Once again, high-tech types are joining the life-and-death search for snow-trapped travelers: Less than a week after the drama of the lost Kim family played out in southern Oregon, heat-seeking planes and phone-seeking gizmos are being employed to look for three mountain climbers missing on Mount Hood in the northern part of the state.

The last time anyone heard from the lost men was on Sunday, when veteran mountaineer Kelly James placed a cell phone call to his family and told them he was worried about the worsening weather conditions. Now James is thought to have sought shelter in a snow cave at about the 10,000-foot level of the 11,235-foot peak, while companion climbers Brian Hall and Jerry Cooke may have attempted a descent.

In cooperation with the authorities, T-Mobile has been "pinging" James' phone, and Hood River County Sheriff Joseph Wampler said that as of Tuesday, a confirming ping was still coming back. "The technology is still talking to the phone," Wampler told reporters.

Wampler said that technique can narrow James' location down to a level of a quarter-mile or so. Now North Carolina-based Iomax Management Group has brought in a phone-locating kit that can get much closer.

"Under ideal conditions, which we hope to be in up there, we're talking 10 or 20 meters," Iomax's president, Ron Howard, told me Wednesday. "If you look at what cell phone companies do for a living ... they have no reason to refine the technology to this degree."

Iomax's reason for refining the technology has to do with its government contracts. In fact, the same technology can locate the cell phones that bad guys use to detonate roadside bombs in Iraq, NBC's George Lewis reported from Oregon.

Howard didn't discuss that aspect of Iomax's work in detail, but he did say the Iomax kit should work even in Oregon's inclement weather, at distances of well over a mile - as long as the cell phone issuing the signal is on a line of sight from the detector. "If it's on, we should be able to find it," Howard said.

Time is of the essence, however: James doesn't have to be talking on the phone, but once the batteries run down, Iomax won't have anything to ping. That's why Iomax's team flew out from Florida and North Carolina just hours after Oregon authorities accepted their offer of assistance Tuesday night. They started their search efforts late Wednesday.

Colorado-based Aracar is also getting its search operation off the ground ... literally. Aracar specializes in search-and-rescue robots - the nonprofit organization's name is actually an acronym for the Alliance for Robot Assisted Crisis Assessment and Response. One of Aracar's founders, John Blitch, told me via cell phone that he and his team are getting their camera-equipped, remote-controlled robo-planes ready to look for the climbers' trail.

"We're getting ready to head up to the mountain," he said at midday Wednesday.

Aracar's unmanned aerial vehicles range in size from your typical radio-controlled airplanes to drones with a wingspan exceeding 3 feet. But even the RC-scale planes are packed with technology - including an autonomous guidance system that can take over if the plane loses contact with the remote operator.

The planes can be equipped to send back still imagery or real-time video, or even thermal imagery from a microbolometer. Such thermal images could identify the "plume" of heat rising from a warm body set against the colder background temperatures of snow and ice, Blitch said.

Blitch said he is a retired Special Forces colonel who has been involved in research and development as well as "intelligence collection for battlefield missions."

"Some of the systems that we have, have been used quite extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan," he said. "What I'm trying to do now is take that same technology and bring it into disaster response applications."

He was one of the founders of the Center for Robot Assisted Search and Rescue, which played a part in post-9/11 recovery, and he's also put search-and-rescue robots through their paces in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

High-tech is coming to the rescue amid the ruins, on the battlefield - heck, even on snowy roads. If Blitch and Howard have their way, similar high-tech tools - and the people who wield them - will help get those three stranded men off the mountain in Oregon.

"We almost had no choice but to send our team out there," Howard said.

Update for 12:35 p.m. ET Dec. 14: Oregon authorities say Aracar's team wasn't able to send out their unmanned planes on Wednesday, and the Iomax team is working away but has not detected a ping yet. Overnight, Iomax's Ron Howard sent out this follow-up statement:

"Our core customers are the U.S. and allied governments worldwide.  Our solutions have helped to resolve hundreds of cases overseas, including high-profile terrorists.  We rarely have the opportunity to put our equipment to work at home.

"We're happy that we have this opportunity to use our technology to help.  We hope and pray that we can work with the rest of the team here to quickly find these guys.

"If the climbers' cell phones are on, our equipment will more than likely find them.

"The equipment we're using here today is portable.  It can be hand-carried where it is needed. We also offer a new service for installation inside networks. If T-Mobile was using our Emergency Services Locator solution, the network could have located the hikers without us.

"This system is perfectly suited for backcountry cell phone networks or other high-risk areas where cellular networks are employed.  Networks serving areas like Mount Hood should consider installation of the Emergency Services Locator system of this kind.  If you become lost, and are carrying a cell phone from certain cellular providers, the Emergency Services Locator system will be able to locate you location within seconds.  To find out if your network technology is suited for our system, please contact us.  Our Web site is http://www.Iomax.net."

Update for 1:10 p.m. ET Dec. 14: Iomax's Ron Howard just sent this status report:

"The equipment is up and running at maximum power and has been since late last night. As of 10:00 a.m. PST, there is no response from our target phone, which is Miller's GSM Samsung flip phone. This could mean several things, good and bad. On the bright side, it means he is saving his battery strength for a more opportune time like a break in the weather.

"According to the intelligence we have been provided on site, our equipment is probing the proper side of the mountain where the climber was last located, which I think is the north side. Our equipment is emitting a continuous signal towards the last known location of his cell phone asking it to acknowledge receipt of that signal. We hope he has intentionally placed his phone in the off position.

"Worst case, and hopefully not the case here, his battery is dead and the phone will never be heard from again. Our guys will remain in place until they can get further up the mountain overland or in the air if the weather subsides. Currently it seems to us, Saturday is the day of reckoning for everyone involved. Our guys are currently co-located with the Aracar folks on the north face of the mountain.

"Interestingly, we have pretty well assessed the GSM (T-Mobile) network's ability to reliably talk to the phones which are located at altitude on Mount Hood. What we are discovering is, that around the 6,000 to 7,000-foot level, coverage is available, however predictably intermittent and unreliable. The signal strength where our guys are is bordering -100db.

"That is very, very weak and on the verge of becoming too weak for any two-way cellular communication to take place at all. Some calls still go through, some go through and are dropped, and most of the time they just don't get connected. Not knowing what the signal strength of the T-Mobile network is at higher altitudes, one can reasonably predict it will be significantly weaker than points further down the mountain, simply due to distance. This reinforces the fact that the network might only see the phone sporadically from here on out, or not at all. If the cell tower signal strength is as weak as it is, the signal from the handset to the tower will be several times weaker at this distance, very difficult for T-Mobile to receive and process."

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Sometimes it takes a geek to buy a gift for a geek. Well-meaning friends and family members may be thinking along more traditional lines for that special someone - say, a nice sweater or a diamond pendant - when what the science junkie really wants is a glow-in-the-dark planisphere watch or a Foucault pendulum. That's why we put out the call last week for science geeks to send in their favorite gift suggestions - with a geek goodie bag offered as an enticement. I've put together a selection of nine suggestions, and now it's your turn to pick the winner.

Check out the descriptions below, then click on over to our thoroughly unscientific Live Vote to cast your ballot. Your criteria could include what you'd like to get as a gift (assuming you're a science geek), what comes off as the most novel (or most bizarre) suggestion, what seems to be the best buy, what stands out as the most educational gift, or what promises to be the most fun.

The top gift suggestion as of noon PT on Friday will earn its submitter a selection of trinkets that only a geek could love, including an MSNBC.com baseball cap, T-shirt and pen; a "Geek" T-shirt in hacker black; a selection of gaming software and relativity-related multimedia; Einstein's "Relativity" and other geeky books; a SpaceX Falcon T-shirt and a Rocket Racing League pin.

As you can see, a lot is riding on your choice - so choose wisely from among these nominees:

• Aerogel jewelry: I'm willing to bet that, on a pound-for-pound basis, aerogel is rarer than diamonds. Aerogel is the bizarre glassy material that's 99.8 percent air, and Aerogem has encapsulated little samples of the stuff in pendants as well as keychains and other gewgaws. The material has been used in space probes such as the Stardust comet-sampling spacecraft and the Mars rovers. If you're getting some for me, I favor my aerogel unadorned (say, from United Nuclear or The Aerogel Store on eBay) - that's the best way to experience just how weird this "solid smoke" really is.
• Nuclear-powered toy: United Nuclear's spinthariscope contains tiny flecks of zinc sulfide and radioactive thorium ore, sealed inside an aluminum-and-plastic capsule fitted with a viewing lens. Alpha particles released by the ore interact with the zinc sulfide to create flashes of blue-white light that can be seen through the lens. Yes, alpha radiation plays a role in the headline-grabbing spy-murder mystery, but the spinthariscope "is completely safe for both children and adults to use," United Nuclear says. As our Cosmic Log correspondent noted, "Nothing says 'Merry Christmas' like a nuclear-powered toy."
• Metal-detector rover: M.D.G. from San Francisco suggests a magnet-equipped toy robot from Target. A "treasure alert" lets the rover operator know when the contraption has come across something metallic. "It's a metal detector!  It's a remote-control vehicle!  This metal detector rover looks like way more fun than putting a magnet to something to learn about the magnetic properties of different materials," M. writes.
• Build-it-yourself robot: If you have visions of robots dancing in your head, it may be because you can't get this video of the Robonova dance team out of your brain. A correspondent from Idaho says robot-building is the true mark of geekhood. For some, that means jumping into the LEGO Mindstorm maelstrom. "But if you truly have the need to freak your geek, then the ultimate build your own automaton would be Robonova-1 from Hitec Robotics," our geekworthy Idahoan writes. "Although it is on my list, I will be hoping it does not decide to take over my job or become our new robot overlords! Speaking of which, you can buy your RoboGeek in your family some light reading material - "How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion" by Daniel H. Wilson - and then hope you survive!"
• Dot-matrix wallet: Why go with a ho-hum leather wallet, when you can stuff that geeky Christmas stocking with a genuine Tyvek wallet modeled after that vintage blue-and-white computer paper we all know and love? Dynomighty has designed this wallet without stitching and promises that the look "will get your old daisy wheel spinning again." The wallet is covered with dot-matrix-printed numerals "so you'll always have a reference to the first 3,000 digits of pi," writes our correspondent, A.B. Chalmers.
• Video watch: "If you don't have a watch that plays videos, how geeky are you?" writes Paul, a correspondent from New York City. It's hard to take issue with that. This USB-enabled offering from ThinkGeek plays videos on a 128-by-128-pixel screen, plays and records audio - and oh yes, it even tells time.
• "Genius phone": The next suggestion is from Seattle's Brian Glanz, who already deserves some sort of prize for thoroughness. He recommends the UTStarcom XV6700 or PPC6700, a phone that combines Wi-Fi with EV-DO cellular service and Bluetooth device connectivity. "At long last, your geek will be completely (un)wired," Glanz declares. It's also an MP3 and video player, a camera, a handheld computer, etc., etc. "They can be expensive, depending on the plan you choose, but other phones can be even more expensive," he writes. Check out the comments section of the original "Geek Gift Guide" item for details and other recommendations from Glanz.
• Pop-can cooling pad: This beverage cooler plugs into a USB port on your desktop computer and keeps your Jolt Cola (or any other canned drink) at a cool 45 degrees Fahrenheit while you tap away. A Cosmic Log correspondent from Montana called the offering from Perpetual Kid to our attention. "They have other USB gadgets that are slightly less useful - such as heated gloves!" the correspondent writes. "Are people working on their PCs outside??"
• Light-up moon: L. Stremler from San Diego says he plans on "giving the moon" this Christmas. The What On Earth Catalog says the "Light-Up Moon in My Room" is "a lunar model that moonlights as a night light. An authentically detailed moon with craters and dark and light patches automatically begins to glow when the sun sets." It could be just the thing for the next generation of lunar explorers.

Review the suggestions, then head on over to our Live Vote and register your choice. We'll recognize our top Santa Geek on Friday.

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When the space shuttle Discovery soared through the night sky on Saturday night, a camera mounted on the craft's external fuel tank beamed back a light show that had never been seen before - at least from this particular perspective. Arcs of multicolored lights shimmered around the orbiter itself, looking for all the world like an aurora. You can watch the display by clicking on this video link.

But what caused the spectacle? NBC News space analyst James Oberg went to some effort to explain the physics behind the show:

"It was pitch black outside - even the moon had not risen. The main engines burn liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, and that flame is nearly invisible (remember chem lab, and earlier shuttle launches). The three main engines glow red-hot and bright, but the flame itself looks transparent.

NASA

The Discovery orbiter is bathed in greenish light as it separates from its external fuel tank. Click on the image to watch a video.

"But - wow!!! - the shuttle, as it approached orbital speed and engine shutdown, was bathed in greenish phantom light. And back behind the tail of the Discovery was a sharp-edged pulsating ring of fire that had never been seen from that angle before (there are no rear-view mirrors in the shuttle cockpit).

"Then, as the engines shut down and Discovery fired its thrusters to pull away from 'the world's largest disposable cold drink can' (as the external tank is jokingly referred to), the tank and the shuttle's underbelly were brightly illuminated by flashes of white light.

"Those flashes were the easiest to figure out - the shuttle's thrusters create bursts of white light when they fire, expelling glowing clouds of 'combustion products' from the chemical fuels they use. That, too, has been seen many times before.

"The greenish phantom light is, according to some physics types I've talked with, the chemical glow of molecules being ripped apart by high speed impact, and then recombining. Specifically, it's probably the oxygen molecules (oxygen gas, like nitrogen and hydrogen gas, exists in the air as paired molecules of two atoms each).

"They get torn apart as they are hit by the speeding shuttle, then quickly rejoin, giving off a distinctive flash of light at a specific wavelength (color). They do the same when they are run into by onrushing clouds of gas ejected from the shuttle's main engines - and that's probably the cause of the 'ring of fire.'

"During these moments, the shuttle is rushing straight-and-level about 55 miles up, not quite in 'space,' and still within the boundary of a small but 'sensible' (that is, 'feelable') atmosphere. This is a lot lower than normal satellites orbit, so the visual effect is not shared on other space vehicles. (The shuttle is given enough speed to cast farther out into space, where it fires its own onboard engine an hour later to stabilize at a higher altitude, normally about 150 miles.)

"Its speed is nearing 18,000 mph, and since the engine flame is expelling gas at about 8,000 mph, even with that backward speed those particles are still moving FORWARD at about 10,000 mph. As they depart from the engines into a narrow-cone-shaped spray pattern, the forward edge of that cone is ramming innocent oxygen molecules at this speed - and creating chemical luminesence around its circumference. Viewed from near the engines (that is, on the shuttle), that glow forms a ring of fire.

"The 'shock wave' illumination has been seen before - I've seen it myself - during night launches. Even if the burning rocket engine is only dimly visible, it appears at the tip of a glowing 'V' whose sides expand as it rises into thinner and thinner air. The glow is not of exhaust super-heated by the fires in the rocket chamber - it occurs at the outer edges of the plume, where it is running into thin air.

"The same 'impact illumination' can also be seen along the edges of the shuttle, in the camera views, and along the spray of gas ejected from the shuttle's small thrusters when it pushes itself away from the tank.

"It is this illumination - not the engine flame - that is seen during night shuttle flights up the East Coast. 

"It was also this illumination that panicked people in Russia and China over the decades when those countries secretly launched big rockets from undisclosed locations, sometimes at night - creating glowing clouds in the sky that frightened witnesses concluded were UFOs.

"That's another story - except that the physics is the same.

"For the very first time, we've had the opportunity to see this visual effect from aboard the space shuttle, during this night launch - the first one to carry external TV cameras looking backwards. That was the novelty of this launch, a mission that I didn't expect to be visually exciting - well, I'll eat those words.

"The same 'impact illumination' surrounds spaceships plunging back into the atmosphere, and this has been observed and photographed by astronauts for decades. On Gemini and Apollo flights, the crew was facing backwards because they had pointed their heat shields into the air blast (a good plan), and could see the trail stretching behind them. On shuttle missions, the winged orbiter enters belly-first, and the crew can see the glow dancing around their nose, out their front windows, and also look out the overhead windows in the back of the cabin to see the glow extending back along the path they have just followed.

"The glow behind a shuttle forms a sharp-edged cylinder with pulsating sides - a ghostly shape that has reminded some astronaut watchers of the Easter Island statues. 'Should we take photographs of it, or bow down and worship it?' one whispered to a companion at the windows, only half in jest.

"Seeing the eerie flickering glows of 'impact illumination' that surrounded the 'Discovery' during Saturday night's launch can help us appreciate the awe in that personal impression. If we had expected the flight to occur 'in the dark,' boy, have the results been illuminating!"

Later on, Oberg sent along an additional note about the shape of the ring of fire, plus a graphic to explain why it looked the way it did:

"I think the ring of fire is the result of our perspective from observing from on board the shuttle - and the actual 3-D shape of the glowing region is a hollow cone with the shuttle at its apex. The cone, widening with distance from the shuttle, is the region of exhaust gases from the main engines, and the boundary of the cone is where the interaction with the thin upper atmosphere is creating this glow. It is at some angular distance from the centerline, perhaps, because the shuttle's own physical shockwave is protecting the very tip of this cone from getting the full blast from the ambient air at 55 miles altitude. From the side - for observers on Earth, the visible light is strongest where the lines of sight pass through the greatest density of glowing plasma - along the top and bottom edges as viewed from a distance. Hence these observers see the same 3-D shape in side profile, and it looks like a letter 'V.'"

NASA / James Oberg

This graphic explains the features seen in the "rocket-cam" view of the shuttle Discovery's separation. The "lit" view is displayed in the small inset image.

Update for 7:57 p.m. Dec. 11: Discovery's ring of fire isn't the only curious twist to this night launch. On the way up to orbit, the shuttle shed its solid rocket boosters, as usual, and the two rockets parachuted down into the Atlantic Ocean for recovery. But once the rocket casings and their parachutes hit the water, they began drifting toward each other - and actually came close to colliding.

As it is, the rockets' parachute lines are twisted together underwater, posing a devil of a problem for the recovery team. For a picture of the bobbing rockets and further details from this tangled tale, check out this posting to the CollectSpace bulletin board.

• N.Y. Times (reg. req.): Study finds recent instance of human evolution
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During the California Gold Rush, the folks who reliably made money were not necessarily the miners – but the outfitters who sold shovels and other supplies to those miners. It could well be the same for the rush to private-sector spaceflight: At least that's the rationale behind Orbital Outfitters, a new venture that aims to lease spacesuits and other equipment to private rocketeers.

"You see through my evil plans," the company's chairman and president, longtime space advocate Rick Tumlinson, joked when I reminded him of the Gold Rush connection. "There was this guy named Levi Strauss who showed up during the Gold Rush..."

Levi, of course, went on to make a name for himself in the blue-jeans business - and Tumlinson and his team hope to do the same in the private-sector spacesuit trade. As outlined in their launch-day news release (PDF file), they already have set up a contract with California-based XCOR Aerospace to deliver the first batch of Industrial Suborbital Space Suits (or IS³ suits) next year.

XCOR's chief executive officer, Jeff Greason, said his company would work closely with Orbital Outfitters to come up with the suit design.

"While traditional pressure-suit providers make great products, their current suits did not meet our unique specifications for use by a variety of spaceflight participants," the release quoted Greason as saying. "Orbital Outfitters has found an innovative approach that can meet our price and performance requirements."

Tumlinson said the suits would be produced in the Los Angeles area, by a team headed by Oscar-winning designer Chris Gilman, who is Orbital Outfitter's chief executive officer and chief designer. It turns out that Gilman has designed spacesuits before - for such movies as "Space Cowboys" and "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me."

But in contrast with those faux suits, the IS³ will be a serious piece of work: The specifications call for the suit to provide life support functions for 30 minutes or longer at 500,000 feet - while also providing mobility and comfort. Even though the first applications will be for suborbital rather than orbital flights, Tumlinson said passengers as well as crew members will expect maximum safety as well as a suit that looks good.

"These people are paying $100,000 to $200,000 to fly," he noted. "They want to look cool."

The first suits will be custom-built for suborbital test pilots. "We're leasing, not selling," Tumlinson said. A typical lease for a crew suit might run for six months or 100 flights, for tens of thousands of dollars over the term. The passenger version of the suit probably won't have as much mobility, and would be leased on a one-time basis for thousands of dollars, Tumlinson said. (That cost would likely be rolled into the flight operator's package cost.)

"When someone puts on an IS³, they will be protected by the best technology we can muster, yet they will look like they stepped off the set of a science-fiction movie," Tumlinson said in today's release. "In fact, we are going to offer customers the chance to buy the outer layer of their suit as souvenirs, which will have a NASCAR/Grand Prix look to them in the colors of the rocket firm on which they flew."

Tumlinson told me Orbital Outfitters might even offer "me-too" sportswear, modeled after the spacesuits but marketed to the general public.

Some suborbital companies, such as Rocketplane and Virgin Galactic, are hard at work designing their own space fashions. But Tumlinson hints that other companies are preparing to join XCOR in outsourcing this part of the new space race to Orbital Outfitters. And who knows? Someday the company may make good on its name by providing orbital flight suits as well as suborbital duds.

"I would love to do Bigelow's spacesuits, for example," Tumlinson said.

For years, Tumlinson has been an agitator for what he calls the "New Space" movement, aimed at getting entrepreneurs more involved in the final frontier. Orbital Outfitters represents the first subsidiary spawned by Tumlinson's XTreme Space Inc., and thus his first effort to put his finances where his philosophy has been.

Just as Levi Strauss didn't have to be a miner to make money in the Gold Rush, Tumlinson hopes his venture will show that you don't have to be a rocket scientist to make money in the new space rush.

"Everybody doesn't have to build a rocket," he said.

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'Tis the season to shop ... for toy-crazy tots as well as gadget-crazy grownups and everyone in between. In fact, you'll find gift guides galore - but what do you get the science geek on your shopping list? Here's your chance to chime in with your suggestions, and win some geeky gifts yourself in the process.

Over the years, I've put together holiday suggestions for science-oriented Santas, including these roundups:

• The gift of science (2002)
• For the scientist who has everything (2002)
• Toy traditions go back to the future (2003)
• Your toys will be assimilated (2004)
• Gifts for space geeks (2004)
• Find your star (2005)

This time I'm hoping you'll do the work for me. Feel free to add your suggestions below for science-related gifts - be they books, barometers or bots. You may have a cool piece of software you've developed, or a gizmo that made a particularly powerful impression on your scientific sweetie. Go ahead, add it to the list - and as long as the commercialism isn't overly blatant, I'll pass it along.

Next Monday I'll put together a purely personal selection of finalists, then offer that list for your consideration in an MSNBC Live Vote (unscientific, of course!). The winner as of noon PT on Dec. 15 - just before Hanukkah starts - will receive the ceremonial grab bag, including but not necessarily limited to:

• Softcovers: "Relativity" by Albert Einstein; "Death by Powerpoint: A Modern Office Survival Guide," by Michael Flocker; and "Hiding in the Mirror: The Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions, From Plato to String Theory and Beyond," by Lawrence Krauss.
• Software: A collection of PC games, plus "Pirelli Relativity Challenge," an anthology of cartoons, animations and videos that explain the special theory of relativity.
• Soft wear: An MSNBC.com T-shirt, hat and pen - with a SpaceX Falcon T-shirt and a Rocket Racing League pin thrown in as a bonus.

The whole collection comes in a snazzy MSNBC.com canvas bag, snail-mailed to the winner's address. Now what science geek could resist all this? Let the geek gift games begin!

Bonus, added 1:45 p.m. ET Dec. 7: I just can't resist throwing in a "Geek" T-shirt in basic hacker black, spirited away from the Microsoft company store.

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Now we have learned that James Kim, the CNet senior editor and occasional MSNBC cable-TV guest, did not survive his Oregon wilderness ordeal - and many of the messages coming in to MSNBC.com are in the nature of condolences for the family. CNet has set up its own "In Memoriam" Web page, but in light of the interest that you all have shown in the saga of the Kim family, we thought it appropriate to provide another opportunity, right here, to express your sympathy.

Over the past couple of days, we've debated what the Kims did - or might have done - to survive, and you're certainly welcome to continue discussing the best ways to be prepared for a road emergency by adding your comments to our "Saved by a Cell Phone" item. This particular posting, in contrast, is expressly for offering condolences. Please don't submit critical comments. In this case, they will not be approved.

Update for 9:40 p.m. Dec. 6: Friends of the family have established a Web page -  http://jamesandkati.com/ - which provides an address for e-mail to be forwarded to the family, as well as information about donations. Here is a statement issued to the media by the people who put together the Web site:

"The friends and community of the Kim family are deeply saddened by the news received today about James Kim. We want to send out our utmost thanks to the Search and Rescue teams who risked their lives in the efforts to bring James back to us, they are true heroes to risk their own lives for a stranger. As friends we know that we did everything we could to help in the search for the Kim family, which is our only comfort now. We thank the Oregon authorities, the media, and everyone who sent us their thoughts and prayers for their support through this very difficult time. Please continue to keep Kati, Penelope, Sabine and the rest of their family in your thoughts."

- Scott Nelson Windels, friend of James and Kati Kim and family

The search for a missing family in Oregon got a high-tech assist from the cellular phone system - which helped searchers focus in on the snowy mountain road where the mother and her two children were found on Monday. But like other aspects of this survival story, the saga of cell-phone salvation appears to have depended as much on a stroke of luck as on the technology itself.

The tale hasn't come to a happy ending yet: Yes, Kati Kim and her two daughters, 4-year-old Penelope and 7-month-old Sabine, were rescued after being stranded for nine days in their car. (It's fortunate that Kim was able to breast-feed both children to keep them going through the ordeal.) But James Kim, who set out to look for help two days before the rescue, is still missing.

The fact that anyone was rescued at all could well be due to the cell-phone angle: When Eric Fuqua, an engineer at Oregon-based Edge Wireless reviewed the company's records, he found that a "ping" from the Kims' cell phone had been detected at a signal tower near Glendale in southern Oregon at 1:30 a.m. PT Nov. 26. That particular tower could even determine the westerly region from which the signal came.

"We were actually able to identify that piece of the pie," Donnie Castleman, the president and chief executive officer of Edge Wireless, told me today.

The clue wasn't conclusive: The engineers could only sketch out an area roughly 26 miles on a side in Oregon's rugged Josephine County. A computer model helped narrow down the area further, based on the roads and terrain. All that helped concentrate the search - and eventually, a helicopter pilot spotted Kati Kim unfurling an umbrella as a distress signal.

Inspector Angela Martin, who led the San Francisco police's investigation, had high praise for Fuqua's detective work. "As far as I'm concerned, he's a hero to me," she told The Associated Press.

So does this mean you can always rely on your cell phone to let the authorities know where you are in the event of an emergency? Not really. But if you're heading down a dark and lonesome highway, you might want to try making a call or sending a text message every once in a while - just in case.

Even when you're not using your cell phone, the device periodically sends signals to cellular towers as you move from area to area. That "Here I Am" signal, or ping, is transmitted periodically as long as the phone is turned on, just so that the network knows how best to connect with your phone.

Theoretically, the network operators could look through their registry records to track a cell phone user on the basis of those pings. But in the Kims' case, that signal alone wouldn't have saved them. Castleman explained that there are just too many registry-related pings for his company to keep track of - and for that reason, the registry records aren't stored.

"This was really tied to the fact that a text message had been at least partially delivered," Castleman said. Edge Wireless did keep a record of the ping confirming message delivery, and that's what left a trace for the searchers to follow.

Cell phones  - and cell-phone networks - are getting increasingly savvy about figuring out locations, in response to a mandate for enhanced 911 services, or E911.

"911 is a very early leader in location-based technology," said Doug Kroupa, an Illinois-based consultant who's working with AT&T on services related to emergency response and public safety.

In many areas, the network can figure out where you are by triangulating your signal from multiple cell towers. "You can generally figure out where you are to the length of a football field or two," Kroupa said.

And if you have a GPS-enabled phone, some cell networks can locate you spot-on.

Of course, there could be a downside to having your phone network know where you are. Privacy advocates worry that such services could turn your phone into a surveillance device, and earlier this year there was a huge controversy over the sale of ill-gotten phone records for all sorts of potentially nefarious purposes.

But when you're in a jam, the cell phone could turn into your best option for a lifeline, as detailed in this CNet report published today. With that in mind, here are a few tips from Castleman and Kroupa about road emergencies in general, and cell phones in particular:

• Consider a GPS-enabled phone the next time you upgrade your cell service, Kroupa said.
• When selecting a service provider, look for the one that provides the best signal strength and call quality, Castleman said.
• Keep your phone fully charged, and if you're in a place where you don't need the cell phone, switch it off to conserve power for when you do need it. Castleman said he's sometimes guilty of not following these rules. "We tend to charge our batteries once a week," he said.
• "Know the road that you're on," Kroupa said. That may mean taking note of the mile markers as you're rolling along - or at least being able to describe the terrain to a 911 operator if you're able to call in.
• In that same vein, be conservative about where you're driving. Many folks have noted that the road where the Kims ended up is a nice shortcut in the summer, but virtually impassable in the winter. "That's a very, very remote part of the state," Castleman said. "They don't call it the Rogue River Wilderness Area for nothing."
• "The biggest thing is, don't panic," Kroupa said. "More often than not, staying with your vehicle will help you be located much more frequently."

Update for 5 p.m. ET Dec. 6: The news came out just a while ago that James Kim was found dead in the mountains - a tragic end to the family's survival tale. My condolences go out to the family and all the searchers who worked so hard to save the Kims, including the techies. I happened to be sitting in the chair to talk about this case on MSNBC when the news broke ... you can check out the cable-TV clips here (before we heard about James Kim's death) and here (afterward).

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World-famous physicist Stephen Hawking is considering an invitation to experience weightlessness - not yet aboard a spaceship, as he eventually hopes to do, but aboard a specially outfitted Boeing 727 jet that simulates the zero-gravity effect encountered in orbit. Will the quadriplegic genius do it? Stay tuned. ...

The invitation was sent by Zero Gravity Corp., in response to Hawking's comments last week that flying in space was his "next goal." A zero-G flight doesn't have quite the view that a spaceflight on Virgin Galactic's rocket plane would have - but it serves as good practice for the more ambitious flight, and it's a service that's available now.

Such weightless flights produce that floating (and sinking) feeling by flying a parabolic trajectory that gives passengers about 30 seconds of enclosed freefall at a time. It's not everyone's cup of tea: NASA's version of the plane came to be called the "Vomit Comet" because of the nausea-inducing ups and downs. But Zero Gravity has tried to smooth out the flight profile to minimize the risk of motion sickness - and antinausea medications definitely help as well.

The company is just finishing up the regulatory requirements for flying paraplegics and quadriplegics. Zero Gravity says it would arrange for Hawking to fly free - in more than one sense of the word - to recognize his contribution to science as well as to the disabled community.

"It'd be our honor to have him as our guest," Noah McMahon, the company's director of marketing, told me today. The flight requirements would call for Hawking to have a couple of assistants on board, but whether the physicist or Zero Gravity provides such assistants would be totally "up to him," McMahon said.

Zero Gravity's invitation isn't coming out of the blue. The company's founder, Peter Diamandis, knows Hawking through another connection. Diamandis is also founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation, which has organized a $10 million genomics prize - and Hawking is one of the notables who has agreed to have his genome analyzed as part of the competition.

Zero Gravity has played host to celebrities before, ranging from moonwalker Buzz Aldrin to domestic diva Martha Stewart to a team of contestants from the reality-TV show "The Apprentice." But if Hawking were to take the trip, the alpha-geek angle - plus the signal it would send to other people with disabilities - would be hard to beat.

That's assuming that all the medical concerns - including the potential effect of increased G-forces on Hawking's frail body - can be addressed. Perhaps getting a zero-gravity experience at an altitude of merely 30,000 feet rather than 62 miles (100 kilometers) wouldn't be worth the risk. On the other hand, if Hawking is cleared for this small step, it would be a good practice run for the giant leap to the edge of space.

Hawking's personal assistant at the University of Cambridge, Judith Croasdell, confirmed that the good doctor was considering the invite.

"Indeed he has received this invitation and we are discussing it at the moment," she wrote me in an e-mail. "I am not at liberty to give out any information yet."

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The secretive rocket company backed by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin, was planning the second test launch at its sprawling West Texas facility sometime between Thursday and today, as reported earlier this week. Air traffic controllers told me that the test didn't go off Thursday or Friday, perhaps due to unacceptable weather - and today they said there were two ignitions, but no liftoff. Because it's Blue Origin's policy not to comment on their tests, we don't yet know whether this was a disappointing fizzle or simply part of the expected testing routine. But stay tuned: Perhaps more information will trickle out.

Space advocates are banding together to urge Congress to revive funding for NASA's Centennial Challenges, a program modeled after the $10 million X Prize and designed to encourage the development of technologies needed to go to the moon and beyond. The bad news is that the program is currently budgeted for no new spending, due to congressional inaction. The good news is that NASA has shifted around already-allocated funds to ensure that most of the existing prizes will be available at least until 2010.

This week, the X Prize Foundation and the Space Frontier Foundation as well as the Space Exploration Alliance (which includes the National Space Society) calls for the U.S. Congress to put some more funds into the Centennial Challenges kitty from the 2007 budget, which is currently in legislative limbo.

The House had set aside additional funds for the prize program, but the Senate "zeroed out" the appropriation in its version of the budget. Those two versions still have to be reconciled, and in the meantime, NASA is holding off on setting aside any new money for prizes.

"We're not spending any, because we just don't know," said Ken Davidian, a NASA contractor supporting the Centennial Challenges.

That doesn't mean the prizes for unwon feats, such as the recent Lunar Lander Challenge and the Space Elevator Games, have suddenly gone poof. "Right now we're working with no money, but obviously the competitions that are out there are funded, and there's no problem with them at all," Davidian said.

In fact, NASA has set up a schedule using the $10 million that was appropriated back in fiscal year 2005 to make sure the existing challenges will be in the money until the 2010-2011 time frame. In fact, like the lottery, the purses build up until someone wins. Here's the plan:

• The Beam Power Challenge as well as the Tether Challenge will continue through 2010 as part of the Space Elevator Games. The potential payout was $200,000 each this year. Another $300,000 will be added to each pot for 2007. Then there'll be another $400,000, then $500,000, then $600,000. If someone wins a challenge - say, next year's $500,000 total for the Tether Challenge - then the pot starts out again with the $400,000, and so on. That's $2 million per competition, for a total of  $4 million.
• The same sort of math applies to the Astronaut Glove Challenge: The purse will be $250,000 the first year, with $350,000 added to the pot in the second year and $400,000 in the third. Total: $1 million.
• Ditto for the Personal Air Vehicle Challenge: First $250,000, then $300,000, then $400,000, then $500,000, then $550,000. Total: $2 million.
• Davidian said $750,000 in all has been set aside for the Regolith Excavation Challenge, and $250,000 for the MoonROx Challenge. Total: $1 million.
• The Lunar Lander Challenge will stand pat with a $2 million purse.

"We want to make sure that we're going to have competitions going through 2011," Davidian explained. "That way, the public is going to be seeing this, guaranteed. And that will be good, because the Congress will see that activity."

No one has yet won a single Centennial Challenge - and George Whitesides, executive director of the National Space Society, acknowledged that it might be easier to draw on more congressional support if someone had won something. But he said "it's not surprising" that contestants would fall short at the beginning - just as they did during the DARPA Grand Challenge for autonomous ground vehicles.

"It generally takes a couple of years," he told me. "Hell, as we know, the X Prize took longer than that."

If NASA had more prize money to offer, the agency could provide incentives for the really ambitious feats required for settling the moon and other space destinations, Whitesides said. For example, there could be prizes for space solar-power satellites, or for micro-spacecraft for bringing small biological experiments down from the space station. You could even fund contests aimed at creating hardhat robots and unmanned aerial vehicles for other planets - two ideas that were proposed but ended up losing out on the money.

"The issue for us is that things are not going in the right direction," Whitesides said. Because of the multiplier effect - the fact that the competing teams tend to spend way more money collectively than the value of the prize - Whitesides and other prize proponents argue that efforts like the Centennial Challenges (or, for that matter, the stalled H-Prize) are the best bargains in research and development.

"If we could get this level of production from the rest of the government, we could probably solve poverty as well as go to Mars," Whitesides said, only half-jokingly.

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