How much oil is being lost every day in the Gulf of Mexico spill? That’s one of the contentious issues surrounding the disaster, but another issue has to do with how much can be captured.

Two weeks ago, BP's medium-term strategy was to seal off the oil leak rather than suck up the leaking oil. The company pumped in thousands of gallons of heavy mud, hoping to overwhelm the upwelling oil and gas. Then the top-kill operation stopped, and BP switched back to the strategy of capturing as much of the leaking oil as possible.

Why the switch? Outside experts have suggested that the top-kill effort was leading to a "doomsday scenario," in which the pressure buildup ruptures the cement linings and rock layers surrounding the well, hundreds or thousands of feet beneath the seafloor. Such an underground blowout could cause oil to seep out uncontrollably from multiple fissures, which would be a nightmare for containment efforts. Some reports raise the prospect that we're already close to that situation. The Washington Post, for example, quoted an unnamed BP official as saying "we discovered things that were broken in the subsurface" during the top-kill attempt.

BP spokesman Jon Pack told me today that such concerns were indeed part of the reason for turning away from the top-kill strategy. "The possibility of an underground blowout - that could be a result if we were to carry on doing that," he said. But the chief concern was that experts simply couldn't predict the effect of putting extra pressure on the well, he said.

"Because we don't have enough accurate information about what was going on in that wellbore, the safest thing to do is move away from that and go to containment," Pack said.

Huge amounts of oil to be burned
That's why BP sheared off the top of the well pipe, and then attached a cap with a hose attached to bring up the leaking oil. Now about 15,000 barrels (630,000 gallons) of oil are being brought up to the surface every day. That oil is being transferred from the Discoverer Enterprise drilling ship to a barge, which will take it to an onshore terminal for processing. More ships are converging on the site to help with the transfer operation, Upstream Online reports.

But the current containment system can't capture all the oil, as anyone who has looked at the live video feed from the oil-leak site knows all too well. At best, the system can bring up and process only about 18,000 barrels (750,000 gallons) daily. To collect more oil, BP and its partners are retrofitting the plumbing that was used for the top kill to bring up as much as 10,000 barrels (420,000 gallons) more every day. The base of operations for this second system will be the Q4000 drilling rig, which was used earlier for the top-kill operation.

The only problem is that there's no capacity available for processing that extra oil on the Q4000. Instead, the oil will be atomized and burned off right at the site, using an imposing piece of equipment known as the EverGreen Burner. Its manufacturer, Schlumberger Limited, calls the EverGreen an "environmentally friendly" burner that is fallout-free and smokeless. But if it works anything like what you see in the artist's conception above, the EverGreen should put on quite a show.

Yet another Q4000-style system could be brought to bear by the end of the month, the Coast Guard says.

Running the numbers
Burning off hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil a day may seem like a colossal waste, but BP's Pack told me that "it would take much longer" to bring in the equipment required for processing that much crude oil. The current containment cap and the Q4000's capture-and-burn system are considered mere stopgaps, to be used while BP builds a more permanent floating-riser oil-collection system for hurricane season. That system should be ready sometime next month.

The charts in this PDF file show all the options for oil collection. If you tally up the numbers released by BP as well as the Coast Guard, you come up with a daily capture capacity of 28,000 barrels (1.2 million gallons) by next week, 38,000 barrels (1.6 gallons) by the end of the month, and 50,000 barrels (2.1 million gallons) by the end of July. That should cover even the high side of the estimates for daily flow from the oil leak. And the permanent fix may come in August, when BP is expected to finish drilling its relief wells and kill the well for good.

At least that's the plan. Over the past 53 days, we've repeatedly seen that the best-laid plans to end the Gulf disaster have often gone awry. Who knows what the next 53 days will bring? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

Update for 3 p.m. ET June 12: The plan to burn off hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil every day is sparking environmental concerns. The company that makes the oil-burning equipment may say the process is "environmentally friendly," but a McClatchy Newspapers report quotes health experts and environmental advocates as saying the operation could expose workers in the area to additional toxins. "It seems like a no-brainer that you wouldn't want to do this," Diane Bailey, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, is quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard is expressing unhappiness with the pace of BP's efforts to deal with the additional oil that can be brought up. Rear Adm. James Watson sent a letter to company executives on Friday saying they had 48 hours to come up with a better plan that can be implemented more quickly.

Update for 2:40 p.m. ET June 14: BP has given federal authorities a plan to raise its oil capture rate to as much as 53,000 barrels of oil a day by the end of June. Details are scant, but it sounds as if the plan would phase in the use of the floating-riser oil-collection system earlier than previously scheduled, and also hustle up the arrival of more production facilities at the oil-leak site.

More on the disaster in the Gulf:

• NBC video: How much oil is leaking, and why does it matter?
• BP's failures made worse by public-relations mistakes
• Frequently asked questions about the Gulf spill
• Daily Nightly: How you can help
• Updates from Upstream Online
• Special report on msnbc.com

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Here's this weekend's selection of thought-provoking or funnybone-tickling Web links, plus a look ahead to next week's science TV:

• NASA Science: Mystery of the missing Jovian debris
• Planetary Society: Solar sail generates power! Hooray!
• Cracked: Six awesome side effects of global warming
• The Onion Sports introduction to World Cup soccer
• The New Yorker: Dystopias for young readers
• Out of the Cradle: Carnival of Space 157
• NatGeo Channel: 'Expedition Great White'
• Discovery: '25 Years of Awesome'
• 'Nova' on PBS: 'Alien From Earth'

The 2010 World Cup in South Africa has barely begun, but it's already a winner on social networks. At one point today, nine of the top 10 topics on the What the Trend website were related to the global soccer spectacular. (Which team does this Jaden Smith guy play for?)

As the action continues, you don't have to watch alone. Here are some social-media sites, gizmos and widgets that focus on the World Cup, provided courtesy of my colleagues Josh Belzman (in-house Tweetmaster) and Helen A.S. Popkin (Technotica mistress and America's Internet Sweetheart ©):

• Twitter's World Cup page
• Facebook guide to the World Cup
• Bing Home Turf Finder | Facebook Fan Flair
• Google: Follow your team
• FIFA.com football widgets
• Mashable: The World Cup's social evolution

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Rehabilitated birds from Louisiana's oil-spill zone are being airlifted to a new home that's famous for flight: NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Six brown pelicans, four laughing gulls and one common tern were flown from a bird-rescue center at Fort Jackson in Louisiana to Florida over the weekend. The birds were released on Sunday at the 140,000-acre Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which is co-located with the space center. "They looked pretty normal," the refuge's supervisory park ranger, Dorn Whitmore, told me today. "They acted happy to be free again. If pelicans could look happy, that's how they'd look."

Bird-rescue crews were gearing up for another Louisiana-to-Florida transfer on Thursday, but Sharon Taylor, a veterinarian with the Fish and Wildlife Service in Louisiana, said the trip had to be postponed. "There was a problem with a last-minute health check," she told me. After the birds are cleaned up, they need a few days of drying and preening to make their feathers waterproof again, Taylor explained. During this evening's final check, she and her colleagues determined that the feathers weren't quite right yet. So it'll be another couple of days before the next airlift can take place.

Why go through all this trouble? The folks in charge of the bird cleanup don't want to release birds back into the oil-contaminated environment that forced the fouled fowl into rehab in the first place. Marsh birds such as egrets and herons are brought to inland marshland in Louisiana, such as the Sherburne Wildlife Management Area. But aerial searching birds, such as pelicans and gulls, like to dive right into the water to find their food. For them, the waters off Louisiana's shores are not a good option.

The lagoons on the space center grounds were judged the best place to relocate such species. "It's pretty safe in the immediate vicinity of where they're being released," Whitmore said. "Of course, we don't know what the birds are going to do after we release them."

During the earlier phase of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, some of the cleaned-up birds were brought to Egmont Key National Wildlife Refuge on Florida's Gulf Coast, but as the plume of oil spread, experts switched the relocation effort to Merritt Island. "As best as we can tell, it's out of the main trajectory," Taylor said.

America's main rocketport may seem like an odd place to put a wildlife refuge, but it's been that way since 1963. Today, Kennedy Space Center provides a home for more than 500 species of wildlife, including endangered sea turtles, manatees, bald eagles and alligators.

Whitmore said the rehabilitated birds will be flown aboard a Coast Guard airplane into the space center's shuttle landing facility. From there, the emigres will be bused to release areas outside NASA's restricted zone. Each bird bears a leg band to facilitate future tracking, and the Fish and Wildlife Service is considering a more sophisticated monitoring effort that will involve fitting rehabilitated birds with radio transmitters.

As of today, 442 oiled birds have been collected alive from four states affected by the oil spill (Louisiana, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi). Rescuers have gathered up 633 dead birds. Only 40 birds have been released so far. But you won't find Whitmore or Taylor suggesting that the birds aren't worth trying to save.

"Everything we've released so far, they've looked really good when we've released them," Taylor said.

Whitmore said Merritt Island offers plenty of habitat for the new birds on the block. "We don't feel that overpopulation will have any impact at all," he said. The pelicans in particular should feel right at home.

"They seem to get along pretty well," Whitmore said. "There are hundreds and hundreds on these islands where they roost every night. They're what we call a colonial nesting bird. They seem to be gregarious. ... I don't think it's an issue that these new birds have a Louisiana accent."

More about the oil spill and wildlife:

• Clean the birds, or kill them?
• See how the oil spill has shifted
• Oil spill clouds World Oceans Day
• Spill slideshow: Wildlife threatened
• Show us your favorite place on the Gulf
• NBC video: In Louisiana, a crude awakening
• Disaster in the Gulf: msnbc.com special report

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How did so many things go so wrong at the Deepwater Horizon oil-spill site? Was it human error, an act of nature, or a blend of both? And why didn't any of those great engineering ideas to stem the spill work out? There are lots more questions than answers, even on Day 50 of the disaster on the Gulf. But a couple of things are clear: First, we got into this fix because of multiple failures and miscalculations. Second, still more ills could well surface before all this is over. Here's a quick recap of what went wrong at the wellhead, and what could go wrong in the future:

1. Why did the well explode in the first place? The Deepwater Horizon oil well, 5,000 feet beneath the sea surface, was right between the exploratory drilling phase and its operational phase. Executives from BP and the other companies involved in the drilling told a Senate hearing that heavy drilling mud was removed from the well without putting on a final cement cap. That move has drawn severe criticism, because it reduced downward pressure on the well. Oil and gas blasted up the line on April 20, touching off the initial explosion. The arguments over what the companies did or didn't do in advance of the blast will play a key role in the coming avalanche of lawsuits.

2. Could this rig have been saved? Firefighters worked mightily to put out the blaze, which killed 11 workers. Some have questioned whether the tons of water and fire retardant dumped onto the rig contributed to its sinking on April 22. If the rig could somehow have been saved from sinking, that would have made the job of capping the oil leak much easier. Instead, the rig fell to the bottom of the sea, mangling the riser line that led up from the wellhead.

3. Why didn't the blowout preventer work? The five-story-high contraption known as a blowout preventer, or BOP, was supposed to be the fail-safe option to close off the leaking well. The BOP contains a series of valves that should have closed upon command, or if the oil-and-gas pressure went out of control. Oil executives voiced profound disappointment that it didn't work. So why didn't it? Technology Review points to several reports, issued years ago, that say blowout control measures that are reliable in shallow waters are not so reliable below depths of 3,000 feet or so. This particular BOP might have been damaged by debris during the rig's fall, or it might have been unable to withstand the pressure from this particular well. Even remotely operated vehicles were unable to close down the valves - which suggests that the gush has irreparably damaged the BOP's plumbing. Would a backup BOP have done any good? That's a question to be considered during the crisis postmortem.

4. Why didn't the containment box work? In early May, BP had hoped that a 40-foot-high containment box could be lowered over the well's leaking pipe and suck up the oil and gas. The problem was that the box was too big: The seawater that was trapped within reacted with the methane bubbling up from the leak, forming crystals of methane hydrate. Those crystals essentially plugged up the hose so that oil could not be sucked up ... kind of like the hair that gets stuck in a vacuum-cleaner attachment. What's more, the crystals were lighter than water, which made the box too buoyant to keep clamped over the leaking pipe. In mid-May, BP switched to a different siphoning system that brought up oil from within the broken riser line.

5. What went wrong with the siphon? The four-inch siphoning tube worked, but it could collect only a fraction of the leaking oil - 5,000 barrels a day at best. During the early phase of the oil disaster, some experts thought the total leakage amounted to 5,000 barrels a day. The siphoning operation made it obvious that much more oil than that was getting into the Gulf. To plug the leak completely, BP pinned its hopes on an operation known as "top kill," which involved pushing enough heavy drilling mud down the well to counteract the pressure of oil and gas.

6. What went wrong with the top kill? BP pushed the mud down the well for hours at a time, for three days. But the operation could never get enough mud down the hole to keep the oil and gas from gushing back up. The exercise reminded me of trying to unplug a kitchen drain by running tap water down the sink with the garbage disposal on. Gunk just came flooding back up every time they turned off the spigot.

7. Why didn't the junk shot work? One of the extra twists to the "top kill" maneuver was to throw some extra debris - say, golf balls or strips of rubber - into the drilling mud, in hopes of plugging up the blowout preventer's leaky plumbing. This is what's known as a "junk shot." Engineers told The New York Times that the junk shot didn't come close to succeeding, apparently because the debris didn't gum up the works as they hoped. BP set aside the strategy of sealing off the wellhead, and instead tried to suck up the oil using a contraption known as the lower marine riser package, the LMRP, or the "top cap."

8. Is the top cap working? Sort of. The top cap doesn't run into the methane-hydrate problems that the containment box did because it closes more tightly over the pipe leading up from the blowout preventer. Less water gets inside the chamber, which provides less opportunity for hydrate crystals to form. Methanol can also be pumped into the cap to retard hydrate formation. To attach the cap, remotely operated vehicles had to saw off the dented riser line - and that part of the operation didn't go as smoothly as hoped. After the saw got stuck, a part of the riser had to be cut off with a giant pair of shears, leaving a jagged edge on the pipe. The cap has four vents to ease the oil/gas pressure while it's being put into place and checked out. So far, only one of the vents has been closed. As a result, lots of oil is still being vented into the sea. BP says progress is being made, with 7,850 barrels of oil being collected over a 12-hour period today. However, experts say cutting off the riser line actually increased the total flow of oil, effectively making things worse ... at least temporarily. Other oil-sucking systems are being put in place, including the Q4000 arrangement that was used for the unsuccessful top kill and a free-floating riser that's designed to ride out hurricane season.

9. Who's in charge, and what have they got? Efforts to contain the oil on the surface are another story entirely, but the main concern here is whether enough resources are being brought to bear. BP is responsible for the cost of the oil cleanup, and over the past few days company executives have said they will "meet our obligations." But critics worry that the cleanup hasn't kept up with the threats posed by the spill. Today's report about an undersea plume of oil contamination stretching as far as 142 miles from the spill site raises the level of concern. Alaska marine biologist Rick Steiner, a veteran of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill response and a longtime critic of the petroleum industry, is worried that the cleanup effort is losing steam. He complained that marine contractors have "done a terrible job" of tending the containment booms around coastal areas. Disaster fatigue could become more prevalent as the crisis continues.

10. Will the relief wells work? Experts have been saying since late April that the long-term fix for the oil leak depends on the relief wells that are being drilled beneath the seafloor. Those 18,000-foot-deep wells are supposed to intersect with the gushing well, and provide openings for BP to push mud and cement down into the leak. As of Monday, the wells have reached depths of 12,956 feet and 8,576 feet, BP said. The wells are due for completion by August, but there's no guarantee that they'll actually intersect with the original well. Some have compared the job to threading a needle, or finding a needle in a haystack. Last year, after an Australian offshore-oil blowout, it took five attempts to hit the mark. If the Gulf of Mexico situation develops in the same way, that could add weeks upon frustrating weeks to the duration of the disaster.

Bottom line? It'd be great to have some strokes of good luck for a change: a top cap that works better than expected, or a hole in one on the relief-well front. But it's most important to have the will and the wherewithal to deal with what's shaping up as a long-term disaster relief project on America's shores. What do you think? Weigh in with your comments and suggestions below.

More sources on the spill:

• The Oil Drum
• Mark I. Moore
• Upstream Online
• Deepwater Horizon Response
• BP: Gulf of Mexico Response | Technical briefing | Slides
• Disaster in the Gulf: msnbc.com special report

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Want to fly aboard the space shuttle? You can get some face time in orbit, digitally speaking, through the space agency's "Face in Space" Web project.

The concept is simple enough: Choose which shuttle mission you want your data to fly on, type your name into the online form, upload a digital image if you wish, size the picture to fit inside a virtual shuttle's window, and click the button. Your name and picture will be added to a computerized file that will be transferred to the shuttle of your choice during the mission.

You can choose between STS-133 on Discovery, now due to fly no earlier than September; or STS-134 on Endeavour, set to launch in November or later.

The Face in Space website was unveiled to the public just today - but the idea has already generated a lot of buzz, and not all of the G-rated kind.

James Hartsfield, a spokesman at NASA's Johnson Space Center, says several thousand people uploaded files during a beta-testing period that was primarily aimed at space agency employees and contractors. Once word got out, other folks contributed as well. "We ended up with people signing up all over the world," Hartsfield told me.

But can you upload anything you want? How about porn? The terms and conditions rule out material "describing or depicting sexually explicit conduct ... or other sexually oriented materials." And NASA reserves the right to remove anything that's uploaded. That being said, Hartsfield told the Houston Press that "there's not a safeguard there against what words people can type in, be it profanity or what have you." He acknowledged that "some of that is inherent in dealing with the public."

Another question has to do with what ultimately happens to the data file. Even if they did upload your porn-laden file to the shuttle computer (presumably after being checked for viruses), who would look at it? The data file is certainly not going to be reviewed in detail during the mission, and once the shuttle lands, all those bits (including the naughty bits) will go poof. The only proof you'll have that your face (or what have you) has flown in space will be an auto-generated, suitable-for-printing certificate bearing the shuttle commander's signature.

Other "fly-your-name" projects involve putting your digitized data on an artifact of some sort, whether it's a microchip on the moon, a mini-DVD on Mars or a CD on its way to Pluto. Today you can sign up to send digital data on the Planetary Society's Lightsail 1 solar sail or NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (a.k.a. the Curiosity rover). In both those cases, the information is put on a storage device (a mini-DVD or microchip, respectively) that will stay on the probe. Now, it's true that the data will probably never be read off those devices. Your message could be destined for oblivion. But it's reassuring for me to think that a trace of my identity could potentially be lying on the Martian surface or heading for the stars.

Should the "Face in Space" data be preserved for posterity, perhaps on DVDs that will be on display with their respective shuttles when they go to the museums? Or is it better to wipe the slate clean, out of respect for privacy and perhaps propriety as well? Let me know what you think in a comment below, and just maybe NASA will take your opinion into consideration.

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Quick! Name a telescope! The title of this item may have been too much of a tip-off, but if you were to ask the typical bystander, chances are the Hubble Space Telescope would be the first name to come to mind.

One reason behind Hubble's popularity has to do with the "triumph-over-adversity" angle: The space telescope was launched with an off-kilter mirror, but was revived in a series of spacewalks. It had a close brush with death several years ago, but underwent a final fix last year and is now better than ever at the age of 20.

The biggest reason for Hubble's iconic status would have to be the iconic imagery it has sent back over those 20 years: the Pillars of Creation, the Eye of God, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field ... heck, even the Cosmic Finger of Friendship. Hubble's pictures have become powerful cultural symbols of the final frontier, just as 19th-century Western landscape paintings portrayed the grandeur of an earlier frontier.

So it's fitting that the European Space Agency's Hubble team is marking the 20th anniversary of the telescope's launch with a pop-culture contest. Until the end of this month, anyone can submit imagery that references Hubble. So far, the entries run the gamut from an Andy Warhol tribute, to ads and album covers, to "Hubble-on-burnt-toast."

Winners will be selected by the end of July in several superlative categories: most artisitic, weirdest, funniest, largest and smallest. The prizes include an iPod Touch preloaded with Hubble videos and images, plus Hubble-themed books, prints and postcards. Check out the European Hubble website for submission instructions, rules and restrictions.

If you need further inspiration, click through our collections of "Hubble's Greatest Hits" and the "Latest, Greatest Hits." And if you need further let's-go-crazification, check out The Onion's article on the Hubble Space Kaleidoscope.

A biologist in Germany has stirred up a fuss with comments suggesting it makes more sense to kill heavily oiled birds from the Gulf of Mexico oil-spill disaster than to clean them.

"According to serious studies, the middle-term survival rate of oil-soaked birds is under 1 percent," Silvia Gaus, a biologist at the Wattenmeer National Park along the North Sea, was quoted as saying on Spiegel Online last month. "We, therefore, oppose cleaning birds."

Biologists on the scene who are actually involved in the cleanup tell a slightly different story: Sure, sometimes it makes sense to euthanize birds who aren’t going to make it, or leave them to die in their natural habitat. But ethically speaking, they feel a duty to try saving the birds if there’s a chance they can be saved.

For example, Rick Steiner, an Alaska marine biologist who was involved in the 1989 Exxon Valdez cleanup and is now assisting Greenpeace, said from a boat in the Gulf that he and the crew turned in a heavily oiled young egret for cleaning just today.

"It was in horrible shape," he told me via telephone, "and I doubt seriously that it will survive the day. But, you know, we caused their pain and suffering, so we owe it to them to do everything we possibly can to give them a fighting chance of survival.”

Today's numbers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other groups involved in the cleanup show that 413 oiled birds have been collected alive, and 594 dead birds have been picked up. Of all those birds, only 39 have been released back into the wild.

The raw numbers from the Gulf certainly look grim right now, and Gaus expects those numbers to get even grimmer. She argues that rescuers' efforts to counter petroleum's toxic effects - for example, by having the birds ingest charcoal solutions or Pepto Bismol - are ineffective in the long run.

Spiegel Online says that Gaus bases her view on 20 years of experience: For example, she worked on the cleanup of the 1998 Pallas oil spill into the North Sea, which killed about 13,000 birds. The report also cites comments attributed to the World Wildlife Fund during the 2002 Prestige oil-spill cleanup off the coast of Spain, to the effect that oil-covered birds "can no longer be helped" and that the organization was "very reluctant to recommend cleaning."

During the present crisis, however, the WWF has been supportive of bird-cleaning. Although it's not directly involved in oil-spill response, one of its partners on the scene is the California-based Oiled Wildlife Care Network. And one of my sources at the WWF deferred to the International Bird Rescue Research Center, which is heavily involved in the bird cleanup effort.

Photo by Bill Haber / AP

Shannon Griffin, Julie Skogland and Darene Birtell clean a brown pelican at a rescue center set up by the International Bird Rescue Research Center in Buras, La.

Mark Russell, a project manager at the IBRRC, took strong issue with Gaus' claim that cleaning is ineffective: He told me that the studies on which she based her conclusions suffered from some gaps in procedure. (For example, what were the rehabilitation practices? Did the monitoring equipment that was strapped onto the released birds contribute to their demise? If you can no longer locate a bird with a transmitter, should you always assume that the bird died?)

Other studies indicate that the survival rate for cleaned-up birds can be quite high, from 78 to 100 percent, as noted on the "Living the Scientific Life" blog. And as bad as those oily pelicans may look in the pictures from Louisiana, Russell said it's often the oiliest birds that have the highest survival rate. That's because they tend to be picked up earlier, before dehydration, hypothermia and other ills have set in.

Russell said there was once a long-running debate over whether the stress of rehabilitation does the birds more harm than good. (Research shows that it doesn't.) Even now, there's a debate over whether the resources spent on wildlife rehabilitation should be directed instead toward rebuilding the tarnished environment left behind by an oil spill. The way Russell sees it, cleaning up the animals is part and parcel of cleaning up the ecosystem. Keeping wildlife populations as healthy as possible will make the recovery easier. "This isn't a 'this-or-that' situation," Russell said.

To be sure, life-or-death decisions have to be made in the field. Steiner told me that oiled birds have a "decent chance" of surviving if they're brought in during the first 24 hours of exposure to oil. But as any veterinarian will tell you, sometimes the decent thing to do is to let the animals go ... and learn a lesson.

"There is a point at which, obviously, they are suffering needlessly, and certainly they should be euthanized," Steiner said. "Some are so far gone when you're capturing them for rehab, that the best thing is to leave them there and let them die in their natural habitat. ... It pulls at the heartstrings, but this is how people get the idea behind our oil addiction, by looking at these oil-soaked birds."

To get a better sense of the struggle to save Gulf wildlife, check out our slideshow as well as the IBRRC's blog - and feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

Update for 7:10 p.m. ET: In your comments, please refrain from talking about "euthanizing" or killing anyone. Some commenters have noted that the reported survival rate for Gulf birds brought in for rehabilitation is around 10 percent, not 1 percent. But it's too early to say how much longer those animals survive once they've been released. In the Spiegel article, Gaus says the 1 percent figure she cited applies to "midterm survival." Russell says that figure is too low, even for longer-range survival, based on the scientific literature he's seen.

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Here's the regular Friday roundup of Web links. Feel free to contribute your own comments on the week that was ... or the week that's coming up. And remember, I'm counting on you to help keep the website wonderful by using the buttons that accompany every comment. Vote up the comments you like, flag the comments that aren't appropriate, and have yourself a great weekend.

• Enter the 'Dance Your Ph.D.' contest
• The Economist: A game of cat and mouse
• io9: 20 science-fiction novels that will change your life
• Jupiter smash sequel: Bad Astronomy | Planetary Blog
• NASA Science News: Keeping a wary eye on space weather

The reactions to today's successful maiden flight of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, a potential successor to the space shuttle, started streaming in long before the celebratory margaritas were poured. "My e-mail box has gone bonkers, and my phone has been ringing off the hook," SpaceX millionaire founder Elon Musk said. The eight-year-old company's fans were effusive in their praise, while others were in the "damn with faint praise" category. Here's a sampling of reactions from both sides, with an extra twist at the end:

STRONG PRAISE

• NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who once said he would do everything in his power to make sure SpaceX and other commercial launch companies were successful:

"Congratulations to Space X on today's launch of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle. Space X's accomplishment is an important milestone in the commercial transportation effort and puts the company a step closer to providing cargo services to the International Space Station. Preparations are proceeding for the first NASA-sponsored test launch under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services project later this year. COTS is a vital development and demonstration partnership to create a commercial space transportation system capable of providing cargo to the station. This launch of the Falcon 9 gives us even more confidence that a resupply vehicle will be available after the space shuttle fleet is retired."

• The Planetary Society, which has championed the "flexible path" space exploration strategy now favored by the White House:

"It's hard not to launch into hyperbole at the success of the first Falcon 9 test flight. It is a tremendous achievement. Hats off to our Planetary Society Board member, Elon Musk, and his SpaceX team. In advancing commercial spaceflight, today's flight of Falcon 9 could be the first small step towards relieving NASA launchers of the burden of low-Earth orbit, thus freeing the U.S. space agency to reach new worlds. ..."

• The Commercial Spaceflight Federation passed along praise from an assortment of space heavyweights, including former NASA astronauts Rusty Schweickart (Apollo 9) and Byron Lichtenberg (STS-9, STS-45):

Schweickart: “As a former Apollo astronaut, I think it’s safe to say that SpaceX and the other commercial developers embody the 21st-century version of the Apollo frontier spirit. It’s enormously gratifying to see them succeed today.”

Lichtenberg: “I expect that there will be a lot more astronauts in the future because of today’s success. Lower cost launches means more flights, which means more astronauts. We’ve only had 500 astronauts in the history of the Space Age, but I hope to see thousands more in the decades to come.”

• Space consultant Charles Lurio, a tireless campaigner for the New Space movement and a tireless critic of the way NASA operates:

"Today’s flight should go a long way toward countering the hoary, 'magical negative thinking' of the past that led many to deride commercial spaceflight efforts. Of course, some will attempt to keep purveying those old myths, but their squawking should now be seen clearly than ever as the pitiful gasps of another era. The Falcon 9 flight, like that of SpaceShipOne, and like many others quietly being marked at pioneering venues around the country, shows that the path to practical spaceflight and commercial innovation driving a 'space PC revolution' is wide open."

• X Prize Chairman/CEO Peter Diamandis, who helped put together the $10 million Ansari X Prize to reward private-sector spaceflight and counts Musk as a member of his board of trustees:

"The maiden voyage of the Falcon 9 marks an important milestone in commercial spaceflight, proving what is achievable by privately-owned companies that are dedicated to pioneering new technologies and making space more accessible. Overcoming the high cost of launching to orbit continues to be a challenge faced by space-related ventures, and the emergence of launch vehicles such as the Falcon 9 contributes to an increasingly competitive environment in the launch vehicle market – a condition which has the potential to drive costs down and open the space frontier to the rest of us. In the not-too-distant future, we hope to see SpaceX and other commercial launch providers transporting crew and cargo to orbiting outposts, the moon, asteroids, and even Mars."

• The Space Frontier Foundation issued a news release that ended with this quote from one of its always-quotable founders, Rick Tumlinson:

“Some have decried the new American space program and harkened back to the good old elitist days of Apollo, and what they see as the end of the 'right stuff' mindset that took us to the moon. Well, they are dead wrong. You want to see excitement and drive of the early days of Apollo? You want to see the Right Stuff right now? Go visit SpaceX or any of the other NewSpace firms and teams out there reaching for the stars. It is alive and well!"

• Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who has been pushing for an extension of the space shuttle program and the restoration of funding for NASA's internal rocket development project, was "very excited" about the Falcon 9 launch during a congratulatory phone call, Musk said. The Politico website quoted Nelson as saying SpaceX's successful test suggests that the Falcon will be in "full operation delivering cargo to the International Space Station a year from now." It's unusual for Nelson, who has seemed a bit doubtful about NASA's moves toward commercialization, to be so positive about SpaceX's prospects. Other members of Congress have voiced sharp concerns about what NASA's shift will mean for traditional aerospace jobs. They've also voiced sharp doubts about the capabilities of commercial launch companies (which, by the way, happen to include traditional aerospace companies). And that brings us to ...

FAINT PRAISE

• Sen. Richard Shelby, the Alabama Republican who once said commercial launch providers "cannot even carry the trash back from the space station," was quoted by Politico as saying that today's launch merely replicated what "NASA accomplished in 1964":

"Belated progress for one so-called commercial provider must not be confused with progress for our nation's human spaceflight program. As a nation, we cannot place our future spaceflight on one fledgling company's definition of success."

• Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, a Florida Democrat whose district includes NASA's Kennedy Space Center, sounded ambivalent about one of the Space Coast's up-and-coming employers:

"The successful test launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is a significant step in the development of the commercial space industry. There is no doubt that commercial spaceflight will play an important role in the future of our efforts in space, and I believe private companies can bring new job opportunities for the Space Coast's highly skilled workforce. But we must both support the emerging commercial space industry and ensure a robust, NASA-led human spaceflight program in order to maintain our international leadership in space and keep our economy strong. I will continue fighting at every opportunity to minimize the human spaceflight gap, protect jobs, and ensure a bright future for the Space Coast."

• Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican, set a new standard for faint praise:

"This first successful test flight of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is a belated sign that efforts to develop modest commercial space cargo capabilities are showing some promising signs. While this test flight was important, the program to demonstrate commercial cargo and crew transport capabilities, which I support, was intended to enhance not replace NASA's own proven abilities to deliver critical cargo and humans to low Earth orbit. Make no mistake, even this modest success is more than a year behind schedule, and the project deadlines of other private space companies continue to slip as well. This test does not change the fact that commercial space programs are not ready to close the gap in human spaceflight if the space shuttle is retired this year with no proven replacement capability and the Constellation program is simultaneously canceled as the president proposes."

Hutchison's faint praise was particularly irksome to Musk, who has about 100 of SpaceX's 1,000 employees working at a test facility in McGregor, Texas.

"We do all of our engine testing and development in Texas," he told reporters. "We're one of the fastest-growing employers in Texas. Why is she trying to hurt a Texas company? That's wrong. And the people of Texas ought to be aware of that. The people of Texas ought to be electing politicians that are going to be working to help their state, not hurt their state."

It sounds as if the Falcon 9 launch wasn't the only fireworks display going on around SpaceX today. What do you think? Should politicians be judged based on where they stand on spaceflight issues, or do other issues (such as the oil spill aftermath) loom larger on the political landscape? Feel free to leave your comments below.

Correction for 11:11 p.m. ET: Of course Sen. Shelby is from Alabama rather than Arkansas. Sorry about that. ... Thanks for calling the error to my attention. Chalk it up to a long day at the end of a long week.

For more about the political dimension of space, check out Jeff Foust's Space Politics weblog, as well as Clark Lindsey's Space Transport News, Keith Cowing's NASA Watch and Rand Simberg's Transterrestrial Musings. Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said he felt as if he was playing Russian roulette with the first launch of his company's Falcon 9 rocket, which is being groomed as a successor to NASA's space shuttle fleet. Well, Musk and his team not only dodged a bullet ... they knocked this one out of the park, and into orbit. For the full story, check out my report in msnbc.com's Space section. I'll be updating that story as the day goes on.

Update for 2:34 p.m. ET: Another Falcon 9 launch attempt is planned for 2:45 p.m. ET. This will likely be the last try for today. If no go, another launch window opens from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET Saturday.

SpaceX's first attempt to launch its Falcon 9 rocket, seen as a private-sector successor to the space shuttle fleet, was aborted with just a second or two left in the countdown at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. That doesn't mean we're done for the day. The California-based company could still turn around and make another try once they figure out what went wrong. For background on the Falcon 9 launch and why it's so important (and risky), check out Thursday's posting on rocket roulette. And stay tuned for updates, initially via my Twitter feed. SpaceX is providing a webcast, but Spaceflight Now's coverage (with Miles O'Brien) is more reliable.

Here's more must-see video from the people who turned Carl Sagan into a songster from beyond the grave. This time the Red Planet is the theme, and the Mars Society's Robert Zubrin is the lead vocalist. I never thought of Zubrin's voice as being musical, but he sounds pretty good. And when you have Sagan as well as musician/physicist Brian Cox and astrobiologist Penny Boston as your backup singers, how can you go wrong? "Mars is a world of wonders!"