phase at 8:24 p.m. ET, goes all the way through the total phase (starting at 9:37 p.m. ET) and ends when the sun's disk is fully uncovered again at 11:03 p.m. ET. The catch is that you have to buy a virtual "ticket" to watch, at a cost of 9.95 euros (roughly $14). Check the International Year of Astronomy's Web site for free information.

After the event, you can expect at least some of these Web sites to offer archived clips of eclipse highlights. If any video clips come to our attention, we'll link to them here, and you can always check our main story about the event as well. It's also a safe bet that SpaceWeather.com will have plenty of eclipse pics on display.

As for the science behind eclipse observations, Williams College astronomer Jay Pasachoff has long contended that sun-observing spacecraft can never totally take the place of total-eclipse observations on Earth. He argued his case in detail last month in the journal Nature.

"Instruments on spacecraft are carefully made for specific purposes, and are locked into their configurations many years in advance of their use," he wrote. "In contrast, eclipse expeditions have the flexibility to use the latest equipment and to take advantage of new theoretical ideas to frame observations."

Today Pasachoff and his team have set up their equipment on a mountain outside Hangzhou, China, to focus on the detailed, close-in structure of the corona - the sun's outer atmosphere, which is visible from Earth only during a total eclipse. Studies like Pasachoff's could shed light (so to speak) on the reasons why the corona is so much hotter than the sun's surface.

Pasachoff has been blogging about his expedition at The New York Times' TierneyLab blog, and he reports that "the weather continues to be a worry" at his observation site.

Will Pasachoff's scientific expedition end in a "wow!" or a washout? Will all these Webcam spread across China, Japan and the Pacific see anything at all? Stay tuned ... and don't be afraid to hop from one Web site to another.

Update for 8:45 p.m. ET: So far the performance has been disappointing, as far as I can tell. The sites listed above either are not yet offering video, or are not accessible, or are in pay-per-view mode. We're keeping our eyes out for other sources of eclipse video.

Update for 8:48 p.m. ET: It looks as if the streams are operating at Live-Eclipse.org, but it also looks pretty cloudy out there.

Update for 8:54 p.m. ET: Totality in India! We'll have video posted within the hour.

Update for 9 p.m. ET: Live Indian coverage here.

Update for 9:15 p.m. ET: Live coverage via msnbc.com. Prospects uncertain. (Link removed because video is no longer streaming.)

Update for 9:58 p.m. ET: Here's the video showing the total eclipse as seen a little more than an hour ago in India.

Update for 10:27 p.m. ET: "We saw it!" Williams College's Jay Pasachoff says. But it sounds as if it was a close thing. I have to say the absolute best streaming-video coverage was on NDTV's Web site, which I hadn't thought to include in my original roundup. That's a good lesson for the next total eclipse, which will be visible from the South Pacific and parts of Chile and Argentina on July 11, 2010.

More on eclipses:

• Eight memorable solar eclipses
• What causes a solar eclipse?
• Test your knowledge of eclipse lore
• Greatest hits for eclipse fans

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. If you really want to be friendly, ask me about my upcoming book, "The Case for Pluto."  You can pre-order it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders.

Courtesy of Bob Bickers

The Bickers family sits around the television on July 20, 1969, in their home in Memphis, Tenn. From left are Bob, William, Linda and Alice Fay Bickers. Robert Sr. took the picture.

Even the highest-resolution camera in orbit around the moon can't make out the mark left behind by Neil Armstrong's "one small step" 40 years ago - but NASA's giant leap left a huge mark on men and women around the globe. For proof, all you have to do is page through the more than 1,400 messages answering the question posed 10 days ago: "Where were you when Apollo flew?"

The reminiscences about July 20, 1969, came from Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, India and Australia. Some were at the Boy Scouts' National Jamboree in Idaho and remember gathering around radios and TV sets in their tents to witness history. "As soon as we heard 'Houston, the Eagle has landed,' a huge cheer from all 50,000-plus went up from all around the park, echoing off the hills, for several minutes," Dave Robertson Jr. recalled.

Some were in Europe, and basked in the adulation that citizens of other nations had for the American spirit on that day: "An Italian embraced me and proclaimed, 'Americani, Astronati, La Luna, La Luna!'" Hal Ackerman wrote.

Many happened to be on the battlefield on that day (and some were imprisoned in North Vietnam, as Sen. John McCain relates in this "Nightly News" video). The memories weren't pleasant. "I was in South Vietnam, slogging through the rice paddies," John Porter wrote from Arizona. "I actually didn't even hear about it until maybe a week later, and to be honest, I really didn't give a (expletive deleted), as I was just trying to stay alive."

For some, the Apollo achievement seemed to hold the promise of a "Jetsons" future that never came to pass. But for others, July 20, 1969, was a life-changing day - and not just because it was also the day they were born, or got engaged, or gave birth (or had their first period, as one woman wrote).

The experience sparked 40 years of imagination and inspiration for Bob Bickers, an artist and attorney in Murrysville, Pa., who has immortalized that day in an exhibit of paintings and photographs currently on display at his local library.

For sharing his story below, and the photograph above, Bickers will be receiving a copy of Andrew Chaikin's coffee-table book about the Apollo adventure, "Voices From the Moon." Here's Bickers' tale:

"I was 13 in Memphis, and anyone visiting my room would think they were were in an unofficial branch of Mission Control.  I had miniature models of Apollo spacecraft being tracked across huge moon maps, and a library of space books and magazines on every aspect of the Apollo program.

"I had been closely following the space race since the early 1960s, watching the Mercury astronauts rocket into space.  On the afternoon of July 20, 1969, my hands sweated along with everyone else as the Eagle landed.  I stepped outside the house and saw traffic on the road and was incredulous that these people were oblivious to the moon landing.

"That night, our family watched on the TV set and finally pulled a mattress into the den to watch the mission coverage all the way through.  Here's a picture of us all around the TV that night (I am the one holding our dog). 

"Years later, I never did become an astronaut. I became an attorney instead, but I also became skilled as an artist and now I have an art show and tribute to that special mission, called 'Apollo 11 - 40 Years a Memory.' More on that can be found at BobBickers.net and on my blog. The moon landings have fueled my imagination all these years while waiting for us to return.  I hope I will see that day soon."

Forrest Bennett of Memphis, Tenn., told a tale that sounds too good to be true. I checked with the National Air and Space Museum, and the staff members there couldn't immediately find the evidence to back up his story. They'd love to talk with Forrest if he's stopping by the museum (but don't worry, Forrest, you're not in trouble):

"I was 6 years old at the time and living in the neighborhood just south of Houston that was home to most of the personnel that worked around the clock in Mission Control at Johnson Space Center.  I remember my dad taking Polaroid snapshots of the television screen as Neil Armstrong stepped off of the ladder on the lunar module and onto the moon's stark surface while uttering those famous words.  I also remember there being a raucous block party soon after the successful return to Earth of the Apollo 11 command capsule.  Imagine if you will a couple of hundred geeks running on andrenaline and alcohol, and you pretty much have the complete picture.

"Our next-door neighbor - whose name I have long forgotten, but whose contribution to my interest in science and space will never be forgotten - was mission director of one of the later Apollo missions.  He was a junior director on the Apollo 11 mission and as such had complete access to the mission plans and gave my dad a printout from the massive mainframe computer that showed in ASCII characters the flight path of the entire mission from liftoff to splashdown.  Unfortunately that now-priceless document was destroyed when a pipe burst in our home years later and flooded the basement where it was stored.  

"An even more poignant memory of 'Jeffrey's dad' which is how I always remember my neighbor, is when the command module returned to Houston on the back of a flatbed semi; he took my dad, his son Jeffrey and me to see the ship that had carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins into history. Jeffrey and I actually climbed into and all over the capsule as it sat strapped to the flatbed truck.  Then, being boys, we left our own marks on history ... we scratched our initials into the carbon scoring on the edge of the heat shield and promised never to tell anyone.

"Years later, as a teenager, I visited the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum - and there in the front entrance, encased in plexiglass for all the world to see, sat the capsule and my initials.  I broke my promise to Jeffrey at that moment and showed my dad what we had done.  I couldn't tell if he was incredulous or proud or both, but I will never forget the look on his face as I pointed out the tiny scratches spelling out my initials FAB.

"Believe it or not, it's true.

"I am going to be taking my own teenager to visit the Air and Space Museum on July 20, and if I am lucky the capsule will still be there and I can show here where her dad left his mark on history."

We received several comments from people who were actually involved in the Apollo 11 mission on the ground (or at sea). Here are a couple of them, beginning with a tale from Ron Holland of Centreville, Md.:

"At the time of Apollo 11 moon landing, I was an operations control shift supervisor at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Working for RCA Corp., as a contractor for the NASA Space Tracking And Data Acquisition Network (STADAN), I was fortunate to have a front-row seat not only for the entire Apollo program, but also most of the Gemini missions before Apollo.

"Being able to hear 'real-time' communications between spacecraft and 'ground' was always interesting technically and exciting personally.

"There is one part of my first lunar landing experience that I want to make crystal clear. It is what Mr. Neil Armstrong really said as he made his first historic step onto the lunar surface. I heard this in real-time, clearly, on a 5/5 circuit, and firsthand. He said; 'One small step for man…' and not, as some P.C. wonks, manipulating revisionists of history would like us to believe, 'one small step for a man.' Good grief!

"Mr. Armstrong, whom I met and shook hands with shortly after his return, later said that he 'meant' to say 'a man,' but it came out as 'man,' without an "A". It's a small thing, but such are the fine points of history. And to think I was there to hear and see it all as it happened. Personally, I prefer the all-inclusive and global 'man.'

"With a total of 35 years, working for NASA and NOAA space programs, I retired in 2003 after serving on the Hubble Space Telescope for 15 years. First, at Johns Hopkins University, Space Telescope Science Institute, in Baltimore, then planning and scheduling HST servicing missions, and finally consulting for NASA's chief engineer at NASA HQ in D.C.

"However, I'll never forget that night in July. The rest of my career was 'gravy.'"

And here's another inside view from Edward Brann, who was at Mission Control in Houston for Apollo 11 (and Apollo 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 and 13):

"... The oversight contract I was working on reviewed the integration of the various Apollo systems. My job was to validate the integration of the landing and rendezvous radar systems to the Primary Guidance and Navigation System on the lunar module. This also included the integration of the radar data into the navigation programs. This started my introduction to and lifelong affiliation with digital computers.

"The Primary Guidance and Navigation System was designed at MIT and built by Raytheon. It must be stated that the Primary computers on both the command module (CM) and lunar module (LM) never failed during a flight.  Compared to the powerhouses we put on our desks, the computers on the LM or CM were antiques. By the time I came on board, the programming demands had expanded the computer to 4,000 words of RAM (random access memory) and 37,000 words of ROM (read-only memory).

"I would bench check the navigation programs and if a section needed further testing, we would schedule some time on the LM simulator. We would get it 'after hours' since it was the same one that the astronauts trained in during the day. The simulator area had simulators for both the command module and lunar module, which for training purposes could be linked together. The movie 'Apollo 13' depicted this simulation area with about 90 percent accuracy.

"Sometimes a contractor goes beyond the letter of the programming contract specs because it makes sense. MIT had designed the major programs with restart check points, which saved the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. The landing guidance program was designed to run in a two-second cycle. When it was started, it would schedule itself to start again in two seconds. It would normally be finished with a cycle by the time the scheduler started it again. During the final phase of the landing profile, the computer was running at 90 percent capacity.

"During Apollo 11's final landing phase, a switch had been left in the wrong position, which caused an abnormal number of computer interrupts. This caused the computer to run at 105 percent of capacity and cause a restart. This happened about nine times on the way down, and the hard call was to either let it continue or switch to the abort computer and head back to the command module. The programmers at MIT were following the telemetry and decided that the computer was functionally following the proper landing profile, which the controllers concurred with, and the rest is history.

"Where was I during all of this? In one of the back-back rooms provided for the contractors to follow the flight on the telemetry screens on the wall. For each controller position in the main control room, which we saw on TV or in movies, there was a back room with 10 to 12 people who backed up the controller position through the head sets. Then this back room was in contact with the associated back-back room where the contractors who built or checked the systems were available for consultation.

"I had prepared a LM mission profile document that integrated the astronaut flight plan with the telemetry readouts expected during different phases of the mission. I was following the landing by cross-referencing my profile with the telemetry displays to make sure that the LM was on the correct descent profile. At about 500 feet, Neil Armstrong took over the landing phase manually (computer-aided). If you listen to that part of the landing, you can hear Buzz Aldrin calling out the feet per second down and horizontally. That was his job while Neil looked for a landing site. During that running call out of the displays, you will hear the comment 'low fuel level light.' This light indicated that the computer had calculated 30 seconds of fuel left.

"The landing phase seemed to last forever from that point until the touchdown indicator came on and they cut the engine. There were a lot of 'blue' faces as everyone - including myself - was holding his breath during those last few seconds. It was calculated after the fact that the LM had less than 10 seconds of fuel left at touchdown. ...

"A Web site readers might find interesting is this one, which contains a transcript of the Apollo 11 landing phase with post mission comments by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin."

Here's how the day changed the lives of Leona T. Hill and her family:

"My future husband and I were sitting on a sofa watching the historic moment on TV. That was our date for the evening in lieu of attending the movie theatre.  When the first moon step was taken, my husband made the comment that we needed to take a giant leap of our own and get married! What a romantic proposal, right? :) And so that journey we started 40 years ago continues today.  Along the way we had four children, and ironically, two of them became computer software engineers for the international space station project and the shuttle program.  Their wives were involved also!  My husband still watches all of the NASA programs on TV and he is vitally interested in all aspects of space."  

July 20, 1969, was also a doubly special day for Rick Sciapiti of Roseburg, Ore.:

"I was flying back on the 'Freedom Bird' to CONUS [continental U.S.] from the Republic of Vietnam. Landing in Japan for refueling, I, along with all the other returning soldiers, got off the aircraft. In the lobby of the airport, we saw people standing around looking at a television of Neil Armstrong standing on the moon's surface. I had just spent 366 days flying close aerial combat support with the 114th Assault Helicopter Co. as a crew chief and door gunner. I was completely out of touch with current events, and when I saw the image of Armstrong on the moon, I was speechless! I had no idea Apollo had taken off and was on a lunar mission. Today is the 40th anniversary of my return from the War in Vietnam."

David Kamerath of Salt Lake City sent along this memory, plus a picture:

Courtesy of David Kamerath

David Kamerath on duty in South Vietnam in 1969.

"July 20th, 1969, was hot and miserable in the rice paddies and murky canals along the Mekong River in Dinh Tuong Province, South Vietnam. I was on a combat mission with an infantry security force consisting mostly of Vietnamese Regional Forces. I halted the patrol long enough to press a small Sony battery-powered radio to my ear and listened to the first lunar landing.

"I was so very proud at that moment and I wondered at the beauty of such an accomplishment. For me, that was an exciting and an encouraging event. In the midst of the heat and misery of a combat patrol, I was hearing one of the most significant events to date in modern history. I was so very proud then, as I am now, of the privilege it is to be an American citizen.

"NOTE: The attached photograph was taken at about the same time and place, but was probably not the same day as the lunar landing."

Several commenters posed the question, "If we could land a man on the moon, why couldn't we win the Vietnam War?" Here's an example from John Clay in Virginia:

"I was on a denuded mountaintop in the Northern I Corps of Vietnam overlooking the DMZ, wondering if they could accomplish a trip to the moon, why couldn't they end the war?"

Kay Sorensen of Salem, Wis., had a different twist on the "if we could land a man on the moon..." question:

"We were visiting my sister and brother in law in Hammond, Indiana. When they landed on the moon, my husband declared that if they could land on the moon, he could stop smoking. He opened the door and threw out his pipe and never smoked again. The moon landing and quitting smoking will always be indelibly linked for our family."

Here's another life-changing story, from Greg McCauley of Indianapolis:

"I was a high school senior in a small Midwest town and was overcome by the magnitude of that event. Two years later, in April 1971, my best friend and I quit college, packed a suitcase, and, with $100 each, flew off to get a job at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. Everyone thought that we were totally nuts and that you had to be a rocket scientist to work for the Apollo lunar program. They thought we would fail and eventually come back home to live out normal lives like everyone else. We swore we would not come home until we were working for NASA.

"Seven months and many odd jobs later, we both got jobs in the Mission Planning and Analysis Division at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. We were 21 years old, had secret clearances and were absolutely in the middle of it all for Apollo 15, 16 and 17. We worked on exciting projects and even witnessed the launches from the floor of Mission Control.

"Those were very exciting times in our lives and proved to us that the American Dream is still alive - you can do whatever you set your mind to doing. Today, as a private business owner, I believe in the power of the human spirit. Anyone can achieve their dreams if they just have the courage to pursue them."

The event was an inspiration to people in other countries as well, as illustrated by Remigius Dias' story:

"The year that man landed on the moon, I was in the final year of finishing high school. Schools in most parts of India at that time did not infuse much enthusiasm in students about the wonders of science. Just that science was one of the subjects which had to be covered to go through school and enter college.

"My interest was to listen to music and news programs over the radio. TV was not introduced in Bombay, India, at that time. Newspaper reports too lagged behind some of the U.K. and U.S. papers, but they did report preparations of the Americans to overtake the Russians in their bid to land a man on the moon. ... That historic day, I did not attend school but was glued to the radio receiver hearing live commentary from VOA [Voice of America]. Although the reception was not so good, with many breaks in between, it was a great way to participate in this historic event.

"The day after Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, the Free Press Journal newspaper carried only a single headline on its front page something about two inches in size in red: 'Man Lands on Moon.'

"I can proudly say that was what motivated me to take up science after my schooling, although I didn't pursue higher studies, but managed to qualify as an audio/video engineer. Wish I was in the USA, where opportunities abound to fulfill my dream of studying space science and being useful to the space program. ..." 

I just love this message from Emnang Cletus in Ogoja, Nigeria:

"I was right in my village without a TV to watch the shuttle. But I dreamt man was constructing a railroad in the sky. Years later, I realized it was a vision of Apollo 11 that I saw. As a 7-year-old, I was perplexed how man could construct a railroad in the sky."

John Spring Hill, who lives in Florida, remembers an alien world on Earth:

"I was in a naval hospital in Guam, getting my body fixed from being shot up in Vietnam. It was a lot scarier than the moon. But if you were near the DMZ, some areas looked like the moon. 2/9 ... Semper Fi."

Elizabeth Braun Andreini of Naples, Fla., had a sunnier memory that makes me wish I were there (I remember all those songs, by the way):

"I was in Kennebunkport, Maine, age 19, Summer of Love, for sure. We walked Kennebunk Beach that night, my Greek paramour and me (my first lover). Back home in Poland, Ohio, my older brother Doug and his girlfriend Margie were preparing his VW camper for Woodstock. Doug would not let my mother serve rice as it reminded him of Vietnam. Both my brothers were spared Vietnam, thank you, God. The Fifth Dimension 'Aquarius' was No. 1 on the charts, Gary Puckett and the Union Gap were No. 85 with 'This Girl Is a Woman Now,' and Sly and the Family Stone gave us 'Hot Fun in the Summertime.' I could write a book about that summer! Wow, thanks for asking!"

I definitely could write a book based on all the where-were-you comments we received as of today. Instead, I'll point you toward the full item, and invite you to leave additional comments below. One additional note: I've edited the above comments, but I just haven't had time to clean up the spelling for the hundreds of other comments we've received. So as you page through the reminiscences, please forgive any errors you might see.

More about the Apollo 11 anniversary:

• Next giant leap reconsidered
• Moonwalk video gets a makeover
• Apollo 11: Where are they now?
• Where were you when Apollo flew?
• On the Web: Moonshots on your computer
• On screen: Apollo on rewind
• In print: Apollo in sharper focus
• More space history on msnbc.com

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. If you really want to be friendly, ask me about my upcoming book, "The Case for Pluto."  You can pre-order it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders.

This was a day for untold stories about NASA's glory days, and reflections on the road ahead. Here's a last-minute selection of Web links relating to Apollo 11's lore and its legacy:

• CBS News poll: We choose to go to Mars
• CollectSpace: Moon rock on a (secret) mission
• The Space Review: Apollo's greatest achievement   
• Russian Space Web: The plan for Russia's moon lander
• Coalition for Space Exploration: Keep America in space 
• Kottke.org: Watch the moonwalk as it happened in 1969
• RLV & Space Transport News: Step by step to space settlement
• Out of the Cradle: Carnival of Space 112 ("Big Moon Day Show")

NASA

Concept art shows what NASA's next-generation Altair lunar lander may look like.

At the same time that NASA is celebrating its biggest triumph - Apollo 11's first human landing on the moon, 40 years ago - the space agency is facing its biggest wave of uncertainty since the Apollo program ended.

The space shuttle era is winding down to its scheduled end next year, and the successor to the shuttle is facing a hail of questions over cost and safety. Five years after the Bush administration set a course back to the moon, the Obama administration hasn't yet decided whether it will stick to that course. NASA is just now getting a new leader after six months in limbo, and an independent panel is in the midst of assessing the options for the nation's future in space: Return to the moon? Target Mars or one of its moons instead? Land on an asteroid?

"I would say they're all in the mix," the panel's chairman, retired aerospace executive Norm Augustine, told reporters today, "and I wouldn't want to make a forecast one way or another."

Ever since astronauts went to the moon, NASA has never had the money to match its aspirations, he admitted. "That puts NASA in a terrible position," he said.

From decade to decade, presidents, lawmakers and members of the public voice strong support for space exploration. Just today, Gallup released a poll indicating that a gradually increasing number of Americans believe the space program has brought enough benefits to justify its costs. But does that translate into the political will to support a space initiative anywhere nearly as dramatic as Apollo, particularly when it's not clear what the initiative will turn out to be?

Augustine said it all "depends on how the question is asked sometimes."

To some people, the juxtaposition of glory on the moon and uncertainty on Earth may seem ironic - but not to John Logsdon, a space policy analyst and historian at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum who also serves on the NASA Advisory Council.

"There was actually something similar that went on after Kennedy announced we were going to the moon," Logsdon recalled. "It took NASA nine months and lots of alternative designs to settle on what became the Saturn V."

The difference this time is that uncertainties surround not only the rockets being designed to get to the moon, but the White House commitment to the vision and the rationale for going there in the first place (OK, the second place).

Forty years ago, the main reason behind the space race was to keep the moon safe for democracy. "Only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new, terrifying theater of war," President John Kennedy declared in 1962.

Today, military pre-eminence is still a key motivator for spaceflight - but primarily in Earth orbit, not on the moon. Various other reasons have been floated for lunar journeys, ranging from a reignited competition for international prestige to new opportunities for 21st-century science to future fusion fuel. But there are arguments for targeting other destinations as well, as well as for saving all that money and just sending robots out instead.

Over the next month and a half, it will be up to Augustine and his colleagues on the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee to sort all this out. By the end of August, the committee is to submit a list of options to NASA and the White House. The Obama administration will then have to move "rather quickly" to craft its own space vision in time to incorporate into its next budget request, Augustine told me.

Here's a quick rundown of the options that are "in the mix" for Augustine's panel, NASA and the White House:

Low Earth orbit
The first priority is to figure out how to continue supplying the space station after 2010, when the shuttle fleet is due for retirement. NASA is slowly working its way toward the first test flight of a prototype for the Ares I rocket that could fill that role when the shuttles are gone - but even under the best-case scenario, that rocket won't be ready for prime time until 2015 or so. Some say the delays and technical issues bedeveling Ares I are so serious that the project should be abandoned.

Logsdon said the debate goes back to 2005, when the Ares design was chosen from scores of proposed alternatives. "What we have been seeing since then are the 'losers' in that study complaining about the fact that their alternative was better than the one that was chosen," he said. "What's different is that there's enough uncertainty about Ares I to make their complaints credible."

Among the alternatives are the "sidemount shuttle" design that NASA itself is looking at as a Plan B; expendable rockets such as the Delta and Atlas, which would have to be certified as safe to carry humans; the DIRECT project championed by maverick engineers inside NASA; and low-cost, next-generation rockets such as the SpaceX Falcon 9 or the Orbital Taurus 2, which are in line for billions in NASA contracts but have fallen behind their development schedules.

Augustine said today that it's too early to count Ares out. "As far as our committee is concerned, it would be completely wrong to say that Ares is dead in the water," he said, adding that "we're looking at a whole bunch of possibilities."

Meanwhile, NASA is hedging its bets by making deals for Russian Soyuz and Progress flights to the station, but many in industry (and in Congress) aren't happy with letting America slide into a spaceflight gap that could last for five years or more. So yet another alternative would be to keep the shuttles in operation, at least for a while beyond 2010.

The bigger question focuses on what we want to do in low Earth orbit. This week some folks raised a huge fuss over NASA's stated plans for deorbiting the space station in 2016. Those plans were drawn up mostly to satisfy the requirements for space station operation, and it's likely that the space station's life will be extended as time goes on. It's also likely the ISS won't be the only game in town. Russia is already talking about building the next space station, and Bigelow Aerospace is working on private-sector stations.

Eventually, low Earth orbit could become a tourist destination, or a way station (and perhaps a fuel depot) for longer space journeys. Can the international space station serve those functions? Probably not. 

Back to the moon
The shuttle system has nowhere near the firepower required to get out of Earth orbit, so if NASA is going to target the moon (or other deep-space destinations), a big new rocket will be required in any case. Like the Ares I, the Ares V design that NASA has selected is based on adaptations of Saturn-era and shuttle technology. Another question is whether NASA's current long-range plan to build a settlement on the moon will still be deemed affordable, given the economic climate we're facing. There are some hints that a "lunar lite" concept, stressing Apollo-style sorties rather than Antarctic-style settlements, will be among the options under consideration. 

On to Mars (or its moons)
The most popular "minority report" on space exploration, endorsed by none other than Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, is to spend as little effort as possible on the moon and go directly to Mars. An even more sophisticated variant of this plan calls for creating a manned base first on one of Mars' asteroid-like moons, Phobos or Deimos, from which observations could be made and landers could be sent. The Russian-led mission to Phobos, called Phobos-Grunt, represents one small step in this direction. But manned Mars missions would be so complicated and costly that it no one nation could do it alone, and taking that giant of a leap would take far longer than returning to the moon. Aldrin, for example, has suggested a target date of 2031 for a manned Mars base.

Target an asteroid
Aldrin has suggested starting out with a simpler step: sending a manned mission to a near-Earth asteroid - for example, the asteroid Apophis, which may have a very small chance of hitting our planet someday. NASA experts have said that the Project Constellation system being developed for moon trips could be used as well to visit asteroids. Space rocks could provide scientific insight into the origins of the solar system, and some have argued they could provide valuable resources for life in outer space as well. But the biggest thing we need to find out about asteroids is how to keep them from killing us. If it does turn out that a big enough space rock is heading our way in, say, 30 years or so, that might well raise asteroid visits to the top of NASA's priority list.

Build a space base
Yet another option would be to build "flexible" space infrastructure in a place that could take travelers to any of these destinations - say, at one of Earth's gravitational balance points, also known as Lagrangian points. One of these points, L2, is already becoming a popular parking lot for costly space probes, and it's not hard to foresee a time when such stable regions of space could become settled neighborhoods. Before Aldrin's most recent focus on Mars, he favored building a "floating launching pad" for manned and unmanned missions at L1, a balance point between Earth and the moon.

Status quo
... Or we could just go with the status quo, which is actually none of the above. This would entail continuing with the uncertainty surrounding human spaceflight, and perhaps increasing the payoff from unmanned probes such as NASA's Mars rovers and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Augustine said the range of opinions being expressed about space policy is just as wide as it was when he presided over an earlier assessment of America's space goals, back in 1990.

"Then, as now, there are some extremely strong, almost passionately held views," he said. "We'll get one letter right after the other from prominent, qualified people - one which, for example, will say we need to start populating Mars immediately because there's a chance we're going to destroy our Earth. The next one will say we've got major problems of an economic nature in this country, and we shouldn't have a space program at all."

The latter view might suit critics of manned exploration such as University of Maryland physicist Robert Park. "The costs and risks are just too high," he was quoted as saying in USA Today's survey of future spaceflight. But it's just the kind of situation that Logsdon hopes Augustine's report will head off.

"The end point of this, I hope, is that after this process is done, we have a plan that is agreed to and can be stable for a period of time long enough so we can go on and execute it," Logsdon told me. "If we keep changing our mind every two or three years, we'll get nowhere."

More about the Apollo 11 anniversary:

• Moonwalk video gets a makeover
• Apollo 11: Where are they now?
• Where were you when Apollo flew?
• On the Web: Moonshots on your computer
• On screen: Apollo on rewind
• In print: Apollo in sharper focus
• More space history on msnbc.com

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. If you really want to be friendly, ask me about my upcoming book, "The Case for Pluto."  You can pre-order it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders.

I can't let the day go by before paying tribute to longtime CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, who passed away today at the age of 92. In his day, Cronkite served as the bellwether of the American spirit - and millions trusted him when he said "that's the way it is."

President Lyndon Johnson knew he was in trouble in 1968 when Cronkite declared that the Vietnam War would end in a stalemate. "That's it," Johnson reportedly said. "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America."

But for folks like me, who were in our mid-teens at the time, Cronkite will be remembered chiefly for his coverage of the space effort. How strange it is that he passed away just short of 40 years since men first landed on the moon! When he took off his glasses after watching the Apollo 11 landing on July 20, 1969, and said, "Whew, boy!" ... the whole country breathed a sigh of relief and amazement with him.

Uncle Walter, you are missed.

More on Cronkite's space connection:

• The Space Review: Inspiration, not information
• YouTube: Walter Cronkite in 'Man on the Moon'
• NASA: Walter Cronkite walks on the moon
• CollectSpace: Tributes to Walter Cronkite

NASA / GSFC

Click for video: A side-by-side comparison shows a frame from NASA's archival video of Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong making his way down the lunar module's ladder at left, and a restored version of the same frame at right. Click on the image to watch a video in which NASA's Dick Nafzger explains the differences in depth.

That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for video restoration.

Forty years after the fact, some of the most historic moments of Apollo 11's televised moonwalk have been brought into sharper focus using computerized image processing techniques.

The black-and-white video still pales in comparison with today's high-definition space extravaganzas, but the experts behind the restoration project emphasize that this is a work in progress. NASA promises that when the restoration of the moonwalk video is complete, the public will see "the highest-quality video of this historic event."

How TV was done in 1969
Samples of the restored video - including Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong's climb down the lunar module's ladder, his "one small step" onto the lunar surface and the raising of the American flag - were released today at the Newseum in Washington to commemorate the 1969 moon mission. Today marks the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's launch, and on Monday it will be 40 years to the day since Armstrong and crewmate Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon.

The first TV pictures from another world were captured by a small camera mounted on a hinged assembly on the Apollo 11 lunar module. When Armstrong stepped out onto the module's platform, he swung the assembly into position - setting up the view of the astronauts on the ladder and footpad. Later in the moonwalk, Armstrong removed the camera from the assembly and mounted it on a tripod for scenes such as the flag-raising.

The TV signal was transmitted from the moon using a special slow-scan video format, which had to be converted into the standard broadcast format at downlink stations in Australia (as immortalized in the movie "The Dish") and California. Then the standard signal was relayed to NASA and broadcasters around the world.

The restoration brings out additional details in the fuzzy video that Americans saw on their television sets on July 20, 1969, and at the same time smooths out the electronic "snow" in the picture. When Armstrong steps down the ladder, for instance, his visor and the outline of his spacesuit can be seen within the shadows - something that most viewers couldn't see nearly as well 40 years ago.

'Lost' tapes may be lost for good
Today's announcement blended some bad news with the good news: For years, video sleuths have been looking for the cleaner slow-scan view of the moonwalk, which had been saved on tape during the mission. NASA engineer Dick Nafzger and others crossed the globe, searching for those "lost" tapes, but came up empty-handed.

"The slow-scan recordings are no longer," Nafzger said.

Nafzger explained that the video was preserved as one track on a 14-track magnetic tape that also recorded telemetry from the Apollo 11 mission. "This is the only time in the Apollo program we recorded television on a telemetry tape," he said.

After the flight, about 45 tapes thought to contain the slow-scan moonwalk video data were archived as part of a 200,000-tape inventory that NASA kept at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Through the years, the archive's managers would determine which tapes were no longer needed. Those tapes would be erased and reused for telemetry from the missions that followed.

Nafzger surmised that the tapes with the slow-scan data were put into the queue for reuse and eventually were recorded over - perhaps even during a later Apollo or Skylab flight. Because the tapes were primarily used for telemetry, it's likely that no one at the time realized that they were erasing the best video record of the Apollo 11 moonwalk, Nafzger said.

There's still one ray of hope, however: Nafzger and his fellow sleuths discovered that an experiment in slow-scan TV conversion was being conducted at the Parkes Observatory in Australia at the time of the moonwalk, and that two slow-scan tapes might have been made during the moonwalk. "These two tapes, consisting of an hour each, approximately, are still missing. ... they're not in the system," Nafzger said.

Doing something for history
So if the "lost tapes" are still lost, how was the restoration done? Nafzger said he and the rest of his team were "desperate to do something for history if we could." In the course of their search, they turned up some broadcast-quality imagery that hadn't been seen in nearly 40 years. Some of it came from CBS News, some came from the National Archives, some came from Australia. Some of it even came from an 8mm wind-up film camera that was held up and aimed at a video monitor at NASA's Mission Control Center.

NASA / GSFC

Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin looks somewhat sharper in a frame from a restored version of NASA video from the moon landing on July 20, 1969.

NASA digitized the imagery and enlisted California-based Lowry Digital to do some heavy-duty reprocessing. Lowry's technique has been compared to "digital botox." Its proprietary software analyzes each frame of video and selects the best pixels for an averaged-out, smoothed-out, cleaned-up version. 

The technique was pioneered back in 1971 by company founder John Lowry, when it was used to restore film from the Apollo 16 and 17 missions. More recently, Lowry has lent a hand with restoring classic movies such as "Casablanca" and "Citizen Kane," and sweetening up the visuals for contemporary films such as the Oscar-nominated Brad Pitt movie, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."

NASA set strict limits on how much restoration could be done. The first part of the complete moonwalk video will be upside down, just as it was when it was aired in 1969. Dust on the lens and internal reflections are being left in as well. "We could make these images 'perfect,' but at a certain point you begin to lose authenticity," Patrick Edquist, Lowry's project manager for the restoration, said in a company statement.

During today's briefing, Nafzger was asked whether asking a company with Hollywood connections to restore the video might give more ammunition to moon-hoax conspiracy theorists. In response, he pointed out that Lowry's roots with NASA go even deeper than its roots with Hollywood. "I don't care where they're from. This company is restoring historic video," Nafzger said. "This particular company has a history with NASA. ... There couldn't be a more perfect match."

He emphasized that the Apollo 11 restoration project has only been in the works for a few weeks, and estimated that the restoration was about 40 percent complete. The costs are being covered by a $230,000 contract that Lowry has with NASA. NASA says the complete moonwalk video should be ready for release in HD format in September.

Nafzger acknowledged that the quality in the 1969 broadcast, and most likely in the restored video as well, could have been better. "Some of the degradation that you saw was not necessary," he said. But he pointed out that getting a great picture was not the first priority at the time.

"The goal was to land and come back safely," he said. "It was not television."

Update for 5:45 p.m. ET: Here's a video from ITN that delves into another Apollo 11 restoration project. The documentary "Moonwalk One" was commissioned by NASA to chronicle the Apollo 11 mission, but fizzled out when it made the rounds in the early 1970s. Recently the original footage was remastered and reissued in a "director's cut" version. Good thing the director had the original 35mm film sitting in boxes under his desk for all those years.

Update for 6:50 p.m. ET: The Associated Press' Seth Borenstein passes along the dismayed reactions from outside historians to today's good-news/bad-news report:

"It's surprising to me that NASA didn't have the common sense to save perhaps the most important historical footage of the 20th century," said Rice University historian and author Douglas Brinkley. He noted that NASA saved all sorts of data and artifacts from Apollo 11, and it is "mind-boggling that the tapes just disappeared."

The remastered copies may look good, but "when dealing with historical film footage, you always want the original to study," Brinkley said.

Smithsonian Institution space curator Roger Launius, a former NASA chief historian, said the loss of the original video "doesn't surprise me that much."

"It was a mistake, no doubt about that," Launius said. "This is a problem inside the entire federal government. ... They don't think that preservation is all that important."

Launius said federal warehouses where historical artifacts are saved are "kind of like the last scene of `Raiders of the Lost Ark.' It just goes away in this place with other big boxes."

Update for 8:15 p.m. ET: Don't miss this "Nightly News" report from NBC News' Tom Costello about the moonwalk makeover, with commentary from anchor Brian Williams (as well as an anchorman from the past, David Brinkley).

More about moon imagery:

• Orbital views of Apollo moon sites coming Friday
• Malta spearheads 'Moon for All Mankind' project

More about the Apollo 11 anniversary: 

• Apollo 11: Where are they now?
• Where were you when Apollo flew?
• On the Web: Moonshots on your computer
• On screen: Apollo on rewind
• In print: Apollo in sharper focus
• More space history on msnbc.com

NASA

Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin pose for their official portrait before the Apollo 11 mission of July 1969. All three men were born in 1930.

Every five years, the three men of Apollo 11 get together to face the cameras and answer questions about the greatest adventure of the 20th century: humanity's first landing on the surface of another world. Now it's been 40 years since that historic touchdown on July 20, 1969, and the spotlight is once more shining on the famous trio.

The biggest stars of NASA's glory days aren't getting any younger. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins are all a year or two away from turning 80. Some might wonder when the "last hurrah" for the space effort's Greatest Generation will come, but the astronauts of Apollo 11 still seem hale and hearty. I wouldn't bet against all three of them living to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their most famous flight.

So what have they been doing since their last stint in the spotlight, five years ago?

Astronauts galore
One big job has been managing all the activities being planned for the 40th anniversary: For years, Aldrin has been calling upon his fellow astronauts to gather together to promote a "Lunar Renaissance" of exploration. Although the appearances planned over the next few days are a little more ad hoc than what Aldrin had in mind, they nevertheless give America's pioneering astronauts and space historians the biggest stage they've had in at least five years.

Washington, D.C., is the main venue. To mark Thursday's 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's launch, NASA Headquarters hosted a panel discussion about the Apollo effort's legacy, released restored video from the Apollo 11 moonwalk, and began airing nine days' worth of Apollo 11 audio transmissions (from pre-launch to splashdown). Meanwhile, the National Air and Space Museum opened an exhibit of paintings and drawings by Apollo 12 astronaut/artist Alan Bean.

On Saturday night, Aldrin will be among the narrators at a Kennedy Center musical tribute to Apollo. An "extremely limited" number of free tickets are to be handed out that morning.

The main event takes place Sunday night, when Aldrin takes his place alongside Apollo 11 crewmates Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins for a lecture at the National Air and Space Museum. Apollo flight director Chris Kraft and former senator-astronaut John Glenn are also due to attend. Although the event is sold out, you should be able to catch it on the NASA TV Webcast.

Monday is the big 40th anniversary of the first moon landing and moonwalk. To mark the occasion, a whole array of Apollo astronauts (including Aldrin) are due to take questions at a NASA Headquarters news briefing at 9:30 a.m. ET. Lots of other 40th-anniversary events are planned around the country.

Stephen Jaffe / AFP-Getty Images file Then-President George W. Bush (second from left) poses with Apollo 11 astronauts Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during an Oval Office meeting on July 21, 2004.

Neil Armstrong: Not that reclusive
Neil Armstrong is the marquee name - chiefly because he was the first man to take any kind of "small step" on the moon, but also because of the mystique that's grown up around the soft-spoken Ohioan.

Armstrong was so turned off by profiteering and forgeries that he stopped signing autographs in 1994 (with a few exceptions for charity). That's only boosted the interest in memorabilia linked to Armstrong, such as the $10.50 check that Armstrong made out to a friend at NASA on the day of Apollo 11's launch. That check was auctioned off in an online sale ending Wednesday night, with the final selling price adding up to $27,350.

The mystique has sometimes led to a public perception that the first moonwalker has turned into a recluse, holing up on the 200-acre farm he bought in 1971 near Lebanon, Ohio. Yes, he hangs out at the farm, but Armstrong also gets around.

"By the public, he's perceived as being more removed than he really is," said Robert Pearlman, editor of the CollectSpace Web site, who makes a study of the astronauts' comings and goings and the memorabilia they leave behind. "If you wanted to see him, you could find him."

Just last month, for example, Armstrong narrated Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait" at a Cincinnati Pops concert. After Apollo 11, he taught engineering at the University of Cincinnati and sat on a wide variety of corporate boards - but over the past few years he's cut back on those academic and business activities.

Perhaps the biggest change in the past five years is that much more information about Armstrong's past life is becoming available - through James Hansen's authorized biography, "First Man," through a "60 Minutes" interview aimed at publicizing the book, and through the hundreds of boxes of personal papers that are being donated to Purdue University (some of which are going on display Monday).

Aldrin and Collins: The promoter and the painter
Even if Armstrong is a bit reticent about public appearances, his crewmate in the Apollo lunar module more than makes up for it. Buzz Aldrin has written three books in the past five years, including two books for children - "Reaching for the Moon" and "Look to the Stars" - and a fresh memoir titled "Magnificent Desolation."

"There hasn't been a day since his book came out that he hasn't had one or two events," Pearlman said. In addition to his book signings, personal appearances and endorsements, Aldrin has been pushing plans to get everyday people into space through a lottery-type system (spearheaded by his ShareSpace Foundation) and calling for NASA to switch its focus from the moon to Mars.

He has also found time to appear in the animated movie "Fly Me to the Moon," record a rap video and tweet to his followers on Twitter. "All done with book signing. Got to see the shuttle launch in the distance," he wrote Wednesday from Orlando, Fla.

The Apollo 11 veteran hardest to find in the public sphere may well be Michael Collins, the astronaut who circled the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the surface below. After leaving NASA in 1970, Collins spent a year as a State Department official, became the National Air and Space Museum's director, then became an aerospace executive and finally started his own consulting firm. Nowadays he lives the life of a retiree and a watercolor painter in Florida.

"His watercolors have been growing in popularity," Pearlman noted. Collins' favorite subjects are nature scenes, but he recently painted a series of Cape Canaveral space settings for the 40th anniversary. He has also revised his memoir, "Carrying the Fire." (Collins will be signing books at the Smithsonian on Sunday, as will Aldrin and Bean.)

Collins may not be as outgoing as, say, Buzz Aldrin. (Who is?) But many see him as the wittiest member of the Apollo 11 crew, and arguably the best writer. Aldrin himself told me a couple of years ago that Collins was "the life of our mission." Back in those days, Aldrin said, "Neil and I were ... a little reserved and not quite as jovial particularly."

A bit of that wit comes through in the statement from Collins that NASA issued Wednesday in lieu of an interview. As seen from the moon, Earth looked fragile 40 years ago and probably would look even more fragile today, Collins said:

... When we flew to the moon, our population was 3 billion; today it has more than doubled and is headed for 8 billion, the experts say. I do not think this growth is sustainable or healthy. The loss of habitat, the trashing of oceans, the accumulation of waste products - this is no way to treat a planet.

NASA: You are starting to sound a little grumpy. Are you grumpy?

Collins: At age 78, yes, in many ways. Some things about current society irritate me, such as the adulation of celebrities and the inflation of heroism.

Q: But aren't you both?

A: Not me. Neither.

Heroes abound, and should be revered as such, but don't count astronauts among them. We work very hard; we did our jobs to near perfection, but that was what we had hired on to do. In no way did we meet the criterion of the Congressional Medal of Honor: "above and beyond the call of duty."

Celebrities? What nonsense, what an empty concept for a person to be, as my friend the great historian Daniel Boorstin put it, "known for his well-known-ness." How many live-ins, how many trips to rehab, maybe - wow - you could even get arrested and then you would really be noticed. Don't get me started.

Q: So, if I wanted to sum you up, I should say "grumpy"?

A: No, no, lucky! Usually, you find yourself either too young or too old to do what you really want, but consider: Neil Armstrong was born in 1930, Buzz Aldrin 1930, and Mike Collins 1930. We came along at exactly the right time. We survived hazardous careers and we were successful in them. But in my own case at least, it was 10 percent shrewd planning and 90 percent blind luck. Put LUCKY on my tombstone.

Q: OK, but getting back to the space program. What's next?

A: I hope Mars. It was my favorite planet as a kid and still is. As celestial bodies go, the moon is not a particularly interesting place, but Mars is. It is the closest thing to a sister planet that we have found so far. I worry that at NASA's creeping pace, with the emphasis on returning to the moon, Mars may be receding into the distance. That's about all I have to say.

Q: I understand you have become a recluse.

A: I'm not sure that's the word. I think of the Brown Recluse, the deadliest of spiders, and I have a suntan, so perhaps. Anyway, it's true I've never enjoyed the spotlight, don't know why, maybe it ties in with the celebrity thing.

Q: So, how do you spend your time?

A: Running, biking, swimming, fishing, painting, cooking, reading, worrying about the stock market, searching for a really good bottle of cabernet under ten dollars. Moderately busy.

Q: No TV?

A: A few nature programs, and the Washington Redskins, that's about it.

Q: Do you feel you've gotten enough recognition for your accomplishments?

A: Lordy, yes, Oodles and oodles.

Q: Oodles?? But don't you have any keen insights?

A: Oh yeah, a whole bunch, but I'm saving them for the 50th.

More on the Apollo 11 anniversary: 

• Where were you when Apollo flew?
• On the Web: Moonshots on your computer
• On screen: Apollo on rewind
• In print: Apollo in sharper focus
• More space history on msnbc.com

This item was last updated at 8:15 p.m. ET July 16.

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. If you really want to be friendly, ask me about my upcoming book, "The Case for Pluto."  You can pre-order it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders.

• Space Coalition Blog: Buzz Aldrin gets his lunar close-up
• NASA: The Apollo 11 conversations Earth didn't hear
• Telegraph: Apollo 11 crew dreamed up 'insurance'
• HankBrandli.com: The rescue of Apollo 11 

Oli Scarff / Getty Images file

Shoppers in London queue up for a vintage-clothing sale at the Angels theatrical costume shop in 2008. Researchers say waiting in line, and other types of turn-taking behavior, may be hard-wired into a wide variety of species.

Taking turns isn't just a nice idea. It may be as much a part of the theory of evolution as survival of the fittest - at least that's the conclusion that British researchers reached after running a genetic simulation through thousands of generations of evolutionary change.

Turn-taking behavior seem to come naturally to humans, whether it's standing in line or deciding who's going to do the dishes tonight. But such behavior has been observed in a wide variety of other species as well: Chimps take turns grooming each other, for example, and penguins take turns minding their eggs.

"It is far from obvious how turn-taking evolved without language or insight in animals shaped by natural selection to pursue their individual self-interests," University of Leicester psychologist Andrew Colman said last week in a news release about the research.

Colman and a university colleague of his, Lindsay Browning, looked into the evolution of politeness for a paper published in the September issue of the journal Evolutionary Ecology Research - not by studying actual monkeys, penguins or line-standers, but by setting up a series of genetic simulations where they could dictate the rules of the evolutionary game.

The experiment was as much an exercise in game theory as in evolutionary biology. Colman and Browning programmed a computer to play a variety of games in which the payoff varied depending on whether the simulated players made the same or different choices.

One of the best-known games in this genre is the Prisoner's Dilemma, in which two prisoners receive different penalties depending on whether they defect or stay loyal to each other. Under the most common rules of the game, the most frequent outcome is for the prisoners to rat on each other, even though they would have been better off if they had both stayed loyal.

"The Prisoner's Dilemma, which is being used to study cooperation almost exclusively to date, doesn't ever give any advantage to automata that take turns," Colman told me. "In fact, it's created a blind spot in studying this issue, in our opinion."

He and Browning mixed up the repertoire by using six games, including the Prisoner's Dilemma as well as variations of cooperative games known as the Battle of the Sexes and Stag Hunt. They also built in a little mathematical mutation to duplicate what biologists have found happens in real life. Then they ran the simulation through 2,000 evolutionary generations. Each 2,000-generation simulation was repeated 10 times to check the stability of the results.

Here's how the experiment turned out: Under the right conditions, different players locked themselves into a pattern of mutually beneficial turn-taking that could sustain itself indefinitely.

"They didn't have the benefit of language to plan any strategy such as that," Colman said. "It could be something that just evolves through natural selection, just with hard wiring."

One factor was key, he said: "You've got to have two different types, because they've got to behave in different ways in the same situation in order to initiate this behavior. Without this genetic diversity, the behavior cannot evolve."

Even though game theorists may cast this diversity as a battle of the sexes (for example, she likes opera, he likes boxing), Colman emphasized that the diversity he had in mind was not necessarily a gender split, a la "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus."

"I always tell my students, 'Women are from Earth, men are from Earth ... deal with it,'" he joked.

Rather, the diversity may take the form of different responses to environment changes (for example, becoming more dormant to conserve energy vs. becoming more active to seek out new food sources). Colman said turn-taking appears to be an instance of the "invisible hand" of natural selection at work.

"The assumption in the early days of evolutionary theory was that evolution would tend to make all organisms conform to an optimal form, and this would tend to reduce diversity. ... That turned out to be a primitive idea and not sufficiently subtle," he told me.

The fact that so many species exhibit turn-taking behavior suggests that the genetic code for cooperative behavior goes way back, Colman said. And that's a good thing, whether you're a yeast organism trying to metabolize sugar, an eel hunting for food in a coral reef ... or a filmgoer standing in line to see the latest "Harry Potter" movie.

"Humans obviously engage in turn-taking behavior. Queueing is an elaborate example of it," Colman said. "What this shows is that it's probably deep in our DNA. You don't have to necessarily assume that this is something that developed recently just because we're a civilized species."

Now it's your turn: Does this research shed new light on evolutionary theory? Is it merely a case of scientists stating the obvious? Or do you think "survival of the fittest" really doesn't explain turn-taking and other forms of altruistic behavior? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. If you really want to be friendly, ask me about my upcoming book, "The Case for Pluto."  You can pre-order it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders.

NASA / CSC / CfA / CFHT / Coelum

Composite photo shows optical and X-ray views of Stephan's Quintet, a galactic collision that has generated a powerful shock wave (indicated here in light blue).

A shockingly beautiful image of a galactic smash-up known as Stephan's Quintet highlights the powerful shock wave created by a cosmic bullet.

The compact galaxy group, 230 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus, is one of the favorite targets for astronomers studying gravitational interactions on a grand scale. It was discovered in 1877 by French astronomer Edouard Stephan.

For many astronomers, the most interesting feature is something that doesn't show up quite as well in visible-light pictures: the light blue arc of X-ray emissions running through the center of the image above.

That X-ray arc, detected by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory, shows up prominently in other wavelengths as well - such as the infrared part of the spectrum that is the NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope specialty. Scientists have concluded that it represents a shock wave that is slamming through the group's intergalactic gas and heating it up so much that it emits radiation in a wide range of wavelengths. The shock wave is generated by the passage of one galaxy (NGC 7318b) through the cluster's core at a speed of almost 2 million miles per hour.

If you click on over to the Chandra Web site and roll your cursor over the picture accompanying the image advisory, you'll see pointers to the assorted galaxies in the cluster. The galaxy at lower left, NGC 7320, is in the foreground and doesn't actually interact with the other four. Think of it as a "fifth Beatle," bringing a little extra star power into the picture of an already-stellar quartet.

A larger map of X-ray emissions, charted by the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton observatory, suggests that there may have been earlier shock waves that have created an X-ray halo around Stephan's Quintet. The long tails of stars spinning off the galaxies provide further evidence of past gravitational interactions.

As usual, Chandra's view of Stephan's Quintet is much more than just a pretty picture.

"Stephan's Quintet provides a rare opportunity to observe a galaxy group in the process of evolving from an X-ray-faint system dominated by spiral galaxies to a more developed system dominated by elliptical galaxies and bright X-ray emission," Chandra's science team said. "Being able to witness the dramatic effect of collisions in causing this evolution is important for increasing our understanding of the origins of the hot, X-ray-bright halos of gas in groups of galaxies."

More shockingly beautiful space pictures:

• June's greatest hits from the cosmos
• All-time top 10 astronomy pictures
• 50 years of views from the moon
• Space Gallery at msnbc.com

• New Scientist: Why the moon still matters
• Slashdot: NASA has the lost Apollo tapes
• 21st Century Waves: Carnival of Space 111
• Wash. Post: NASA plans for space station's end

Co Rentmeester / Time Life Pictures via Getty Images

Gamblers watch moonshot coverage at the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas in July 1969.

On July 20, 1969, I was an Iowa farmboy watching every black-and-white move of a fuzzy-looking, spacesuited figure on our living-room television set. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was doing pretty much the same thing in New York City (though he was a mere 10 years old, four whole years younger than I was).

Sen. John McCain was sitting in a Hanoi prison - and wouldn't even find out that someone landed on the moon until a year and a half later. But for millions and millions of people around the world, even for McCain's Vietnamese captors, the Apollo 11 landing and that "one small step" on another world was a red-letter day that would be remembered through the decades.

Now it's your turn to share some moonshot memories: Where were you when Apollo 11 flew? Even if you're took young to have been around when the first moon landing took place (which is the case for more than half of the U.S. population), you can still feel free to comment on the past, present and future of space exploration.

Watch the moonshot, then milk the cows
I'd like to say that watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin climb down to the moon's surface put me on the path I'm on today. At the time, I was just one more teenager with a 3-inch telescope who didn't know what he was going to do when he grew up. I do remember that watching the moonshot was pushing back my bedtime, which was particularly crucial because I had to get up at 6:30 the next morning to help my dad milk the cows.

Eventually, I left the farm and got into the journalism trade (after stints as editor of my high-school and college newspaper). I really didn't get into space news coverage until after I joined msnbc.com, almost exactly 13 years ago. But every now and then, I come across hints that there was a space geek inside me just waiting to be let out.

For example, while cleaning out my basement bookshelves recently, I rediscovered the special issue of Life magazine I've been saving for 40 years. And I've always gotten a little thrill from knowing that Neil Armstrong's parents once lived where my in-laws live today in Wapakoneta, Ohio. (Check out this chapter from "First Man," Armstrong's authorized biography, to get an idea what the "center of the chaos" in Wapakoneta was like 40 years ago.)

I happened to grow up in the generation when the Apollo effort was winding down just as we were revving up: The last mission to the moon was launched just as I was entering college, and by the time I graduated, Apollo was history and the space shuttle era had not yet dawned. Some have even called my generation the "Orphans of Apollo."

Prizes for your prose
Now we're heading toward another spaceflight gap: An era in American spaceflight is winding down once more, and although NASA is taking aim at the moon again, the road from here to there is far from clear.

Even if you're too young to remember Apollo, I'd love to hear about your favorite space-related experiences, or find out what you think about the parallels and the differences between the 1970s and the current transition time. Please feel free to add your space-shot memories and your thoughts about the future of space travel as comments below. I'll pick out some of the comments for a follow-up story on July 20.

To get your creative juices flowing, I'll set aside my copy of Andrew Chaikin's wonderful coffee-table book, "Voices From the Moon," to send to the author of the choicest comment (as judged solely by this former Iowa farmboy). If you're so inclined, I'll send along the "Orphans of Apollo" DVD as well.

More on the Apollo 11 anniversary from msnbc.com:

• 'Time and Again': Remembering Apollo 11
• On the Web: Moonshots on your computer
• On screen: Apollo on rewind
• In print: Apollo in sharper focus
• Buzz Aldrin's journey (and his rap video)
• More space history on msnbc.com 

More Apollo 11 reminiscences on the Web:

• USA Weekend: The day the earth stood still
• Space Foundation: Apollo 11 stories keep coming in
• Florida Today: Moon landing memories
• The Guardian: Where were you when the Eagle landed? 
• New Scientist: Where were you for Apollo 11?
• Space.com (1999): Where were you in 1969? 
• Space.com (2009): "The Moon: Then, Now, Next"
• Where Were You: July 20, 1969