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  • Tour space, inside and out

    Submitted by Matt Shields / UGC
    The shuttle Endeavour's launch at 4:14 a.m. ET Monday creates a false dawn in
    this photo, taken by Matt Shields at the Kennedy Space Center's visitor complex.

    The night launch of a space shuttle is a wonderful sight. Sadly, it's a sight we may never see again. But the view gets even better when you're in space, and anyone with an Internet connection can take a virtual tour.

    Let's start with the liftoff: My first shuttle-watching experience was a night launch back in 1997, when the shuttle Atlantis rocketed up to Russia's Mir space station. I'll never forget that pillar of flame rising into the sky, lighting up the clouds and setting off a wave of rattling sound that took several seconds to reach the press viewing area.

    By all accounts, the impression was just as dramatic for those attending Endeavour's launch in person early today. The best views come from remote-controlled cameras set up close to the launch pad, and you'll find plenty of those at Kennedy Space Center's media archive. But regular folks can get some great pictures as well, as you can see from our FirstPerson collection of "Blasts From the Past."

    The photo you see above, submitted by Matt Shields, makes it look as if the sun is rising east of the Kennedy Space Center's visitor complex. It's really the shuttle rising at 4:14 a.m., well before dawn. Assuming that NASA holds to its current schedule, this is the last time such a phenomenon will be seen. The four shuttle launches left on NASA's list are all due to take place during daylight hours.

    If you're inclined to get into the action for one of those final four, Ben Cooper's Launch Photography Web site provides a fantastic travel guide, plus examples of what you might see. Here's a Q&A that features Cooper's photos and his advice for amateurs. And here's his bottom line when it comes to attending a launch: "Everyone should see one once, and soon it will be too late."

    Inside the space station
    Fortunately, it's not too late to get in on views from the International Space Station. NASA has begun streaming interior views from the station's laboratories, as well as external views showing our planet below. Click here for additional technical details from NASA - and click here to go directly to the video stream, encoded using Windows Media Player.

    Last year, NASA put together a multipart video tour of the space station (including the toilets!). Astronaut Mike Fincke is your guide. "You're getting the straight skinny, the dirty laundry and everything," Fincke says on camera.

    If you prefer your tours short and sweet, check out this newly posted, two-minute flythrough of the space station - which features forward and rear-view-mirror views captured by NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, accompanied by a jazzy soundtrack.

    Once Endeavour's crew installs the Tranquility connecting node and its Cupola observation window, the space station will be 98 percent complete. To get an idea how many steps it's taken to get the orbital outpost into its final form, check out this NASA animation.

    NASA via Twitpic
    Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi sent down this view of the Amazon River
    snaking through Brazil, as seen from the International Space Station.

    Looking outside
    Of course, the big payoff from spaceflight doesn't come just from building things, but from using those things to achieve greater goals. One of the goals is to learn how to live and work in space. Another is to study processes in zero gravity that could yield rewards back on Earth. And still another is to watch the earth below - not only to enjoy the magnificent view, but also to make scientific observations.

    The space station's astronauts have taken more than 450,000 photographs so far, and our brand-new slideshow highlights some of the coolest views. NASA's Human Spaceflight Web site and the Earth Observatory site may be the best-known repositories for orbital imagery, but the prime source would have to be "The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth."

    Now that the station's crew members have a direct connection to the Internet, the photos have been coming down like meteors during the Perseids. The guy largely responsible for that is Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, who has been posting spectacular snapshots to Twitpic for a couple of weeks now. (Check out NPR's slideshow for the highlights.)

    If you think that's something, just wait until the big bay window known as the Cupola is installed. The shuttle era may be fading into the sunset, but the golden era of orbital imagery is just now dawning.

    Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And pick up a copy of my new book, "The Case for Pluto." If you're partial to the planetary underdogs, you'll be pleased to know that I've set up a Facebook fan page for "The Case for Pluto."

  • Boosters flare in space debate

    Brian Lockett / Air-and-Space.com
    SpaceShipOne pilot Mike Melvill holds a sign reading "SpaceShipOne, Government
    Zero" after the rocket plane's first spaceflight in June 2004. NASA's latest plans
    have raised fresh questions about government-run vs. commercial space ventures.
    Check Air-and-Space.com for more pictures of aerospace milestones.

    First NASA laid out its new vision for human spaceflight, putting the moon on hold and focusing instead on new technologies and space commercialization. Then Congress weighed in. Now former astronauts, an aerospace guru and Hollywood's hottest director are boosting the debate to a higher level.

    The next few months are likely to bring a far-reaching debate over America's future in space, based on the reactions that have greeted the budget proposal for NASA since Monday's release. The debate won't be just about one year's spending, but about the next decade or two. That's why space aficionados are so passionate on both sides of the issue.

    One former shuttle astronaut, Tom Jones, said that the decision to cancel NASA's Constellation back-to-the-moon program signaled that "human spaceflight is unimportant to U.S. national interests."

    "Starting next year, and for the foreseeable future, we will launch just four Americans into space annually, as passengers on foreign rockets, to a space station slated to be decommissioned in 2020," Jones wrote in his Flight Notes blog. "What will Americans do in space beyond that gloomy date?"

    He expects that China will pursue increasingly ambitious space goals and become the next country to send explorers into deep space. "We will watch, helpless to follow," he wrote.

    Jones doesn't say much about the commercial spaceflight companies that are angling to provide NASA with rides into orbit, other than to note that none of them has "built a human-rated booster or spacecraft."

    Another former shuttle astronaut, Ken Bowersox, is more bullish on the commercial prospects - perhaps in part because he's now an executive at one of those companies, California-based SpaceX. Today Discovery News quoted him as saying that space contractors "should be able to come up with new and innovative ways" to fill NASA's needs for resupplying the International Space Station.

    Yet another ex-astronaut, Leroy Chiao, says in his blog that "we are ready for commercial human spaceflight." Chiao was a member of the Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee, also known as the Augustine panel, which laid out a spectrum of options for NASA's future.

    "Anytime there is significant change in the air, the establishment gets nervous," he wrote. "This is to be expected. Sometimes dramatic change is necessary to achieve fresh results. Time will tell if the private companies will achieve [low Earth-orbit] access, but I for one remain optimistic."

    Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin went even further, praising President Barack Obama for redirecting America's space policy "away from the foolish and underfunded moon race that has consumed NASA for more than six years." In The Huffington Post, Aldrin sketched out his expectations for a "flexible-plus" approach to exploration:

    "If Congress agrees, we'll turn over all space taxi services to the private sector and aim NASA at fully using the station - extended to at least 2020 in Obama's plan - and spending a billion dollars a year in creating these new private sector spaceships. When the time comes to start building deep space transports and refueling rocket tankers, it will be the commercial industry that steps up, not another government-owned, government-managed enterprise. And if we want to use the moon as a steppingstone in the future, we'll have to join with our international partners for the effort. No more 'go it alone' space projects. If you or your children or grandkids ever hope to fly into orbit, these new vehicles are their only hope for a ride to space."

    Aldrin said the decision to change NASA's course ranked as Obama's "JFK moment." That's an interesting phrase, because in a commentary last year, NBC News' Jay Barbree said that Obama was facing a "Kennedy decision" - and that the right choice would be to stick with the Constellation program.

    One of the most successful figures in the private-spaceflight industry, Scaled Composites' Burt Rutan, also weighed in on NASA's future. Rutan, the aerospace designer behind the SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo rocket planes, has delighted in tweaking "Nay-Say." He sometimes jokes that the space agency's acronym stands for "No Adult Supervision Apparent." But he turned serious in an e-mail sent to several journalists after this week's unveiling of the NASA budget proposal:

    "I am for NASA doing either true Research, or doing forefront Exploration, with taxpayer dollars. Ares/Orion is more of a Development program than a Research program, so I am not depressed to see it disappear.

    "I am concerned to see NASA manned spaceflight disappear, since they provided world leadership in the '60s and part of the '70s.  The result was America's universities being the leader in science/engineering Ph.D.s. Many American kids will be depressed by the thought that our accomplishments will not be continued and thus America will fall deeper away from our previous leadership in engineering/science/math.  I believe our future success depends on our ability to motivate our youth.

    "I would support a restructuring of goals and funding so NASA can be allowed to perform like the '60s on space Research and on Exploration. There is not a shred of evidence that the president sees any value in those goals."

    Even James Cameron - the director of the world's two top-selling movies, "Avatar" and "Titanic" - had something to say about America's future in space. At one time, Cameron was in the market to go into orbit himself, and he still talks about making a Mars movie someday. Here's the bottom line from his op-ed in today's Washington Post:

    "Over the past 15 years, I have gotten to know a lot of people at NASA while working on projects to advance space and ocean exploration. I've found that many, if not most, started as starry-eyed childhood dreamers. Maybe they loved science-fiction stories, with their promise of alien worlds, or maybe they were geeks like me, peering through a telescope in the back yard until their moms yelled again for them to come inside - "It's a school night!" They grew up to become engineers, brilliant planetary scientists and steely-eyed missile men who collectively have pushed our human presence out to the moon and our robotic presence not just to Mars but also to the outer reaches of the solar system. I applaud President Obama's bold decision for NASA to focus on building a space exploration program that can drive innovation and provide inspiration for the world. This is the path that can make our dreams in space a reality."

    There's a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt out there, especially among NASA employees and contractors who are wondering what will happen to their jobs. Earlier this week, I asked whether NASA's new vision marked the beginning of a new era or the start of a death march. Feel free to reflect on such questions over the weekend - perhaps as you follow the coverage of the shuttle Endeavour's launch - and offer your own perspective as a comment below.

    Update for 9:45 p.m. ET Feb. 6: Robert Park, an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Maryland, has been a longtime critic of spending on human spaceflight in general, and the International Space Station in particular. In his weekly "What's New" column, he often argues that robots are so much better than humans at space exploration that there's little reason to put astronauts at risk. Park told me that this week's column has been delayed due to the East Coast snowstorm, but here's his take on the revised NASA plan:

    "I think we are witnessing the end of human spaceflight, with the exception of
    space tourism, which is essentially an expensive carnival ride. Bungee jumping
    for those with too much disposable income."

    Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And pick up a copy of my new book, "The Case for Pluto." If you're partial to the planetary underdogs, you'll be pleased to know that I've set up a Facebook fan page for "The Case for Pluto."

  • Buying into predictions

    Who'll win the Super Bowl? There's a market for that. The Oscars? There's a market for that. How well will Apple's iPad do? Yep, there's a market for that, too. Prediction markets, which started out as a political phenomenon, are becoming routine.

    It's been more than 20 years since economists came up with the idea of using a "stock exchange" to predict the performance of political candidates, just as you predict the performance of a company by buying its stock. Such markets aren't perfect, as the economic downturn of 2008 illustrated all too well. But in the political realm, some economists say prediction markets reflect the actual results of an election better than traditional opinion polls. (Others disagree.)

    The concept can be applied to a wide variety of propositions - ranging from the political prospects for health care reform to the spread of swine flu. (By the way, the market trends suggest that the H1N1 flu will make a comeback, even though health officials have a different view.) Small-scale markets can also be used for industry forecasts - so much so that Microsoft, Google and Yahoo would like to see them used more widely.

    Bet on the Colts ... or the Saints?
    The Super Bowl is an ideal subject for prediction markets ... or should we say, "betting." A couple of years ago, Wharton School economist Justin Wolfers told me that the betting line in Las Vegas is the "single best indicator" of the big game's outcome.

    By the time the playoffs come around, a lot of the uncertainty has been wrung out of the proposition. So it's no surprise that the Indianapolis Colts' all-or-nothing shares are valued higher than the New Orleans Saints' shares (64.6 vs. 35.4 percent) on the Inkling market. The Colts are favored in most betting lines, with a 4.5-point spread emerging as a consensus.

    One investment strategist has advised betting on the Saints to beat the spread, however, because the Colts' "alpha" is perceived to be higher than it actually is. Whatever that means.

    Unlike honest-to-goodness online gambling sites, most prediction markets based in the United States don't deal with real money due to legal restrictions. Instead, they trade in "karma" or play money. If you're on the right side of a proposition, you win a pre-set payoff. If you're on the wrong side, you lose your investment.

    Prediction markets allow you to buy and sell your shares as the price changes, so you can dump your investment in the Colts and reinvest in the Saints if the market conditions change - for example, if Colts lineman Dwight Freeney has a bad ankle. Also, knowledgeable investors can capitalize on the bad choices made by those who are less knowledgeable (sometimes known as "morons vs. non-morons," or "sheep vs. wolves").

    With all this in mind, here are how a couple of other propositions are shaping up:

    Oscar's closest races
    The Hollywood Stock Exchange got nine out of 10 best-picture nominees right this week. The market's only miss was having "Invictus" up for an Oscar rather than "The Blind Side." Now the market is trading shares for the winners - and "Avatar" is facing a strong challenge from "The Hurt Locker." The directors of those two movies (James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow) are also neck-and-neck in the market's Oscar assessment.

    Other favorites include Jeff Bridges for best actor, Sandra Bullock for best actress, Christoph Waltz for best supporting actor and Mo'Nique for best supporting actress. Inkling's Oscar markets predict the exact same outcomes, suggesting that the "Avatar"/"Hurt Locker" matchup will be the biggest source of suspense for the March 7 Oscar ceremony.  

    Is the iPad a good iBet?
    In the wake of Apple's unveiling of its iPad electronic tablet, the publicity folks for Bookmaker.com sent out a release sizing up the odds for the year's best-selling tablet. The iPad was listed as the favorite, just as you'd expect. Here's the full lineup, where higher numbers indicate a smaller likelihood of winning and thus a larger payoff:

    • Apple's iPad: +200
    • Barnes & Noble's Nook: +275
    • Amazon's Kindle: +300
    • Microsoft/HP Slate: +350
    • Dell's Mini 5: +400
    • Sony Reader: +400
    • Irex Iliad: +500
    • Fujitsu Flepia: +550

    Do you think the markets are a magic oracle for predicting real-life outcomes, or do they merely mirror conventional wisdom? Feel free to weigh in with your opinion - and pass along your own Super Bowl / Oscar / iPad predictions while you're at it.

    Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And pick up a copy of my new book, "The Case for Pluto." If you're partial to the planetary underdogs, you'll be pleased to know that I've set up a Facebook fan page for "The Case for Pluto."

  • Pluto maps raise new questions

    M. Buie / SwRI / NASA / ESA
    Click for video: Hubble Space Telescope images, taken in 2002-2003, were
    combined to produce these maps of Pluto. Click on the image to watch Pluto spin.

    Pluto hasn't been getting much respect lately, but today the Hubble Space Telescope's team unveiled maps of the dwarf planet that are just a foretaste of the extreme close-up to come.

    The maps spark fresh questions about the icy world that was discovered 80 years ago this month: Why has Pluto's northern hemisphere brightened so quickly over the course of just a few years? What's causing darker spots in the south? And why is Pluto getting redder all over?

    "We think these changes are actually driven by seasonal changes," said Marc Buie, a planetary scientist at the Colorado-based Southwest Research Institute.

    Huge amounts of methane and nitrogen ice appear to be moving from one part of the world to another through Pluto's wisp of an atmosphere. One particularly bright spot appears to be rich in frozen carbon monoxide.

    So what's the precise mechanism for the shift? "That's a mystery," Buie said. The complete answers might well have to wait until 2015, when NASA's New Horizons probe swings past Pluto and its moons.

    'A fascinating world'
    The color variations seen in Hubble imagery captured between 1994 and 2003 represent "the biggest changes we've ever seen" in the solar system, said Caltech astronomer Mike Brown, the world's most accomplished dwarf-planet discoverer.

    Brown noted that "this really is the time when we expected that exciting things were going to happen on Pluto." Buie said its northern hemisphere is getting a lot of springtime exposure to the sun's rays, while the other hemisphere is going through a dark autumn. At the same time, Pluto is getting significantly farther away from the sun, due to its highly elliptical 248-year orbit, which is expected to produce a global cooling effect.

    Buie said Pluto's temperature ranges from 351 below zero Fahrenheit to minus-382 (60 to 43 Kelvin). If Earth's orbit were as extreme as Pluto's, our planet's temperatures would be swinging from the 60s in springtime to 90 degrees below zero F in the fall (16 to -68 degrees Celsius), Brown said. That illustrates how wild Pluto's weather can get.

    "It's a ridiculously extreme place to be," Brown said.

    One hypothesis is that methane frost is falling out of Pluto's atmosphere as it gets colder, creating the brighter whitish-orangish spots. Over time, the sun's ultraviolet radiation breaks down the methane, resulting in a residue of dark reddish-black carbon. Buie said another idea is that frozen nitrogen is being taken up into the atmosphere, leaving behind "fairy castle structures" that scatter light more efficiently.

    "There are enough theories out there to basically describe every scenario you could imagine," Buie told me.

    M. Buie / SwRI / NASA / ESA
    A comparison of Pluto imagery from 1994 (top) and 2002-2003 (bottom) shows
    significant changes in surface brightness.

    The findings give the solar system's most controversial world a little extra mystique. It's been a rough few years for Pluto. When Brown found an object on the solar system's rim that was bigger than Pluto in 2005, that set off a controversy leading to Pluto's demotion from the nine-planet lineup a year later. Pluto's status remains controversial - as explained in my book, "The Case for Pluto."

    Brown said observations from Pluto could be compared with studies of other dwarf planets, farther away in the icy Kuiper Belt, to help unravel the mysteries behind the surface variations.

    During today's teleconference, Brown joked that someone sent him an e-mail claiming that "Pluto was mad at me and ... that's why it was getting red." More seriously, Brown said the newly released research showed that asking whether or not Pluto was an official planet was no longer "a terribly interesting question."

    "Pluto is just a fascinating world, and it really doesn't care what we call it," he said. "It's a great place to study, and we'll be learning a lot more about it in years to come."

    In a sentimental sidelight, Brown noted that today's report came on what would have been the 104th birthday of Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh (1906-1997).

    Four years of number-crunching
    The data behind the new maps came from Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2002 and 2003, before the camera went on the blink. The ACS was repaired last year during the final shuttle servicing mission to the space telescope.

    In each of Hubble's pictures of Pluto, the dwarf planet's images was no more than a few pixels wide. But Buie wrote special software to process the scant data and create a sharper composite image that was roughly analogous to our naked-eye view of Earth's moon.

    "This has taken four years and 20 computers operating continuously and simultaneously to accomplish," Buie said in today's news release from NASA.

    At one point Buie had to interrupt his analysis of Pluto's surface to focus on two new moons that turned up by surprise in the Hubble imagery. He and his colleagues announced the discovery of those moons, now known as Nix and Hydra, in 2005.

    A paper on the fresh findings is due to be published in March's issue of The Astronomical Journal. In addition to Buie, the authors include Lowell Observatory's William Grundy and Eliot Young, Leslie Young, and Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute. Stern is also the principal investigator for the New Horizons mission.

    Buie said future observations using Hubble's brand-new Wide Field Camera 3 may shed more light on Pluto's dark (and bright) mysteries. Definitive answers might not be available until New Horizons gives Pluto its extreme close-up in 2015, however.

    The new findings are already being used to plan the detailed choreography for the probe's encounter - and the bright spot of frozen carbon monoxide is a prime target. "Everybody is puzzled by this feature," Buie said.

    Update for 5:25 p.m. ET: I've repeatedly tweaked the text in an effort to characterize the nature of seasonal changes on Pluto more accurately, but I'm still puzzled. And maybe that's precisely the point.

    Update for 2:25 a.m. ET Feb. 5: Watch Pluto spin in this video.

    Update for 5 p.m. ET Feb. 5: I've tweaked the text still more to provide a better comparison of temperature variations on Pluto and Earth.

    Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And pick up a copy of my new book, "The Case for Pluto." If you're partial to the planetary underdogs, you'll be pleased to know that I've set up a Facebook fan page for "The Case for Pluto."

  • 10 history-makers in science

    TheGrio
    TheGrio's "100 History Makers in the Making" include 10 scientists, engineers and
    environmentalists. Clockwise from top left are Charles Bolden, Tony Hansberry,
    Derrick Pitts, Lisa Jackson, James McLurkin, Agnes Day, Shelton Johnson, Robert
    Bullard, Beverly Wright and Jerome Ringo.

    Black History Month is an occasion for looking back at the past achievements of African-Americans - including the discoveries made by George Washington Carver and Benjamin Banneker. But it's also an occasion for looking ahead to future achievements - and that's what TheGrio is doing this month with its list of "100 History Makers in the Making."

    The list includes 10 scientists, engineers and environmentalists who are making an impact even now. The newsiest name has to be NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, the first African-American to be named head of the space agency. Bolden is presiding over what is arguably NASA's most dramatic transition in a quarter-century.

    TheGrio cites the racial challenges that faced Bolden in his youth, when he was denied an appointment to the Naval Academy by lawmakers from his home state of South Carolina. He didn't just shrug his shoulders at the rejection, but instead appealed to President Lyndon Johnson. Bolden eventually won the appointment instead from a black congressman from Chicago.

    Bolden went on to a 34-year military career in the Marines - including a 14-year stint as an astronaut. He flew on four shuttle missions, including the deployment flight for the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990 and the first joint U.S.-Russian shuttle mission in 1994. Bolden returned to NASA after retiring from the Marines as a major general.

    No matter what you think of NASA or its future, there's no question that Bolden has brought a different tone to America's space effort. His predecessor, rocket scientist Mike Griffin, once acknowledged that "I don't do feelings." Bolden, in contrast, sometimes wears his emotions on his sleeve. That's been particularly true in the past few days, when he's had to speak out about the space program's past tragedies and the difficult times ahead.

    "I am a big person for passion," the 63-year-old told reporters in Washington this week. "I am here because I am passionate about space and exploration. Otherwise I'd be sitting in Houston, Texas, or I'd be in San Diego with my three granddaughters. I am here because I am passionate about this. I cry about it some times - so what?"

    If you think that's an inspirational story for Black History Month, check out these nine others from TheGrio:

    • Robert Bullard: Called "the father of environmental justice," Bullard has a leading role in drawing attention to the impact of climate policy on vulnerable communities.

    • Agnes Day: Howard University microbiologist focuses on pressing research topics ranging from drug resistance to breast cancer.
    • Tony Hansberry: 15-year-old high-school student invents post-surgical stitching method to help women recover from hysterectomies.
    • Lisa Jackson: The first African-American to lead the Environmental Protection Agency is dealing with pivotal climate issues.

    • Shelton Johnson: Award-winning Yosemite National Park ranger collaborated with filmmaker Ken Burns on a landmark documentary series about America's national parks.

    • James McLurkin: Rice University robotics engineer works on ways to get swarms of little machines working together.
    • Derrick Pitts: The chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute has a knack for explaining cosmic subjects. Watch him work on "Countdown" with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.

    • Jerome Ringo: Former chairman of the National Wildlife Federation is a leading advocate for green jobs.

    • Beverly Wright: Environmental scholar founded Dillard University's Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and made her mark during post-Katrina recovery in New Orleans.

    For further reflections on the scientific side of black history, check out these past postings:

    Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or
    following     b0yle on
    Twitter    . And pick up a copy of my new book, "The Case for Pluto." If
    you're partial to the planetary underdogs, you'll be pleased to know that I've
    set up a     Facebook
    fan page     for "The Case for Pluto."

  • Dodging the arrow of time?

    ABC
    Benjamin Linus (played by Michael Emerson) sets off a time-travel effect by
    pushing a wheel through a nexus of exotic energy in the ABC television
    series "Lost." Physicist Sean Carroll takes readers through a more scientifically
    grounded exploration of time's flow in his book, "From Eternity to Here."

    The last season of "Lost" might clear up some fictional time-travel mysteries, but the true mysteries of time can be found in a new book titled "From Eternity to Here."

    If the laws of physics are reversible, why can we change the future - but not the past? Why is it virtually impossible to unscramble an egg, or unstir the cream in our cup of coffee? Why does the arrow of time move in only one direction?

    In the world of "Lost," the arrow of time gets tied up in knots: A mother shoots her time-traveling son before he was born ... A plane-crash survivor nearly kills a kid who grows up to enlist him as an assassin. Virtually everyone on the island gets zapped from the present to the past and the future when somebody pushes a creaky old wheel through a glowing slice of weird electromagnetic energy.

    So far, however, the show hasn't run into the kinds of paradoxes that plague science-fiction tales ranging from "The Twilight Zone" to the latest "Star Trek" movie. Nobody goes back and kills Hitler to head off the Holocaust. Nobody kills his mother before he's born. As one character says, "Whatever happened, happened."

    That's a refreshing perspective, says Caltech theoretical physicist Sean Carroll, the author of "From Eternity to Here."

    "I'm surprised at how well time travel is treated in 'Lost,'" Carroll told me today. "It acts as a narrative illustration of what I say in the book. ... At a deeper level, they get the message: The reason why time travel affects us on a visceral level is because it touches on this idea of destiny versus choice."

    It's all about the entropy
    The way Carroll sees it, the mysteries of time - including the permanence of the past, as well as predestination versus free will in the future - focus on the cosmic concept known as entropy. Entropy is generally defined as the progression from order to disorder, from useful energy to useless energy equilibrium, from an ice cube to a puddle of lukewarm water.

    Our universe appears to moving irrevocably from a state of low entropy (the big bang) to high entropy (the Big Chill). That means the past has less entropy than the future ... and that, in turn, means you can't go back and change things. "The way the laws of physics work, we're never going to experience anything going backward in time from our own point of view," Carroll said.

    Sure, you can refreeze the water into an ice cube. Heck, it's theoretically possible to reprocess a scrambled egg, molecule by molecule, so that it looks like a raw egg again. But that requires adding more energy into the system. The total entropy of the system still goes up. It's the law - specifically, the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

    Carroll's book isn't so much about the impossibility of time travel as it is about that bigger mystery of entropy. Why does the arrow of time fly in just one direction, and where did that arrow come from, anyway? Does it make sense to talk about what happened before the arrow flew?

    Some physicists would say such questions can't be discussed in scientific terms. But Carroll isn't one of those physicists. After explaining in detail what we know about entropy and its relation to the arrow of time, he moves on to the more speculative side of the issue.

    "Why do we ever find an egg?" Carroll asked me during our interview. "It's because it's not an isolated system in the universe. ... We should think about the universe like we think about the egg, which is that it came from something else."

    Bubble universes ... again!
    In the book, Carroll explains why the idea that our universe is just one isolated corner or "bubble" in a larger multiverse makes scientific sense, even though it's based totally on speculation.

    The bubble-universe idea has popped up in other contexts as well - for example, to explain why our particular universe seems to work as well as it does. "It's eerily similar to what cosmologists are talking about," Carroll acknowledged. He said the bubble-universe concept is "certainly very far from established" but helps explain some features of the cosmos that scientists have long puzzled over, including the arrow of time.

    Carroll suggests that the big bang could have been a cosmological blow-up that started pushing our universe from low to high entropy, and set the arrow of time on its flight path. Other bubble universes might have gone in different directions. "These universes would be created both 'forward' and 'backward' in time," Carroll said.

    If we could see a high-to-low-entropy universe in action, it might look to us as if the world was running in reverse. But that's a completely theoretical "if," because every universe is completely cut off from the others.

    Or are they?

    "There are models out there that make predictions that haven't yet been strongly tested," Carroll said. "Pockets of bubble universes might have bumped into each other and left a spot."

    Some physicists think the marks left behind by those bumps just might show up in a detailed map of cosmic microwave background radiation - perhaps even the one currently being made by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite. (However, the latest analysis of data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe has not found any anomalies, as reported by Columbia mathematical physicist Peter Woit on Not Even Wrong.)

    Carroll is also looking forward to seeing results from Europe's Large Hadron Collider, which is due to begin its science campaign in earnest this month. Those results may not immediately shed new light directly on the arrow-of-time question, but they will provide more grist for Carroll and his fellow theorists to chew over.

    "One of the best things that could come out of the Large Hadron Collider is a better understanding of space-time," Carroll said. "Finding new particles is great, but particles are interesting because they teach us something deeper than that."

    Another wrinkle in time
    While we're on the subject of depth, I should mention that Carroll's 438-page book delves deeply into the details of quantum theory, thermodynamics and thought experiments such as the Boltzmann brain paradox. If you're looking for something a bit less scientifically rigorous than "From Eternity to Here" but more rigorous than "Lost," you might want to page through "In Search of Time," Canadian science writer Dan Falk's survey of the various concepts of time through the centuries.

    Falk's book touches not only on the arrow(s) of time, but also on the history of timekeeping, the neuroscience of time perception and much more. Sir Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, says it's "almost unputdownable." Because the book came out a couple of years ago, it qualifies as this month's selection for the Cosmic Log Used Book Club.

    For almost eight years, the CLUB Club has been highlighting books with cosmic themes that have been around long enough to turn up at your local library or used-book shop. Send in your CLUB Club recommendation, and if it's picked up as a future monthly selection I'll send you a signed copy of my own book, "The Case for Pluto."

     

  • Private spaceflight goes public

     

    Sierra Nevada
      NASA calls for the International Space Station to be serviced by private-sector spaceships such as Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser craft, shown in this artwork.

    "Apollo on steroids"? Forget about it. Back to the moon? Not anytime soon. NASA's new vision for space exploration is less specific on a destination, but more focused on making room for new technologies and new players in spaceflight.

    Some critics in Congress say they'll fight to keep some elements of the moon plan in place - but one of the most influential critics says it would be "very difficult" to change NASA's new course.

    In its budget request, released today, the White House is seeking $19 billion for the space agency during fiscal 2011, which is a slight increase from the current fiscal year's $18.7 billion. But over the next five years, NASA says it will have $6 billion more than previously planned, with most of that going to support technology development and commercialization.

    NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told reporters that the increase represented "an extraordinary show of support in these tough budgetary times."

    The most dramatic and controversial part of the plan wasn't the decision to put off the next lunar landing. Previous studies suggested that NASA's Constellation program couldn't possibly get humans back to the moon by 2020, as President George W. Bush proposed six years ago. The best NASA could have managed was somewhere in the 2028 time frame, according to last year's Augustine panel review.

    Nor was it the decision to cancel NASA's Ares 1 rocket development program. A prototype of the medium-lift launch vehicle went through a successful test last October, at a cost of $445 million. But Sen. Bill Nelson, the Florida Democrat who chairs the Senate subcommittee on space, told reporters today that Ares 1 was a "non-starter" because it wouldn't have been ready until 2018. That's too late for it to be of much service to the International Space Station. "It was a rocket in search of a mission," Nelson said.

    No, the biggest shift had to do with who would be in charge of providing the successors to the space shuttle fleet, which is currently due for retirement by the end of this year. Instead of having its own human spaceflight program to service the space station, NASA said it would buy rides in private-sector space taxis. In Nelson's words, "the commercial boys" would be in the driver's seat.

    "If the commercial boys don't work, then we are stuck for upwards of a decade relying on the Russians ... and that is not a good position to be in," the senator said.

    New Space and Old Space
    Some of those commercial boys are actually the same companies that are working on the shuttle program under NASA's direction, albeit in different combinations. Others are relative newcomers. In the course of laying out the rationale behind NASA's budget request, agency administrator Charles Bolden announced that five companies would share $50 million in federal stimulus funds to jump-start the commercialization of human spaceflight:

    • Blue Origin, the sometimes-secretive rocket venture founded by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos, will receive $3.7 million. The eight-year-old company has been testing rocket prototypes for suborbital flights at its Texas spaceport, but this is the first firm evidence of its orbital aspirations. NASA's money will go toward the development of a launch escape system and a composite crew module for structural testing. "We are pleased to be selected by NASA as a member of the CCDev team," program manager Rob Meyerson said in a statement. "Blue Origin continues to work patiently and step-by-step to lower the cost of spaceflight so that humans can continue exploring the solar system."
    • The Boeing Co. - which is the prime contractor for the space station and a partner in the United Space Alliance, which runs the shuttle program for NASA - will receive $18 million for development of a seven-person crew capsule for travel to and from the space station. One of Boeing's partners in the project is Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace, which has launched two inflatable space modules into orbit and would help design the crew capsule.
    • Paragon Space Development Corp., an Arizona-based company that specializes in life support systems for spacecraft, would get $1.4 million for the development of an air revitalization system. One of the company's many projects is to build a "Lunar Oasis" mini-greenhouse that would be sent to the moon aboard a privately funded lunar lander.
    • Sierra Nevada Corp. would receive $20 million to aid in the development of a space plane known as the Dream Chaser. Through its subsidiary, SpaceDev, Sierra Nevada has worked on microsatellites as well as the hybrid rocket engines used on SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo.
    • United Launch Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed Martin venture that offers Atlas and Delta expendable rockets, would get $6.7 million. The U.S. military has been using the Atlas 5 and Delta 4 for years, but they've never been approved for sending humans into space. NASA still has to establish a procedure for certifying that commercial rockets are safe for human spaceflight - and industry executives said they were starting to work with the space agency on the all-important safety issue. NASA's money would go toward developing an emergency detection system for ULA's rockets.

    The money is aimed at encouraging the companies to develop new concepts for sending astronauts to the space station and back down to Earth, and to demonstrate those concepts with actual hardware.

     

    MSNBC
      Click for video: Astronomer Derrick Pitts discusses NASA's space plans with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on "Countdown."

    NASA has already been paying out tens of millions of dollars to two other companies, California-based SpaceX and Virginia-based Orbital Sciences, to develop unmanned spaceships for delivering supplies to the space station. SpaceX's first demonstration flight of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo capsule is scheduled for the middle of this year.

    If those companies are successful with their cargo craft, NASA will pay them $3.5 billion between now and 2016. By that time, NASA hopes that commercial spaceships will be cleared to fly astronauts to the space station and back.

    SpaceX founder Elon Musk said his company could provide crew transport capability two or three years after it receives a NASA contract. However, SpaceX "was obviously not a winner" in the latest NASA competition, Musk said. He explained that there wasn't enough money available from the $50 million program to perfect a launch escape tower for the Dragon - which is considered essential for crew safety.

    "We don't have any issue with that," Musk said.

    Congress strikes back
    What Musk does have an issue with is congressional criticism of NASA's commercial spaceflight plan. "It's important to separate the comments from the vested interests," he told me during today's teleconference. "There are certain members of Congress who cannot be swayed by any rational argument. They simply want the answer to be that funding continues in their district, independent of any sound basis for it."

    The sharpest criticism came from the places that are most heavily invested in spaceflight as it's being done today:

    • From Alabama, where NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center has played a key role in developing the Ares 1 rocket: GOP Sen. Richard Shelby said NASA's budget proposal "begins the death march for U.S. human spaceflight." Sen. Jeff Sessions, also a Republican, said NASA's plan "abandons our nation's nearly five-decade commitment to human spaceflight and will likely result in NASA taking a back seat to China, Russia and India in space exploration."
    • From Texas, home of NASA's Johnson Space Center and Mission Control: GOP Rep. Pete Olson said the budget proposal raises questions about President Barack Obama's "desire to have a [space] program to sustain at all," and fellow GOP House member Ralph Hall said he was "alarmed that the administration is planning to reject all that we have accomplished." Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee said "we're going to be very vocal about any undermining of the commitment to NASA."
    • From Florida, where the team at NASA's Kennedy Space Center launches shuttles: GOP Rep. Bill Posey called the space agency's plan "a giant step backwards," and Democratic Rep. Suzanne Kosmas said "the president's proposal is unacceptable."

    Nelson seemed somewhat less pugnacious about about NASA's change in course: "When the president says he's going to cancel Constellation, I can tell you, to muster the votes and overcome that is going to be very, very difficult."

    Jobs are a big concern in the aerospace industry, as they are for the nation as a whole. Because NASA's five-year spending plan was getting a boost, Bolden said "we expect to support as many if not more jobs with the FY 2011 funding the president has proposed." But others fear that the job equation will take a negative turn. Nelson said canceling Constellation would eliminate about 7,000 jobs in Florida alone - which would outweigh the jobs expected to be created through commercialization (1,700 in Florida, 5,000 nationwide).

     

    CNBC
      Click for video: Space policy expert Scott Pace and Space Adventures' Eric Anderson discuss NASA's plans on CNBC.

    Last year, Congress wrote a provision into NASA's current budget saying that the White House couldn't cancel the Constellation program without Congress' assent - and Nelson told me "that will be a matter" in the negotiations over the next budget. Late today, Nelson's aides said the senator would look into continuing some aspects of the Ares rocket program, just in case NASA's commercialization scheme didn't work out.

    But Musk said NASA's new spending plan was a recognition of fiscal realities, as well as an opportunity for commercial spaceflight. "Success was not one of the possible outcomes from a budgetary standpoint," he said. "It was simply a matter of when it would be canceled, not if."

    Some lawmakers said NASA should stick with the Constellation program because more than $9 billion has been spent on Ares and the Orion crew capsule already. But Jim Kohlenberger, chief of staff at the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, had a sharp retort for those critics.

    "I think the fact that we've poured $9 billion into an unexecutable program really isn't an excuse to pour another $50 billion into it and still not have an executable program," he said. "That's what I would tell taxpayers."

    The road ahead in space
    During the run-up to the budget proposal's release, a lot of attention was devoted to what NASA's space effort was not going to do. But today, NASA and commercial space executives spoke more freely about what the space agency and its partners would be doing.

    If I had a nickel for every time the NASA briefers used the phrase "game-changing" and "innovative" ... well, I certainly could have bought another latte today. That might have made up for the fact that the space agency's top officials couldn't give a precise timetable or itinerary for future voyages beyond low Earth orbit. "We don't want to set an arbitrary deadline, as has been done," said Lori Garver, NASA's deputy administrator.

    Instead, NASA's budget lays out how much money could be spent over the next five years to advance exploration-related research and development:

    • $7.8 billion for demonstrations of space technologies such as on-orbit refueling, inflatable space modules, robotic docking systems and closed-loop life support systems.
    • $3.1 billion for heavy-lift propulsion research and development. Garver suggested that NASA was not interested in "a restacking of existing technologies" for a heavy-lift launcher such as the previously planned Ares 5 or the shuttle-derived DIRECT system. Instead, she favored a fresh approach for the rockets that could carry humans beyond Earth orbit. She also said the heavy-lift rocket should be developed in cooperation with international partners.
    • $3 billion for robotic precursor missions - for example, a lunar lander that can be remote-controlled from Earth and can send back near-live video, or a factory that turns material from the moon or an asteroid into usable resources.

    Where might all this lead? Administrator Bolden reeled off a few flights of fancy:

    "Imagine trips to Mars that take weeks instead of nearly a year; people fanning out across the inner solar system, exploring the moon, asteroids and Mars nearly simultaneously in a steady stream of 'firsts'; and imagine all this being done collaboratively with nations around the world," he said. "That is what the president's plan for NASA will enable, once we develop the new capabilities to make it a reality."

    NASA's commercial partners voiced their own visions for the next 10 years. Robert Bigelow, the billionaire founder of Bigelow Aerospace, said he was aiming to put his first habitable space station into operation in 2015, with 30-day orbital visits available at $22.95 million per seat. And the visions for 2020 were even more ambitious.

    "I think I'm going to go out on a limb and say that in 2020 there will probably be very serious plans to go to Mars, with people," SpaceX's Musk said.

    Bigelow climbed out on the same limb: "We as a company have lunar ambitions. ... and we also have Mars ambitions as well." Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson, meanwhile, predicted that private space explorers would be circumnavigating the moon by 2020.

    That's a lot of brave talk, but the talk sounded equally brave six years ago when Bush announced that NASA would be sending astronauts back to the moon by 2020. So what do you think? Is this the beginning of a death march, a new era, or something in between? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.  

    More about NASA's new vision on the Web:

    This report was last updated at 2:30 p.m. ET Feb. 2.

    Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And pick up a copy of my new book, "The Case for Pluto." If you're partial to the planetary underdogs, you'll be pleased to know that I've set up a Facebook fan page for "The Case for Pluto."

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