IBM's latest "Commuter Pain" index indicates that the traffic in Beijing and Mexico City is way worse than it is in Los Angeles or New York. Big-city traffic is never pleasant - but there's hope as well as hassle, thanks to some high-tech traffic strategies currently under construction. That's the reason why IBM started measuring the pain in the first place.

This is the third year that IBM has come out with its CPI. "The first two years, we had focused intentionally on U.S. cities, but this year we decided to expand it a bit more and look at cities around the world," said Naveen Lamba, global industry lead for IBM's Intelligent Transportation practice.

For this year's index, IBM worked with Survey Sampling International to poll 8,192 motorists between the ages of 18 and 65 in 20 international cities during the month of May. The drivers were asked 10 questions about metrics such as commuting time as well as their views on gas prices and road-related stress. Average scores for each city were converted to a 100-point scale.

Moscow's drivers reported the longest-lasting traffic delays. When they were asked to report the length of the worst jam they've experienced during the past three years, the average time was two and a half hours. Across the board, the average longest wait time was an hour. Drivers in New Delhi and Beijing reported the highest incidence of traffic-related health problems (96 percent and 95 percent, respectively). Eighty-four percent of the Beijing commuters said traffic has had a negative effect on work or school.

When all the scores were compiled and weighted on a 0-to-100 scale, Beijing and Mexico City were tied with a 99. Los Angeles, the most painful U.S. city on the list, was tied with Amsterdam way down at No. 13. The least painful city on the list of 20? That would be Stockholm, the even-tempered capital of Sweden.

Here's the full list:

IBM

This graph shows the scores of 20 cities on the Consumer Pain Index. Beijing and Mexico are tied with 99, the highest score. Other cities include Johannesburg (97), Moscow (84), New Delhi (81), Sao Paulo (75), Milan (52), Buenos Aires (50), Madrid (48), London (36), Paris (36), Toronto (32), Amsterdam (25), Los Angeles (25), Berlin (24), Montreal (23), New York (19), Houston (17), Melbourne (17) and Stockholm (15).

Roughly half of those surveyed said that traffic has gotten worse in the past three years, and 31 percent said the tie-ups have gotten so bad on occasion that they've had to turn around and go home.

So why is IBM doing this, other than to make Angelenos feel better about their commuting woes? Here's why: Using network science to ease traffic messes just might be a growth industry in the years ahead. The global market for intelligent transportation projects could reach $421 billion per year by 2015, according to Brian Cotton, vice president of consulting at Frost & Sullivan.

IBM doesn't just make computers and the software that runs them. The company also sells fare-management systems for mass transit, flow prediction systems for traffic managers and lots of transportation-related software. Doing the Commuter Pain survey helps IBM figure out which products could make the biggest impact.

"What types of solutions can we develop to mitigate pain points? ... The situation is so bad in certain instances that one or two solutions are not going to make much of a dent," Lamba said.

Among the potential solutions: adjusting the traffic lights on streets and freeway on-ramps to reflect the ebb and flow of vehicles ... raising or lowering tolls based on congestion ... giving different routing guidance to different sets of commuters. "With all these different levers, we analyze what would be the impact of making those interventions," Lamba said.

One of the biggest challenges is simply giving commuters and transit managers accurate information about the delays that are just ahead. "Real time is great, but real time is often too late. ... If you can get ahead of the curve, where you can predict very accurately a little bit into the future, then you can proactively manage these networks," Lamba said.

IBM's traffic prediction software combines historical data and real-time traffic reports, road segment by road segment, to estimate what a commute will look like as the commuter continues down the road. The system was put to a successful test a couple of years ago in Singapore. "It can accurately predict anywhere up to 60 minutes into the future and tell you what the speeds and volumes will be on each of the links that you have the information from," Lamba said.

Those predictions can be distributed to commuters via electronic bus-stop signs or mobile devices to let them know when the bus is really going to arrive, as opposed to when the schedule merely claims it will be there. The software can even fill in gaps in regional traffic data, although those gaps are likely to fade as GPS-based traffic monitoring takes hold.

All this predictive power sounds great. But as quantum physicist Niels Bohr once said, prediction is very difficult, especially about the future (or was that Yogi Berra?). "We can project this information, but the minute you disseminate that information, that prediction is no longer valid," Lamba acknowledged. If you tell commuters to take Highway 99 rather than Interstate 5, soon Highway 99 becomes as clogged as the interstate.

That's where differential advice comes into play. "What is the desired end state you want [the road network] to look like, and given that end state, what is the information that you put out to different people?" Lamba said. Just as airport security agents direct people into different inspection lines to even out the load, commuters going from the same point A to point B may be pointed in different directions to even out the pain.

If this sounds geeky, that's good: It's high time that we took game theory to the streets. To learn more about the linkage between network science and highway traffic, check out this report from Capital Ideas Online, as well as the book on which the article is based, "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)."

More network analysis from Lamba:

• Will embedded traffic sensors become obsolete? Lamba said IBM is exploring ways to monitor traffic flow continuously by using GPS devices in cars, starting with taxis. "Now you've got a new wave of sensors. We can use cameras as sensors as well." Someday, the stoplight will know you're coming and turn green just in time. Or, on the flip side, snap a picture of your license plate if you happen to run the light.

• Are there cultural differences in commuter pain? Yes, Lamba said: "In certain European cities, the level of transit usage is much higher, and people walk more to work. That's the normal expectation, whereas in Los Angeles or some other cities, the expectation may be different." For example, a Swede might be more patient about waiting for pedestrians to pass, while U.S. drivers might prefer a route that avoids having to deal with pedestrians, even if the trip takes a little longer.

• Why do traffic jams occur even when there's no blocking problem? "There's this concept of hyperequilibrium, where there's so much demand on the network that any small disturbance has non-proportional impact. A small thing where a police car has its lights on, that causes so much delay." Lamba recalled a troublesome commute of his own, which was set off because the cars ahead of him slowed down as they entered a patch of the street where the sun was shining into drivers' eyes. "As soon as you cross the segment where you're not looking at the sun directly, everything is just fine," he said.

• Can you escape congestion by moving over to an alternate route? Lamba says that's usually a myth. In most cases, traffic flow quickly adjusts to even out the load. "People are thinking the other street is better, but in reality ... you don't get any advantage by taking the alternate route, assuming that no incidents have happened."

More about traffic tech:

• Most dangerous season for driving? Right now
• Red Tape: Bad news about drivers who text
• Auto to climb Pikes Peak without a driver
• Apps for the auto are on the way
• How's my driving? Ask my car

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

• Pew Research Center: Public sees future full of promise and peril
• Bad Astronomer: Another direct picture of exoplanet confirmed
• Daily Grail: Zahi Hawass is chasing mummies ... on reality TV!
• New Scientist: All you need to know about general relativity

A $10 million competition for ultra-efficient vehicles is rolling on toward next month's finals after eliminating about a dozen of the cars vying for the prize.

The Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize competition is aimed at rewarding the development of marketable automobiles capable of getting of 100 miles per gallon of gasoline, or the equivalent for other energy sources (a measure known as MPGe). Almost half of the cars that came to the Michigan International Speedway for the contest's Knockout stage, conducted at the Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Mich., had to go home with wounded hopes.

At the most, 15 cars are still in the running for a share of the X Prize purse. And until the organizers announce the official lineup for the on-track finals, due to take place July 19-30, there's a chance that additional cars could yet be eliminated.

But there are clear front-runners for the $10 million, based on this week's results:

• If anyone is going to win the $5 million set aside for four-seat mainstream cars this year, it will be the Edison2 team, led by Virginia real estate developer Oliver Kuttner. The only vehicles left in that competition category are two of the models entered by Edison2. One of the team's hybrid Very Light Cars achieved 101.4 MPGe before penalties were assessed. But after accounting for those penalties (deducted due to repairs, drive cycle violations or other no-nos), its score fell to 67.3, barely above the 67 MPGe requirement for this round. Edison2 also has a tandem two-seater vying for an alternative prize.

• Li-ion Motors' all-electric Wave II registered the highest fuel efficiency among side-by-side two-seaters, with a 182.3 MPGe performance. That's a front-running performance among "alternative" cars in the Knockout stage. But winning $2.5 million in the finals could require speed as well as efficiency. If multiple cars satisfy all the requirements during the finals, including the 100 MPGe standard, then the prize goes to the car with the lowest elapsed time during an on-track trial that's designed to test efficiency as well as range. The side-by-side class has eight entrants, so this is potentially the most competitive category.

• Switzerland's X-Tracer Team had not just one, but two tandem two-seaters entered in the Knockout stage, and both of them were passed through to the finals. The X-Tracer cars (which look more like glorified motorcycles) had the highest efficiency scores in their class, at 180 and 171.6 MPGe. That makes them the front-runners for the $2.5 million in the tandem alternative category. During the Knockout stage, they were the only cars in their class to achieve better than 100 MPGe efficiency.

There are also plenty of disappointments. Among the teams eliminated over the past week and a half are American HyPower, BITW Technologies, Enginer, FVT Racing, Global-E, Illuminati Motor Works, OptaMotive, Team EVX and West Philly Hybrid X. The Cornell 100+ MPG Team, K-Way MOTUS and Liberty Motors Group withdrew even before the Knockout trials got started last week.

The Knockout outcome was particularly disappointing for the West Philly team, a high-school group that garnered more and more attention as the contest progressed; and for the Illuminati gang, whose retro-looking electric car offered the only competition for the Edison2 team in the mainstream class. The Illuminati Seven vehicle posted an impressive 119.8 MPGe score in the efficiency trials.

"We're out," Illuminati announced in a Twitter tweet on Monday evening. "Despite amazing efficiency MPGe, we were knocked out when our transmission broke during the Consumer Reports 0-60 test."

West Philly's converted Ford Focus fell 3.5 points short of the required efficiency score of 67 MPGe, apparently due in part to a battery-charging snafu. Simon Hauger, the West Philadelphia High School teacher who led the team, was philosophical in his Monday-morning blog post:

"Our game plan was right on, our cars ran perfectly, and our kids amazed everyone who had the pleasure of meeting them. We proved to the world that a bunch of high school kids and their teachers can build a safe, affordable, American-made car that gets over 75 mpg (over 100 mpg on the highway). This is a real car that has a real business plan. It was built by real kids and what they have done has real significance."

That's the bottom line for the X Prize phenomenon. It's not about the $10 million. ... OK, maybe it's partly about the $10 million. But in the longer run, it's about bursts of innovation that will yield real payoffs in the years to come. I can hardly wait to see how the next burst plays out.

Learn more about the teams still standing after the Knockout round:

Mainstream Class Teams:
Mainstream Class vehicles must carry four or more passengers, have four or more wheels, and offer a 200-mile range.

• Edison2, Lynchburg, Virginia (E85, two cars)

Alternative Class Teams:
Alternative Class vehicles must carry two or more passengers and allow for a 100-mile range.

Side-by-side seating:

• amp, Blue Ash, Ohio (Electric)
• Aptera Motors, Vista, California (Electric)
• Li-ion Motors at EV Innovations, Mooresville, North Carolina (Electric)
• RaceAbout Association, Helsinki, Finland (Electric)
• Tata Motors Limited, Coventry, United Kingdom (Electric)
• TW4XP, Rosenthal, Germany (Electric)
• Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington (Gasoline)
• ZAP, Santa Rosa, California (Electric)

Tandem seating:

• Edison2, Lynchburg, Virginia (E85)
• Spira, Banglamung, Chonburi, Thailand (Gasoline)
• Tango (Commuter Cars), Spokane, Washington (Electric)
• X-Tracer Team Switzerland, Uster, Switzerland (Electric, two cars)

Check out our slideshow of X Prize competitors from the earlier Shakedown stage of the competition. And for still more about Edison2, click through to Jason Fagone's report for Slate.

Update for 1:30 p.m. ET June 30: A new spreadsheet from the X Prize lays out what happened during the Knockout stage in further detail. Most of the eliminated cars failed to reach the minimum 67 MPGe requirement, with a smattering of cars that flunked the emissions test or the technical inspection, didn't achieve 0-to-60 acceleration or simply didn't show up in time for an on-track event.

"The Knockout was just that - a true knockout - which surprised some of the teams with its rigor," Cristin Lindsay, vice president of prize operations for the X Prize Foundation, told me.

The finals could bring similar surprises. As an example, Lindsay pointed to Illuminati's transmission failure during the acceleration trial. "I could see that type of thing happening at finals again," she said. So get ready for some even more serious chills and thrills in the weeks ahead.

On the correction front, meanwhile, TW4XP is in the side-by-side alternative class, rather than the tandem class where I initially listed it.

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The machines that are fighting the Gulf of Mexico oil leak have been compared to platoons of Supermen: They work 5,000 feet beneath the surface of the sea, amid pressures that would crush a human. They're built to capture 3-D video of the scene around the gushing well and send it up topside. They can detect objects hundreds of feet away using sonar. They can turn bolts, saw off broken pipe, hook up hoses and carry around equipment weighing hundreds of pounds.

But they're just machines.

Those dozens of machines would be useless without the hundreds of humans controlling their every move from a mile away. And if you want to stay on their good side, you'll call those machines "remotely operated vehicles," or ROVs - not underwater robots.

"To me, as an ROV person, the term 'underwater robot' does conjure up a certain image," said James McLauchlan, a Briton living in Portugal who has 25 years of experience in the offshore subsea construction industry under his belt. "I tend to think of something with a head, two legs and two arms ... something that's down there trying to make its own decisions, trying to make the best of a difficult job."

The way McLauchlan sees it, the ROV is just a tool - a multimillion-dollar, high-tech tool, to be sure, but nevertheless a tool that's being manipulated by flesh-and-blood professionals, via a local control center on the vessel or rig above, to help save the world from an environmental disaster.

McLauchlan isn't involved in the BP subsea operation, but he keeps close tabs on it in his role as the head of ROV World, a website that serves as an online watering hole for the ROV community. His company also supplies subsea technology and performs underwater inspections for offshore operations. A veteran of the British Army's Royal Engineers, McLauchlan spent 10 years as a commercial bell diver for the oil and gas industry, and for most of the past 15 years he's been a shift operation supervisor for offshore ROV construction projects.

Nowadays, much of the chatter on ROV World focuses on what the workers behind the machines are doing in the Gulf. ROV pilots have been trading news and rumors, pictures and points of view since just after the April 20 oil-rig explosion that sparked the disaster in the Gulf.

As you'd expect, most of the postings see the situation through the eyes of the men behind the joysticks. For example, BP interrupted the collection of thousands of barrels of oil last week because of problems with a line leading up from the leaking well's containment cap. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the federal government's point man on the oil-spill response, said the problem arose because an ROV bumped into the cap - but not all of ROV World's patrons were buying that explanation.

"Let me guess - Thad Allen again?" one posting read. "Meanwhile, back in the real world, Enterprise had gas alarms and moved off 400 meters, resulting in cap moving 40 meters off the BOP [blowout preventer]."

During our conversation, McLauchlan stressed that the pilots are careful to execute only the commands they are given, under the watchful eyes of supervisors and clients.

"The fact that the well is not good, and that BP has lost control of it, that's self-evident," McLauchlan told me. "That doesn't really detract from subsea operations. ... Whether there's a well that is out of control, or whether a well is in normal operation, we carry out operations as suggested by the client. We provide the eyes and the ears for the client, but at the end of the day, it's the client who decides what action should be taken."

McLauchlan estimated that more than 97 percent of the world's ROV pilot techs are male. For the Gulf of Mexico operation, ROV crews are housed for weeks at a time aboard the dozens of vessels and rigs surrounding the leaking well. Each crew works a 12-hour shift, finishing up with "toolbox time" to brief the crew taking over for the next 12-hour shift. In an on-the-scene report from one of the drillships, The Washington Post's Joel Achenbach notes that workers can take advantage of workout rooms, foosball tables, video games, TV and Internet during their off hours. But drinking and "horseplay" are not allowed.

In an e-mail exchange, McLauchlan discussed the routine of an ROV pilot, with the understanding that he's an ocean away from the action. Here's an edited transcript of the Q&A:

Cosmic Log: I'm just trying to visualize how the operation works. With the BP operation, there appears to be "the Hive," which is the ROV Operations Center, part of the Houston Crisis Center. But that looks to be folks sitting around computer terminals. I assume these are the people who are orchestrating the campaign on the big-picture scale, but the actual steering is done on the various ships that are at the site.

James McLauchlan: You would be correct in assuming that the Ops Center is BP's nerve center for this operation. Normally this is not the case as, when all is well, the client representative on ships (or, in the case of drilling rigs, the company man) is the first point of client liaison for normal operations. Most normal operational issues are dealt with onboard, or changes are implemented during normal working hours onshore unless there is an emergency. Then the emergency plan can be put into action.

There is always a 24/7 emergency response plan in place onboard, and various numbers on the beach that I (I say 'I' as an offshore project manager during such projects) can call if I feel the need. If we have an emergency situation that is beyond our control we are not simply left alone to get on with it. We can call on help as soon as we need. In any case, any incident or near miss needs to be reported and acted upon ASAP. There are always procedures in place for this.

Operations-wise, on the BP-chartered vessels right now there will be a couple of BP representatives (at minimum) on the vessels to give 24-hour coverage. They will be having their strings pulled by BP people further up the food chain in the Ops Center on the beach for sure.

BP

A room known as "the Hive" houses the ROV Operations Center inside BP's Houston Crisis Center.

Q: Is there generally a live two-way link between the onshore center and the offshore pilot operation?

A: Mostly only in cases such as this type of major disaster, you might get a live video link. It is common for many normal high-end operations these days to have a live 24/7 Ku-band connection to the beach for all sorts of communication. Phones, Internet, fax, etc., but that's just for routine day-to-day stuff, not live video streaming, as it really sucks up the available bandwidth. The vessel or rig comms can be and are utilized for emergency 24/7 communications if required.

Q: Do the pilots live aboard ship?

A: ROV pilots and all associated project staff live on the ship. The same applies to drill rigs.

Q: Are they cycled off and on for shore time?

A: Often a trip could be 28 days, but it can be as short as two weeks (in Norway and U.K., for example) or as long as six weeks (Asia, Africa and other areas). It varies depending on which part of the world we are operating in, how long the job might be, etc. Many drill rigs have regular crew-change rotation of two weeks on, two weeks off ... or four weeks on, four weeks off.

Q: You mentioned that there were 12-hour shifts, with a handover and "toolbox talk" at the transition between each shift. Do pilots stare into display monitors and move joysticks around during all that time, or is there usually some down time where the ROV is "parked" because of the demands of simultaneuos operations?

A: Generally a work-class ROV system, such as the ones being used in the BP Gulf of Mexico operation and globally, has a three-man crew for each 12-hour shift. That's one ROV supervisor and two pilot techs.

Courtesy of James McLauchlan

James McLauchlan keeps close tabs on the oil-spill disaster on the ROV World online forum.

One person flies, one is co-pilot, the other is around to help out. A three-man team does allow for people to get a break, have a coffee, meals, etc. Each person on the three-man team should be able to rotate out through all positions. The supervisor runs the shift and liaises with the operations supervisor or client depending on how big the vessel or job might be.

Often the ROV can be put on the bottom, just observing. Watching the oil leak is a prime example. Then you really need only one guy in the pilot's seat and one guy in the shack to help if required. That leaves a guy to float around and do other stuff. In general, a 12-hour shift can be hard on occasions, but perfectly manageable for normal operations ... and sometimes deathly quiet. When the weather is bad there may be no operations for days, which is when we catch up on preventive and ongoing maintenance tasks.

Sometimes another vessel may need to come in and perform non-ROV-related tasks. Then the ROV boat might pull off for a period.

Q: How do the ROV pilots on different ships involved in the operation avoid having their machines bump into each other, or getting their lines (for power and comm) tangled up? During simultaneous operations, is there an open channel or a traffic controller that orchestrates the different parts of the operation?

A: All ROV's have sonar. We can 'see' objects around us, and after a while you build up a mental map of the seabed as you would if you walked in the same park day in, day out. Plus we have multiple cameras and lights. Most ROV's are lit up like a Christmas tree underwater so it's hard to miss seeing one. For positioning we know where the ROVs are by using USBL underwater positioning systems that show the location of an ROV on a screen in relation to the vessel it is operating from. With more complex multivessel operations, all this data and video streams can be fed between vessels and fed to other ROV systems.

If we have two or more work class systems working together we set up live 24/7 live comms between all ROV control systems. We have hard wire and radio comms plus phones, so should any one system fail we have fallbacks. With regards to tethers ... at these depths, ROV use Tether Management Systems so we rarely have issues with ROV tethers becoming entangled. It happens, but in 99 percent of the instances I have ever known we were able to untangle them without external assistance.

Q: How does this operation rate compared with the operations in your experience? I've got to think that this is the most complex operation ever conducted in the offshore world, but I have to say I don't have any experience with that.

A: This operation is not one of the most complex. We do far more complicated construction tasks than this all over the world. This one may look complex, but that might be because the public has no real idea what we do routinely on construction projects.

Q: Do you find there's a particular type of person who's best-suited for this kind of work (for example, a video gamer, or former military)?

A: Experienced time-served mechanics with hydraulics experience, and electrical/electronic personnel are the best types. Ex-military with the same experience are good candidates too. Computer gamers probably couldn't even wire up an electrical plug or use a spanner (wrench), so would be of no use to us.

More on the disaster in the Gulf:

• How to cope with Gulf oil glitches
• Is God punishing the Gulf?
• Newsweek: How robots help stop the Gulf oil spill
• Interactive: The physics of oil spills
• Full coverage from msnbc.com

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

• Univ. of Manchester: 'Plato Code' cracked? | The code explained
• This Is Wiltshire: The Marden Henge mystery (via Daily Grail)
• Spaceflight Now: Falcon 9 spacecraft meets fiery end
• The New Yorker: The plastic panic

A partial lunar eclipse may not be as spectacular as totality, but it can sure generate some spectacular pictures. And thanks to all the online channels that are now available to photographers, it's easier than ever to see a worldwide selection.

Well, make that a "half-worldwide" selection: Lunar eclipses, partial as well as total, are visible to half of the globe at once. That's in contrast with total solar eclipses, which can be seen only along a miles-wide track that extends across what's usually an exotic strip of the world (like the South Pacific, which is the focus of next month's brush with solar totality).

The prime viewing for Saturday's eclipse stretched from the western side of the Americas to the eastern edges of Asia. In California's Mojave Desert, the peak time was around 4:30 a.m. in the morning - or "0-dark-30," to use photographer Alan Radecki's term. His multiple-exposure image, featured above, shows our planet's shadow subtly moving from one edge of the moon to the other during the course of the eclipse.

Slamet Riyadi / AP

Earth casts a shadow over the moon during a partial lunar eclipse, as seen on the evening of June 26 from Yogyakarta in central Java. Click here for an interactive graphic that explains eclipse astronomy.

The peak hour came earlier as you went farther west, and on the other side of the International Date Line, it was Saturday night when the eclipse was at its peak. Australian photographer Andrew Ritchie captured a multiple-exposure picture that was somewhat similar to Radecki's, but looking toward the other horizon.

Indonesians gathered in Yogyakarta on the island of Java to watch the show. Others saw the eclipse from the Pacific as well as from Asia, stretching eastward as far as India and Nepal. This NASA map shows the area of visibility.

Slamet Riyadi / AP

An Indonesian student uses a telescope to look at Saturday's lunar eclipse from Yogyakarta in Java.

If you weren't in the eclipse zone, or if clouds (or sleep) kept you from seeing the event as it happened, you can still experience some of the thrill by checking out SpaceWeather.com's gallery of eclipse pics, or doing a PicFog search. Space.com's Tariq Malik rounds up a nice selection of photos, including a time-exposure photo of the International Space Station passing over California's Palomar Mountain during Scott Kardel's eclipse-watching session.

The next lunar eclipse will be a total one, occurring on Dec. 21 with North America in the prime viewing position. But you don't have to wait that long to get an eyeful of the sky. Now is the best time of year to see the space station pass overhead, and NASA's online database tells you when and where to look. (There are four sighting opportunities tonight from my neck of the woods.)

July 11's total solar eclipse won't be at all visible from North America - you'll have to go someplace in the Pacific or South America to see it. But I'm hoping that some scientific expedition groups, such as the Saros Group, will be sending out video streams while it's happening. If you know of webcasters who are making preparations (or Chilean and Argentinian TV networks that are touting live coverage), let me know in your comments below and we'll put together a roundup for armchair eclipse-watchers around the globe.

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As many as 10 teams have fallen by the wayside in the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize contest for ultra-efficient cars — and other teams are working hard to stay in.

When this week's second round of on-track testing began at the Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Mich., 24 teams were in the running for the prize. The competition is aimed at encouraging the development of marketable cars capable of getting 100 miles per gallon of gasoline, or equivalent energy efficiency for other power systems. That's what's known as 100 MPGe.

During this first week of the Knockout phase, the challenge has been all about being able to hit the 67 MPGe mark, which is two-thirds of the efficiency goal. The cars also had to prove that they could go 67 miles (for two-seaters) or 134 miles (for four-seaters) without refueling. If they can do that, then they move on next week to further rounds of tests to check their emission levels and handling. Those tests are due to continue until June 30. The cars that satisfy the requirements will return to Michigan for an even more grueling round of finals next month.

The $10 million purse, put up by Progressive, will be split among the top finisher in the four-seater "mainstream" category ($5 million), plus the leading two-seater "alternative" teams in two categories (tandem and side-by-side, $2.5 million each). That's assuming that at least some of the cars attain 100 MPGe, while satisfying requirements for range, emissions and safety. A lot of teams are not going to make it. AutoblogGreen's Sebastian Blanco quoted the competition's senior director, Eric Cahill, as saying he thought 10 to 16 cars would qualify to move on to the finals.

The Knockout stage isn't even over yet, and Cahill's assessment has already come true. On Friday, before the week's standings were announced, Illuminati Motor Works team leader Kevin Smith told me "there'll be some surprises on the website." The results posted on Saturday morning weren't pretty.

Smith's team was one of the survivors, but he's not overjoyed to see fellow competitors fail. "We've got some friends on other teams," he said. "It's upsetting to see this."

Here are the teams that have been dealt setbacks so far in this round:

• American HyPower: Eliminated due to a faulty fuel sensor. In a Facebook posting, the team emphasized that their elimination was not related to their car's hydrogen-fueled engine. "Although we're no longer in the competition, we'll continue to follow it as we further develop our technology," the team said.

• BITW Technologies: The standings show that the Indiana-based BITW team's Vincitore 1000, a Chevy Metro that was modified to use a three-cylinder biodiesel engine, was eliminated this week.

• Cornell 100+ MPG: Withdrew just as the Knockout stage was getting under way, due to a problem with the electronics that monitor the car's battery power, according to Consumer Reports.

• Edison2: The Virginia-based team came to the Knockout stage with four cars. This week its side-by-side two-seater was eliminated, but the team still has two four-seaters and a tandem two-seater in the running.

• Enginer: X Prize organizers said the team's hybrid steam combustion/electric vehicle was eliminated.

• Global-E: One of its two high-efficiency prototypes, the Pulse, was eliminated before the Knockout phase began. Its G1 model didn't make the grade during this week's testing, according to the X Prize standings. That means the team is finished for this year.

• K-Way MOTUS: As I mentioned a few days ago, the Italy-based K-Way team had to withdraw from the competition due to engine troubles.

• Liberty Motors Group: Also withdrew as the Knockout phase was beginning.

• Optamotive: The side-by-side, all-electric E-Rex was eliminated, but the judges' decision was still being appealed as of Saturday.

• Team EVX: The Texas-based team's all-electric SmartCar was eliminated this week.

• West Philly Hybrid X: This high-school team was a sentimental favorite, but both of its hybrid cars were knocked out during this week's trials, X Prize spokeswoman Arron Robinson told me.

That's 12 cars eliminated this week, including the two from West Philly. Nine teams are no longer in the $10 million competition, one team is appealing the elimination, and Edison2 still has other cars in the race. Additional cars could be eliminated as the teams "move on to complete next week's acceleration, braking and avoidance maneuver tests conducted by Consumer Reports' staff," Liza Barth wrote Friday on Consumer Reports' blog.

On the plus side, Western Washington University's team reportedly aced the range test on Friday and will move on to the next round. ZAP Alias said its celebrity driver, Al Unser Jr., "congratulated the team" on Friday's performance. Canada-based FVT Racing said its hybrid electric/gasoline fuel-vapor vehicle passed the range test "with flying colours."

Based on the reports so far, Kevin Smith and his Illuminati team were among the week's big winners. Their swoopy-looking Seven vehicle reportedly averaged 119.8 MPGe in its efficiency tests. AutoblogGreen's Blanco said the Seven's batteries needed some conditioning to achieve the required range - and when I asked about that, Smith acknowledged that working with the new batteries was a challenge.

"It's still posing some challenges, but we're getting there," he said.

The Knockout tests aren't finished yet. Next week, the survivors will have to prove they can handle the road safely and operate within emission standards. (The all-electric Seven should have no problem with that latter issue.) And then there are the finals next month ... and the lab tests in August ... and the awards ceremony in September. The end of the road, and the definitive demonstration that 100-mile-a-gallon efficiency is technically possible as well as marketable, is still a couple of months away for the X Prize competitors. But as Smith said, they're getting there.

Update for 9:30 p.m. ET June 28: There's more bad news from Monday's acceleration tests. Consumer Reports' Jeff Bartlett says via Twitter that the German-made, battery-electric TW4XP two-seater tried to pass its acceleration test and "did not make it." Bartlett also said Illuminati's Seven didn't make the grade: "Team Illuminati did not pass the accel test. Painful to see. Team has much to be proud of."

If Illuminati is out of the running, then the $5 million prize for the most efficient four-seat mainstream car would be Edison2's to lose. The only mainstream vehicles still in the competition are the two Very Light Cars fielded by Edison2. The same team has a two-seater in the running for an alternative-category prize. Edison2 reported that it exceeded the required 67 MPGe standard and hit 100 MPGe during the Knockout efficiency tests.

Over the weekend, I spoke with Eric Cahill, the competition's senior director, and he told me that the 67 MPGe requirement "has been the biggest hurdle" during the Knockout stage. But it sounds as if the zero-to-60 test is a killer as well. Cahill was well aware that the challenge for four-passenger vehicles is tougher than it is for two-passenger vehicles.

"We are very optimistic that we are going to have winners, most certainly in the alternative [category]," he told me. "With the mainstream [category], we're optimistic - but it's going to be a bit narrower."

Update for 12:30 p.m. ET June 29: In today's blog post, Consumer Reports' Jeff Bartlett indicates that TW4XP was at last able to pass the acceleration test. Illuminati appears to be out of the competition, along with the team fielding the Amp Electric Sky sports car. But Bartlett points out that appeals are still being heard, and so the word on some of these eliminations is not yet definitive. Stay tuned for the semifinal answers. (The finals are scheduled next month.)

Check out our wicked-cool slideshow featuring X Prize cars. Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

If you live in the Americas, you'll have to get up early on Saturday morning to catch a glimpse of a partial lunar eclipse - but this one should look bigger than you'd expect, thanks to a trick of the eye.

This lunar eclipse is actually the second event in this year's eclipse parade, and arguably the least spectacular blackout of the bunch. The really big events are coming up ... including an exotic total solar eclipse next month and a perfectly timed lunar eclipse in the midst of the December holiday season.

The heart of Saturday's eclipse won't even be visible from parts of the East Coast. But the fact that it takes place close to sunrise means the eclipsed moon will be low in western skies as seen from the rest of the United States - and that means the well-known "moon illusion" will come into play.

The moon always looks bigger when it's near the horizon, as compared with when it's high in the sky. But the reasons for that are still a matter of debate among psychologists: One factor is that the moon's proximity to the horizon leads the viewer to see it alongside tiny distant objects on the horizon. Our primate brains are programmed to perceive the moon as being even farther away, and much bigger than those distant objects.

But when the moon is hanging in a big empty sky, our brains don't make that perceptual connection quite as easily. Some researchers say we perceive the heavens as a shallow inverted bowl, with celestial objects high in the sky seeming to loom more closely, like a cloud or a bird directly overhead. Others say the "inverted bowl" theory is dead-wrong, and say the angular-size illusion involves something called oculomotor micropsia.

For more perspectives on the moon illusion, check out these archived explanations from NASA Science News, Space.com and Bad Astronomy - and ponder the mystery as you gaze at the morning's darkening moon.

Sky and Telescope

This chart shows the progression of Saturday's partial lunar eclipse, with times expressed as UTC (GMT). The peak of the event comes at 11:38 UT, which is 7:38 a.m. ET (after sunrise) or 4:38 a.m. PT.

Here are a few more tips to add some style to your moon observations:

• Because Earth's shadow covers only about half of the moon at the most, this eclipse won't be as spectacular as totality, but you may see a slight reddening of the dark half, due to the light refracted by Earth's atmosphere, as explained in this article.

• The peak of the eclipse comes at 7:38 a.m. ET - after the sun has risen - but for West Coast residents that's a doable 4:38 a.m. Prime time comes even earlier in the Pacific and east Asia - with Australia potentially the most pleasant place for eclipse-viewing. (Put a shrimp on the barbie for me Saturday evening, mate!) For the full details on viewing conditions, click here.

• This weekend is a good time to look for the International Space Station in the skies above. In fact, the shining orbital outpost is due to make a pass over the United States right around the time of the eclipse. Check out NASA's online sighting database to find out when you'll be able to spot it. Click onto SpaceWeather.com for more about space station sightings as well as pictures of the eclipse and this month's auroral displays.

• This eclipse is a mere warmup for the big South Pacific solar total eclipse that's due to occur on July 11. The bad news is that I won't be going to Easter Island to watch the show in person. The good news is that you can usually find a webcast to watch totality in real time, even if it's the middle of the night where you live. Stay tuned for a rundown of the viewing opportunities.

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

• 'Nova' on PBS: 'The Spy Factory'
• The Daily Grail: Singularity backlash
• New Scientist: 40 questions of science
• National Geographic: The evolutionary road

• Cracked: 7 classic Disney movies based on R-rated tales
• BoingBoing: All your favorite dinosaurs suck (@$!%# alert)
• ABC Australia: Women's bodies 'choosy' about sperm
• BBC: Building a do-it-yourself nuclear fusion reactor

Don't panic over those reports that solar storms could cause high-tech disruptions in 2013. But don't ignore them either. That's the word from NASA Headquarters' top guy for solar science.

Concerns about the potential for an unprecedented assault from space were stoked last week by a report in London's Telegraph, warning that a super storm could cause "catastrophic consequencies for the world's health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken."

The warnings focus on the 2012-2013 time frame, because that's when the 11-year solar activity cycle is expected to peak. Back in 2006, solar scientists said the coming peak, known as solar maximum or "solar max," could be 30 to 50 percent stronger than the last one, based on a computer model that looked at how plasma circulates between the sun's equator and its poles.

Since then, additional reports have added to the concern: In 2008, a National Academy of Sciences study said a severe geomagnetic storm could cause $2 trillion in damage and require as much as a decade of recovery time. In comparison, the damage estimate for Hurricane Katrina is a mere $80 billion or so.

Amid all the hype about a 2012 Maya apocalypse, there's been increasing talk about the potential for a solar superstorm on the scale of 1859's "Carrington event," which shorted out telegraph wires, sparked fires and set off auroral displays as far south as Cuba. The fear is that the damage would be more severe in this world of GPS navigation, satellite communications and mobile devices.

The Telegraph's article quoted Richard Fisher, the head of NASA's Heliospheric Division at the space agency's Washington headquarters, as saying that a superstorm would "cause major problems for the world."

"It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigation, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic," he told the Telegraph.

When I caught up with Fisher, his forecast was less dire, and less definite: He told me it's far too early to say just how strong the next solar maximum will be. In fact, some experts are now predicting that the intensity will be well below average, based on the fact that the sun has been unusually quiet in recent years.

"The next maximum is anticipated to be somewhere around the lowest ever seen to a little bit higher than the highest that's ever been seen," Fisher said half-jokingly. "I think it was Yogi Berra who said ... the problem with predictions is that they all take place in the future."

But Fisher doesn't joke about the need to be prepared for the potential disruptions caused by space weather. A bad solar storm could easily have a negative impact on everyday life. For example, air traffic over the North Pole has increased dramatically since the previous solar maximum in 2001. If severe geomagnetic storms were to sweep past Earth, those flights would have to be shifted farther south to guard against communication disruptions. This year's Icelandic ash mess suggests how a situation like that might affect global travel and commerce.

"It has a fairly large economic impact on an airline if you have to divert an airliner," Fisher noted.

Fortunately, the methods for predicting space weather have improved over the past decade or two. Satellites such as the Advanced Composition Explorer can spot the signs of a geomagnetic storm up to an hour before it hits our planet, providing valuable lead time for power grid operators. (A space storm in 1989 sparked a nine-hour electrical blackout in Quebec, affecting 6 million customers and costing the power company more than $10 million.) Other observing instruments, which measure seismic activity originating on the far side of the sun, can provide a couple of weeks of warning about active sunspot regions.

So how bad does Fisher think things can get in 2013?

"I think there's a relatively high probability that there will be a solar event that will have some effect over hours to tens of hours. That's pretty high in the next 10 years," he told me. "I think that it's a low probability but a very high-impact circumstance for a large solar event that disrupts infrastructure for periods of longer than a day or two."

He doesn't advise preparing for Armageddon, but he does suggest that you have an emergency supply of food, water and the other things you need to weather a disaster. Which is good advice whether or not a superstorm hits in 2013.

"In modern life, you want to understand how vulnerable you are," Fisher said. "A good big winter storm will knock out the local power delivery for hours to a day or two. I keep a little water around the house in case that situation happens. There are alternate systems for providing power to hospitals, critical records and things like that. I think it'll be inconvenient, as opposed to ... well, not necessarily deadly, for goodness' sake."

Update for 9:15 p.m. ET: Just how vulnerable are our satellite-based communication systems to outbursts from the sun? For another perspective on the superstorm hype, I checked with Joseph Mazur, associate director of the space science department at The Aerospace Corp.

"At Aerospace, when we're working with our national security customers and commercial customers and even NASA, we're really focused on the space systems working throughout the extremes of the space environment," Mazur said. "So we do our work before the spacecraft is launched."

The Aerospace Corp. works with satellite builders and operators to make sure their spacecraft can stand up to the worst-case scenario for space weather. That scenario is based on previous observations, and not on hypothetical speculation about how bad things might have gotten in 1859. "There's not much information about what the specific hazards were like for that event. ... In mission design, there is currently no way to account for an event that exceeds the previous worst case," Mazur said.

Mazur wanted to clear up a couple of misconceptions about outbursts from the sun: First of all, he said, "I really have a problem with the whole phrase 'solar storm,' because in the public literature, it connotes something that comes from the sun. ... The problem is that you can't just put all of space weather into one term." In reality, space weather takes in a spectrum of phenomena - ranging from outbursts of radio interference that travel at the speed of light, to eruptions of electrically charged particles that take more than an hour to reach Earth and interact with our planet's magnetosphere.

Another misconception is that space weather events occur only at solar max. "Impacts from the space environment aren't really correlated with the solar cycle very well. ... What we try to advise our customers is that there are space environment hazards that are there all the time," he said. "Some occur with higher probablility in the years around solar maximum, but nobody really plans their missions around the sunspot number."

In fact, a significant geomagnetic event occurred just a couple of months ago, in April. Was there any impact on satellites? "There may have been," Mazur said. "There's nothing I can tell you in this forum. It was an enhancement of the environment that we haven't seen for a number of years, since December of 2006."

Bottom line? Once again, it pays to be prepared, in 2010 just as much as in 2013.

The lead federal agency for space weather is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency that has the National Weather Service under its wing as well. Click on over to the Space Weather Prediction Center to find out what's up, learn how a G4 storm is different from an R4, and sign up for e-mail alerts. Another must-see website is SpaceWeather.com, which provides solar activity updates as well as fantastic pictures of sights in the sky.

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

Australian microbiologist Frank Fenner says it's "too late" for the human species, and that Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years. Do you think humanity will be out of business by the year 2110?

• Discovery News: Did sickle cell anemia kill King Tut?
• The New Yorker: ESPN enters the third dimension
• Telegraph: Listen to the music of the sun
• Next Big Future: Carnival of Space 159

Astronomers have issued the first-ever storm warning for a planet beyond our solar system, with carbon monoxide winds in excess of 3,000 mph.

The weather report is part of a study published in this week's issue of the journal Nature that also includes the first-ever measurement of the same planet's orbital speed, which provides a new way to calculate its mass. The alien gas giant is about two-thirds as massive as Jupiter, and closer to its star than Mercury is to our similarly sized sun.

The planet HD 209458b, also known as Osiris, is already famous because it was the first world beyond our solar system known to have an atmosphere. The fresh findings add to the planet's renown - even though you wouldn't want to live there.

"HD 209458b is definitely not a place for the faint-hearted," the research team leader, Ignas Snellen of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, said in a news release from the European Southern Observatory. "By studying the poisonous carbon monoxide gas with great accuracy, we found evidence for a super wind, blowing at a speed of 5,000 to 10,000 kilometers per hour (3,000 to 6,000 mph)."

In a follow-up phone call, Snellen told me that's much faster than the strongest winds recorded in our own solar system - the 1,200 mph winds near Neptune's Great Dark Spot.

On HD 209458b, the super winds are generated by the temperature difference between the planet's day side and its night side. Because the planet circles its star at a distance only one-twentieth of the distance between Earth and the sun, the temperature of the upper atmosphere on HD 209458b's sun-facing side is thought to be as high as 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit (10,000 degrees Celsius) while the dark side is much cooler.

The upper layers of the atmosphere were observed rushing from the hot side to the cold side. Computer models suggest that the super-strong winds drive a complex weather pattern on HD 290458b, Snellen said.

"The winds that are lower in the atmosphere are doing something different," he told me. The models indicate that there should be a circular jetstream, moving from east to west, but Snellen said he and his colleagues could not detect such a pattern directly. Other researchers have reported that the star is blasting the planet so intensely that tons of atmospheric gases are being stripped away every second - and someday the planet may end up having no atmosphere at all.

The magic of spectroscopy
The star HD 209458 is 150 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus, and the giant planet (let's call it "Osiris" from now on) is visible only as a variation in the blip of light from the star. So how were the astronomers able to find out so much about Osiris' winds?

The secret lies in spectroscopy. Astronomers can break down the wavelengths of light from a distant star to determine the chemical composition of the material that is giving off that light, using an instrument known as a spectrograph. Snellen and his team used the CRIRES spectrograph on the ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile to observe the starlight for five hours, during a time when Osiris was passing in front.

Previous spectral observations have suggested that Osiris' atmosphere contains carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, as well as methane and even water vapor. Snellen and his colleagues could pick up the chemical fingerprint of the carbon monoxide - but they found that the wavelengths making up that fingerprint were shifted slightly toward the blue end of the light spectrum. Such a shift is caused by the Doppler effect, suggesting that the carbon monoxide molecules were rushing toward them. By measuring the amount of "blueshift," the astronomers could calculate just how fast those molecules were moving. And that's where the 3,000-to-6,000 mph figure came from.

Studying Osiris' mass and atmosphere
A detailed breakdown of the spectral observations also produced an estimate of Osiris' orbital speed. By plugging that figure into Newton's law of gravity, the astronomers found that Osiris is about 64 percent as massive as Jupiter - which agreed with earlier estimates that used other methods. They also found that Osiris' parent star was roughly equal to the mass of our own sun.

"In general, the mass of an exoplanet is determined by measuring the wobble of the star and assuming a mass for the star, according to theory," Ernst de Mooij, a co-author of the study, explained in the ESO's news release. "Here, we have been able to measure the motion of the planet as well, and thus determine both the mass of the star and of the planet."

The astronomers also measured how much carbon was in Osiris' atmosphere. "It seems that HD 209458b is actually as carbon-rich as Jupiter and Saturn," Snellen reported. "This could indicate that it was formed in the same way. In the future, astronomers may be able to use this type of observation to study the atmospheres of Earthlike planets, to determine whether life also exists elsewhere in the universe."

More about planets near and far:

• An avalanche of alien planets
• Giant planets made in a jiffy
• Looking for alien Earths? Here they come
• Planets on the Web: An online guide
• Dwarf planets have their day
• Interactive: The new solar system
• Planets gone wild

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

The letters are flying as fast as Falcon 9 rockets as Congress considers what to do about America's space effort.

This week's war of words began with space legend John Glenn's open letter calling for a continuation of the space shuttle program. "Why terminate a perfectly good system that has been made more safe and reliable through its many years of development?" Glenn asked.

That sentiment was seconded today in a statement from Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas: "I strongly agree with Senator Glenn, and the concerns expressed by many others, that the simultaneous cancellation of the Constellation program and the retirement of the space shuttle threatens our access to and use of the space station."

Hutchison has introduced legislation that would let NASA extend space shuttle operations as necessary while replacement vehicles are being developed. However, the draft currently under consideration calls for continuing NASA's Constellation spaceship-building effort, including the Ares 1 rocket program that the space agency and the White House are planning to kill.

The Obama administration's current spaceflight plan calls for shutting down the shuttle program by next year, relying on the Russians in the short term for resupply of the International Space Station, and phasing in commercial spacecraft such as SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule to send payloads into orbit. Eventually those payloads could include NASA's astronauts as well as cargo.

In the meantime, NASA would focus on developing the technologies for going beyond Earth orbit, including new types of craft for deep-space travel (for example, the Orion spaceship that was proposed under Constellation) and a heavy-lift rocket for facilitating their journeys.

Obama's timetable calls for the heavy-lifter to be designed by 2015. But in a letter dated today, 62 members of Congress urged Obama to speed up that timetable. They registered their support for "the immediate development and production of a heavy-lift launch vehicle that, in conjunction with the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, may be used for either lunar or deep-space asteroid exploration to an asteroid and beyond, as you said in Florida."

Yet another letter was sent to Congress today by 56 space leaders - including former astronauts and NASA executives, industry executives and scientists, journalists and activists - urging lawmakers to support Obama's push for commercialization in low Earth orbit and accelerate NASA's push beyond Earth orbit. "The near-term development of commercial human spaceflight and a clearly defined program of human exploration beyond Earth orbit are both essential," the letter said. "Without either, our nation's leadership in space will significantly suffer."

Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and a former NASA associate administrator, helped orchestrate that particular letter-writing campaign. He told me the aim of the campaign is to show members of Congress (and the press) that the space constituencies known as New Space and Old Space are "drawing together."

"A broad space coalition, recognizing the value of both commercial space and human exploration beyond Earth orbit, is much more powerful than those who would pit us against one another," said Stern, who serves as a representative for the Blue Origin spaceship venture as well as the head of a suborbital research group.

In the past, New Spacers have often compared themselves to the nimble mammals scrambling beneath the feet of clumsy big-aerospace dinosaurs. "That's becoming a flawed analogy," Stern said. "Change is hard, and people have to get used to it."

Stern's own experience of moving from a NASA executive office to the commercial space game is one example showing how New Space and Old Space are merging. Here are three others:

• One of the signers of the space leaders' letter to Congress, former Kennedy Space Center director Jim Kennedy, also signed a letter in April telling Obama that canceling Constellation would be "wrong for our country for many reasons." Today, Kennedy told me that he signed the earlier letter "because I thought it was pushing us toward a better direction." At first, he was reluctant to put his name to the new letter out of concern that he'd end up looking wishy-washy. "I told Alan, 'You really don't want me signing that letter,'" he said. But Stern convinced Kennedy that the letter struck the right balance for America's future space effort. Now Kennedy is on board with a hybrid approach to spaceflight. "What about a two-tier program, where you have commercialization of access to low Earth orbit as well as a public initiative to get people beyond Earth orbit?" Kennedy asked.

• The letter issued today by members of Congress might appear to support the "Old Space" way of doing things, but it got a strong vote of support from SpaceX, the New Space standard-bearer. "It looks like Congress is on the right track, encouraging the administration to move forward as quickly as possible with heavy-lift,” SpaceX Vice President Lawrence Williams told me in an e-mailed statement. “Since President Bush unveiled his Vision for Space Exploration in 2004, the plan has been that NASA would focus its development efforts on moving beyond LEO [low Earth orbit] and use commercially developed rockets to service the ISS." It's worth noting that SpaceX's millionaire founder, Elon Musk, says he's been conducting talks with NASA about a public-private initiative to develop a super-heavy-lift rocket.

• The Commercial Spaceflight Federation serves as the prime industry association for New Space companies, but this week it announced that its newest executive member is United Launch Alliance, a rocket venture created by the Old Space giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin. "We look forward to the day when astronauts are flying to low Earth orbit onboard commercial vehicles such as Atlas and Delta," United Launch Alliance's president and CEO, Michael Gass, said in a statement. "And the track record of success for Atlas 5 and Delta 4 shows that commercial spaceflight can and will be conducted safely."

The launches of all these missives suggest that the debate over America's future space effort is heading into a crucial phase - not only because the shuttles are nearing their scheduled retirement, but also because policymakers will soon have to make budgetary decisions that will have an impact for years to come. The House Science and Technology Committee wants NASA to deliver piles of budget planning documents by Friday, but it remains to be seen whether the space agency can comply that quickly.

Should America spend $3 billion a year to keep the shuttles flying? Should NASA be allowed to shut down the Constellation program, on which $10 billion or so has been spent already? Are there billions of dollars to spare for accelerating the development of a heavy-lift rocket? Will commercial ventures like United Launch Alliance and SpaceX be able to deliver on their promise to close America's spaceflight gap? You can expect more letter-writers to weigh in on these questions in the months ahead - and you have a chance to launch your own missive in the comment section below.

More on the space debate:

• SpaceX fans and foes speak out
• Shuttle successor succeeds in first test flight
• NASA's vision gets another battering
• Space pioneers fight NASA policy
• First moonwalker blasts Obama's space plan
• The pressure is on at SpaceX
• Sizing up the space races

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."