NASA says it will begin work on an ambitious mission to capture a near-Earth asteroid and bring it to a stable orbit in the Earth-moon system as part of the agency's overall $17.7 billion agenda for the coming year.

The budget request for fiscal year 2014, unveiled on Wednesday, also aims to get U.S. astronauts back to flying on U.S.-based spaceships by 2017, launch the $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope by 2018 and send another rover to Mars by 2020. 

The proposed budget is about $50 million less than the amount sought a year ago, but about $1 billion more than the agency's current spending plan. Billions of dollars would be set aside to continue operations on the International Space Station, keep up the work on interplanetary missions, expand the nation's network of Earth-observing satellites and upgrade aerospace technologies. However, the headline-grabber in the budget is the asteroid retrieval mission, which is budgeted for $105 million in spending during the fiscal year beginning in September.

"This mission represents an unprecedented technological feat that will lead to new scientific discoveries and technological capabilities and help protect our home planet," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement accompanying the budget request.

Planning documents suggest that the space agency would launch a probe powered by a next-generation solar electric propulsion system sometime around 2017, to rendezvous with a 7- to 10-meter-wide (25- to 33-foot-wide) asteroid around 2019. A collapsible shroud would be wrapped around the asteroid, and then the probe would pull the space rock to a stable point in high lunar orbit or at a gravitational balance point beyond the far side of the moon.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, officials familiar with the plan told NBC News that NASA was already beginning the work to identify a candidate asteroid. The 2014 budget includes $78 million for planning the mission, and $27 million to accelerate NASA's efforts to detect and characterize potentially hazardous asteroids. NASA's chief financial officer, Elizabeth Robinson, indicated that this spending would come in addition to the $20 million that the space agency currently spends annually on asteroid detection.

The plan for the mission was formally unveiled less than two months after an asteroid streaked through the atmosphere and broke up over Russia. The breakup sparked a meteor blast that shattered windows and injured more than 1,000 people.

That asteroid was thought to have been about 17 meters (55 feet) wide. The type of asteroid targeted for the future NASA mission, in contrast, would be too small to pose a threat to Earth — even if it were to break loose somehow and plunge through the atmosphere.

Astronauts to visit
Bolden said the asteroid-grabbing mission meshed with NASA's plans to head off cosmic threats as well as to prepare for deep-space human exploration. Eventually, astronauts would be sent to study the captured asteroid and bring back samples, most likely during a beyond-the-moon test mission that's already planned for 2021.

"This asteroid initiative brings together the best of NASA's science, technology and human exploration efforts to achieve the president's goal of sending humans to an asteroid by 2025," Bolden said. "We will use existing capabilities such as the Orion crew capsule and Space Launch System rocket, and develop new technologies like solar electric propulsion and laser communications — all critical components of deep-space exploration."

A senior administration official told NBC News on condition of anonymity that the added cost of the asteroid mission would be around $1 billion, spread over several years. That figure doesn't include the estimated $35 billion that is being paid out to develop the SLS/Orion system for deep-space human flights.

As Bolden noted, the asteroid mission would satisfy President Barack Obama's space exploration goal for 2025, and allow NASA to turn its attention to sending astronauts to Mars and its moons in the 2030s. Last week, Bolden signaled that other potential objectives, such as sending humans back to the moon, were not on the agenda for the foreseeable future.

Nevertheless, some lawmakers want NASA to go in a different direction: A bipartisan group of House members last week reintroduced a bill calling on the space agency to develop a plan for establishing a permanent human presence on the moon.

"Last year, the National Research Council committee charged with reviewing NASA’s strategic direction found that there was no support within NASA or from our international partners for the administration’s proposed asteroid mission," Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., said in a statement. "However, there is broad support for NASA to lead a return to the moon. So the U.S. can either lead that effort, or another country will step up and lead that effort in our absence — which would be very unfortunate."

No guarantees
NASA's $17.7 billion spending plan accounts for less than half a percent of Obama's $3.8 trillion request to Congress for fiscal 2014. The entire budget is likely to come under close scrutiny in the Republican-controlled House as well as the Democratic-controlled Senate, and there's no guarantee that the final version will look anything like the White House's proposal. In fact, last year's budget request ended up going nowhere. Instead, the federal government is currently operating under a budget sequestration plan that cut back on previous spending levels.

"This was a meat-ax approach that I think nobody initially intended to have take effect," White House science adviser John Holdren said Wednesday during a budget briefing.

Holdren said the total amount of money budgeted for research and development in 2014 would come to $142.8 billion, which represents a "small decline" in inflation-adjusted dollars compared with 2012 spending levels.

"Although this is not the budget that we would want if financial times were better, it reflects an extraordinary effort by this administration to preserve a key investment in research, development, innovation and STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] education that our country's future requires," Holdren said.

Update for 9:15 p.m. ET April 10: NASA's asteroid retrieval mission could complement commercial efforts to identify and exploit bigger near-Earth objects, said Chris Lewicki, president of the Planetary Resources asteroid-mining venture. He said he's already been involved in an "ongoing discussion" about how such a mission could benefit the public as well as private enterprise.

"Maybe this is a model for a COTS-like program where there are operations put in place for private industry to help develop a marketplace," Lewicki told NBC News.

But Lewicki said the mission will not be easy. "It represents something new that will require NASA and the contractors that help them do it to really stretch their capabilities," he said.

For example, Lewicki said it would be "very challenging" to identify and track deep-space objects in the size range that NASA is targeting — that is, 7 to 10 meters wide. Such objects usually can't be spotted unless they make a close approach to Earth.

"With what's been proposed in the budget, NASA is putting more money on the table to accelerate and leverage more observation activities," Lewicki said. "The question is, is that enough? And is it going to be soon enough?"

More reaction:

• Planetary Resources: Asteroid plan offers 'bold new thinking'
• Deep Space Industries calls for partnerships (via Moon and Back)
• University of Arizona experts welcome asteroid plan
• Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas: Plan comes 'seemingly out of the blue'
• Coalition for Space Exploration backs budget proposal

More about asteroids:

• Asteroid miners are getting a boost from NASA
• How asteroid mission could lead to Mars
• Cosmic Log archive on asteroids

Correction: I originally wrote that the full budget proposal was seeking $3.8 billion, but it's actually $3.8 trillion. Unfortunately, it's not the first time one of those wayward "illions" has slipped through the net. Thank goodness I have sharp-eyed commenters to set me straight.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Wed Apr 10, 2013 2:54 PM EDT

DigitalSpace

An Orion exploration vehicle approaches a near-Earth asteroid in this artist's conception. Such a mission would be carried out in 2021 under the White House's new plan for NASA exploration beyond Earth orbit.

NASA's accelerated vision for exploration calls for moving a near-Earth asteroid even nearer to Earth, sending out astronauts to bring back samples within a decade, and then shifting the focus to Mars, a senior Obama administration official told NBC News on Saturday.

The official said the mission would "accomplish the president's challenge of sending humans to visit an asteroid by 2025 in a more cost-effective and potentially quicker time frame than under other scenarios." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because there was no authorization to discuss the plan publicly.

The source said more than $100 million would be sought for the mission and other asteroid-related activities in its budget request for the coming fiscal year, which is due to be sent to Congress on Wednesday. That confirms comments made on Friday by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., a one-time spaceflier who is now chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Science and Space. It also confirms a report about the mission that appeared last month in Aviation Week.

The asteroid retrieval mission is based on a scenario set out last year by a study group at the Keck Institute for Space Studies. NASA's revised scenario would launch a robotic probe toward a 500-ton, 7- to 10-meter-wide (25- to 33-foot-wide) asteroid in 2017 or so. The probe would capture the space rock in a bag in 2019, and then pull it to a stable orbit in the vicinity of the moon, using a next-generation solar electric propulsion system. That would reduce the travel time for asteroid-bound astronauts from a matter of months to just a few days.

The Keck study estimated the total mission cost at $2.6 billion — but the administration official said the price tag could be reduced to $1 billion, or roughly $100 million a year, if the mission took advantage of an already-planned test flight for NASA's heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew exploration vehicle. That flight would send astronauts around the moon and back in 2021.

"This mission would combine the best of NASA's asteroid identification, technology development, and human exploration efforts to capture and redirect a small asteroid to just beyond the moon to set up a human mission using existing resources and equipment, including the heavy-lift rocket and deep-space capsule that have been under development for several years," the official said in an email.

The 2014 budget would set aside $78 million for planning the asteroid retrieval mission, plus $27 million to accelerate NASA's efforts to detect and characterize potentially hazardous asteroids. The federal government currently spends $20 million annually on asteroid detection.

Meteor sparked action
The official said the plan had been under discussion for months, but coalesced after February's meteor blast over Russia. The meteor's breakup injured more than 1,000 people and sparked a worldwide sensation. It also sparked a series of congressional hearings about threats from space, during which Republicans as well as Democrats hinted that they would support more funding to counter asteroid threats.

"This plan would help us prove we're smarter than the dinosaurs," said the official, referring to the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and many other species 65 million years ago. An asteroid in the 7- to 10-meter range would be about half as wide as the one that broke up over Russia. That's far too small to pose any threat to Earth, even if the space rock was coming directly at our planet. But the captured asteroid could provide valuable insights for dealing with bigger ones in the future. 

Initial preparations for the mission won't have to wait for a deal to end budget sequestration, or approval of the budget for the 2014 fiscal year. NASA would begin immediately to identify the asteroid for retrieval, and take advantage of existing efforts funded by the agency's science, technology and human exploration directorates. The most expensive element of the plan, the multibillion-dollar Orion/SLS launch system, is already being funded under the terms of an agreement with Congress.

Discussions with NASA's international and commercial partners will continue in the months and years ahead, the official said. The retrieved asteroid could conceivably become a target for other scientific missions or asteroid-mining operations. In the process, governments might have to address issues surrounding the ownership and exploitation of space resources.

"We're trying to force the question," the official said. "We're trying to push the envelope on this new frontier."

Questions raised
Some observers have already raised questions about the plan, based on the advance reports. Scott Pace, the director of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, told The Associated Press that it was a bad idea on scientific as well as diplomatic grounds. It would be better for the United States to join forces with other countries to conduct a comprehensive survey of all potentially dangerous asteroids, Pace said.

Rick Tumlinson, chairman of an asteroid-mining venture called Deep Space Industries, said he was concerned that NASA's asteroid mission might interfere with private-sector efforts — and he called on NASA to rely on private enterprise wherever possible. The administration official assured NBC News that cooperation with commercial ventures as well as other groups such as the B612 Foundation was part of the plan.

The official noted that the mission would provide a relatively low-cost route to satisfying President Barack Obama's goal of sending astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025. The lessons learned during the mission could be applied to future missions aimed at diverting other asteroids — perhaps to head off a potential threat, or conduct further scientific study, or exploit the potentially valuable resources that asteroids contain.

After the asteroid mission, NASA would turn its attention to a farther-out destination: Mars. The Obama administration has called for astronauts to travel to the Red Planet and its moons by the mid-2030s, and that would be the next major target for space exploration. The administration official told NBC News that other concepts, such as sending astronauts back to the moon or creating a deep-space platform beyond the far side of the moon, are not on the agenda for the foreseeable future. 

More about asteroids:

• Asteroid miners get boost from NASA
• Senator says asteroid mission is in the works
• Cosmic Log archive on asteroids

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

L. Calcada / N. Risinger / ESO

An artist's conception shows the planet Alpha Centauri Bb, orbiting one of the stars in a nearby triple-star system. A commercial venture known as Uwingu says it will use proceeds from a contest to give Alpha Centauri Bb a new name to support endangered educational and public outreach efforts.

NASA's plan to suspend educational and public outreach activities due to budget sequestration has sparked protests from some of the space agency's biggest fans, and a commercial venture known as Uwingu wants to help fill the gap. Uwingu says it will direct proceeds from its contest to name the closest exoplanet toward projects that are facing budget cuts.

The venture was set up last year to offer space-themed entertainment that would raise money for education and space science. Just last week, Uwingu kicked off an effort to come up with a "people's choice" name for Alpha Centauri Bb, an Earth-sized planet that was detected last year just 4.3 light-years away.

It takes $4.99 to nominate a name, and 99 cents to cast a vote. The contest closes on April 15, and the winner will be announced the next day. Some of the proceeds will go toward paying the company's expenses, but the target is to put at least half of the money into a fund to support research and education. 

Rough patch for NASA
When the company made its public debut, the founders said the Uwingu Fund could serve as a lifeline for scientists and educators if NASA's budget ran into a rough patch. Sequestration certainly qualifies as a rough patch: The automatic spending cuts will force NASA to scale back its budget by roughly $900 million for the fiscal year.

As part of its plan to comply with sequestration, NASA officials on Friday ordered the suspension of educational and public outreach activities, also known as EPO. Planetary scientist Alan Stern, Uwingu's CEO and a former NASA associate administrator, said the suspension has put educational and public outreach programs "under severe and sudden stress."

"At Uwingu, we believe that private and commercial funding of space-based initiatives — including research and EPO — is more important now than ever," Stern said in a statement Monday. "That's the purpose of The Uwingu Fund, which is fueled from people participating in the naming contest for Alpha Centauri's planet. Today we're announcing that Uwingu is taking action to combat the severe, adverse impact of sequestration on NASA EPO by directing all Uwingu Funds proceeds raised through this contest to grants to EPO professionals and projects."

In the grand scheme of things, education and public outreach aren't the most expensive things that NASA does. The continuing resolution that governed spending for the current fiscal year set aside $137 million for the agency's education account, and sequestration would trim that figure by $7 million. NASA budgets additional funds for public outreach on a mission-by-mission basis, but the expense is still a small proportion of NASA's $17.8 billion budget.

Outcry over outreach
Friday's move nevertheless sparked an outcry from many who rank education and public outreach among NASA's strongest suits. Over the weekend, more than 4,500 people signed onto an online petition urging the White House to "repeal" the EPO spending cuts.

"This is something that hits extremely close to home, and not just because I may not have a position this summer as a result of this," Scott Lewis, media director for Astrosphere New Media Association, said in a Google+ posting. "NASA's education and public outreach is something that opens the eyes of thousands, if not millions of people, to the magnificence of science, technology, engineering and mathematics."

One of the ventures that could be affected by the budget cuts is CosmoQuest, an online educational project that sponsors virtual star parties, citizen-science projects and similar activities with NASA support. Pamela Gay, a professor at Southern Illinois University who is CosmoQuest's project director, said the effect on funding is not yet clear — but she's already preparing for cutbacks.

"I'm looking at multiple fundraisers," Gay, who is on Uwingu's board of advisers, said in a Google+ posting on Sunday. "While I'm less worried about CosmoQuest than I was yesterday, it is clear that many good people in the NASA EPO community are deeply in jeopardy. I continue to encourage you to help us seek donations so that I can recover as needed from any cuts we incur, and, as additional funding allows, work to contract people who do lose their jobs to help us build new and amazing things for CQX. I'm hoping you will help me build a safety net for our community."

Correction for 3:55 p.m. ET March 25: I referred to Scott Lewis as an astronomer at Citrus College — which prompted this email from Lewis, a.k.a. "The Bald Astronomer": "I'm not an astronomer at Citrus College, but a student there. I am, however, media director for Astrosphere New Media Association, on the education/public outreach team for CosmoQuest, owner of KnowTheCosmos.com, and an all-around attractive man. haha."

More about sequestration's effects: 

• Sequester keeps NASA officials from conference
• FAA to close 149 air traffic control towers
• Budget battles: What you need to know

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA via Twitter

NASA says the tweets will continue despite a "pause" in educational and public outreach initiatives.

NASA is putting the brakes on its educational and public outreach efforts, due to the continuing standoff over the federal budget and the resulting sequestration of the agency's funds.

The cutbacks in NASA's activities, including social-media initiatives, were outlined on Friday in a pair of memos from NASA Headquarters in Washington. The independent SpaceRef website published both memos, including one that ordered a suspension and another that provided additional instructions for NASA's Communication Coordinating Council.

Automatic spending cuts are taking effect, at NASA and many other federal agencies, as the result of the failure by the White House and Congress to agree on a budget deal. Last month, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told lawmakers that sequestration would reduce NASA's overall budget from the $17.8 billion that Congress approved last year to $16.9 billion.

The space agency already has cut back on travel and training expenses. As a result, some of the space agency's scientists and executives had to pass up this week's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas. The new directives extend the cutbacks to online, multimedia and social-media initiatives as well as publications.

Operational websites and social-media accounts were excluded from the suspension, however — which means existing Twitter accounts, including @NASA and @MarsCuriosity, can stay in business. NASA has rapidly expanded its online presence in the past couple of years, winning recognition from the Emmys, the Shorty Awards and the Webby Awards. Just this month, the Mars Curiosity mission's social-media team won the South by Southwest Interactive Award for best social-media campaign. 

Waivers were also granted for mission announcements, media events and products, breaking-news activities and responses to media inquiries. In an emailed response to NBC News' inquiry, NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs said additional guidance would be issued next week, addressing areas that would be exempt from the suspension.

"It's important to point out that it's a suspension, not a cancellation," Jacobs wrote. "The agency's budget for the fiscal year is more that $1 billion below the original request. We are taking prudent steps to ensure the resources expended on outreach activities are done so wisely.

"Mission activities and much of the existing news and information dissemination is not likely to be impacted, including our successful social media efforts," he said. "However, it is important in this constrained fiscal environment to pause and assess how the money is being spent on a wide variety of outreach activities, many of which are funded by independent projects and programs. We are not canceling anything yet. We are being financially responsible by pausing long enough to review activities before they go forward."

Update for 9 p.m. ET March 23: Folks have started a petition on the White House's "We the People" website, calling for a repeal of the sequestration cuts for education and public outreach. Although the sentiment is admirable, NASA's hands (and the White House's hands) may be tied by the rules that govern sequestration. It's important to note that all of the space agency's activities have to be cut back by the same percentage. It's just that in the case of education and public outreach, the memos that address the process for starting the cuts have now been made public. 

That being said, signing a White House petition is a great way to make your opinion known, and so is writing or calling your representatives in Congress.

More about sequestration's effects:

• FAA to close 149 air traffic control towers
• How science funding will be affected
• Budget battles: What you need to know

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:00 PM EDT

Congress got the word from NASA on Tuesday about its options for dealing with the threats posed by asteroids and comets: Lawmakers can either provide adequate funding for detecting and characterizing near-Earth objects, and diverting them if necessary — or they can pray.

Threats from space are generally the stuff of science-fiction movies such as "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact," but members of the House Science Committee took a hard look at the realities during Tuesday's hearing, which came in response to the Feb. 15 meteor explosion over Russia as well as a close encounter that same day with a much bigger asteroid known as 2012 DA14.

The lawmakers didn't always like what they heard. The committee's chairman, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, told the panelists more than once that the progress report they delivered was "not reassuring." But representatives from both parties were receptive to the idea of putting more resources into the effort to counter cosmic threats.

White House science adviser John Holdren noted that the funding devoted annually to cataloging potentially threatening asteroids has risen from $5 million to more than $20 million over the past couple of years. But even at that level, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden estimated that it would take until 2030 to catalog 90 percent of the near-Earth objects between 140 meters and 1 kilometer in width, as mandated by Congress.  

"Maybe we can help you out with the budget. Don't know," Smith replied. He said "we need to find ways to prioritize NASA's projects."

Holdren said the single most useful project would be to put an infrared-sensing telescope in a Venus-like orbit, like the Sentinel Space Telescope being developed by the nonprofit B612 Foundation. The telescope could look for asteroids that currently can't be spotted from the ground because they spend much of their time within Earth's orbit, where they're lost in the sun's glare. The 55-foot-wide (17-meter-wide) rock that blew up without warning over Chelyabinsk in Russia last month was just such an asteroid.

"It came from a direction where our [existing] telescopes could not look," Holdren said. "We cannot look in the sun." 

Don Davis

Artwork by Don Davis shows a meteor streaking across the skies over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. More of Davis' work is available at his website, DonaldEDavis.com.

Holdren estimated the cost of an asteroid-hunting space telescope at $500 million to $750 million, and said it could reduce the congressionally mandated survey time to six to eight years. Following through on the Obama administration's plan to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 would cost about $2 billion a year, Holdren said.

The automatic spending cuts known as sequestration will affect NASA's asteroid-hunting effort as well as the plans for human exploration, Bolden warned.

"The president has a plan. But that plan is incremental," Bolden said, referring to the Obama administration's budget proposal. "And if we want to save the planet, because I think that’s what we’re talking about, then we have to get together ... and decide how we’re going to execute that plan."

The idea of enlisting other countries as well as amateur astronomers to "crowdsource" the hunt for threatening asteroids struck a responsive chord with lawmakers. But Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., reminded Bolden that China couldn't be on the list of partners due to a congressional ban.

Congressional teach-in
The hearing served as a teach-in for some of the panel members. At one point, Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas, asked whether the $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope could be retrofitted to look for asteroids. "No, sir," Bolden replied. At another point, Gen. William Shelton, head of the Air Force Space Command, had to explain to lawmakers that the space-based surveillance system used for monitoring missile launches on Earth could not watch out for rocks coming in from deep space.

Holdren and Bolden provided a status report on the asteroid search, reporting that about 95 percent of the near-Earth objects larger than a kilometer are being tracked. However, only about 10 percent of the 13,000 to 20,000 asteroids bigger than 140 meters have been detected. If an asteroid of that size were to strike land, it "could devastate the better part of a continent," Holdren said.

Looking on the bright side, Holdren added that such asteroids are thought to hit Earth only every 20,000 years or so.

Bolden said less than 1 percent of the space rocks in the 30- to 100-meter range have been found. Such asteroids may not be continent-killers, but they are bigger and more potentially destructive than last month's Chelyabinsk meteor.

Lawmakers repeatedly asked how much advance warning would be required to deflect a threatening asteroid, and were repeatedly told that it would take years. Shelton said that if time was limited, "probably nuclear energy is what we're talking about." But even a nuclear-armed mission to blast an asteroid, Bruce Willis-style, would require lots of lead time. Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., asked Bolden about the strategy for dealing with an Earth-threatening asteroid that was discovered with three weeks' warning.

"If it's coming in three weeks ... pray," Bolden said. "The reason I can't do anything in the next three weeks is because for decades we have put it off."

More about threats from space:

• 'Marsageddon' comet adds to concerns
• The global plan to deal with asteroids
• Cosmic Log archive on asteroids

Ali Weinberg is an associate producer with NBC News in Washington.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

MGH-UCLA Human Connectome Project

This visualization shows the grid structure of major pathways of the human brain, as mapped by the NIH Blueprint Human Connectome Project. Click on the image for a Flash interactive exploring the brain.

BOSTON — The brain-mapping project that the Obama administration wants to facilitate isn't necessarily aimed at adding billions of dollars to the money already being spent on research, according to the scientists who inspired the idea. Instead, it's aimed at harnessing new technologies to uncover the secrets of neural function less expensively and more completely.

"We can bring down the cost and increase the quality of the technology," said Harvard geneticist George Church, one of the researchers who proposed the Brain Activity Map Project last year. "We are trying to work with current funding [levels] to bring down the cost."

The New York Times reported on Monday that the White House has embraced the idea of having the Office of Science and Technology Policy spearhead the project, with participation by the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies. The federal initiative is to be unveiled as early as next month, the Times quoted its sources as saying.

The roots of the project go back months if not years earlier: The goals of the BAM Project were outlined last June in a white paper appearing in the journal Neuron. The researchers proposed a 15-year international effort to map the functions of the brain's complex neural circuitry to an unprecedented degree — using traditional tools such as magnetic resonance imaging in combination with novel technologies such as nanosensors and wireless fiber-optic probes that can be implanted into the brain, and genetically engineered cells that can be linked up with brain cells to record their activity.

The scientists' idea was to start with mice and work their way up to primates. "We do not exclude the extension of the BAM Project to humans, and if this project is to be applicable to clinical research or practice, its special challenges are worth addressing early," they wrote.

The discoveries generated by the effort could point to new strategies for dealing with brain-centered maladies such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, autism and schizophrenia.

Church and his colleagues compared the BAM Project's potential impact to the effects of the $3.8 billion Human Genome Project, a 13-year-long effort that analysts say generated $796 billion in economic activity. "After the genome project, we brought the cost [of whole-genome sequencing] down by a million-fold," Church said. Advanced technologies for studying brain activity could bring savings on the same scale, he said.

In this month's State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama made a similar point: "Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy — every dollar.  Today, our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer's.  They’re developing drugs to regenerate damaged organs; devising new material to make batteries 10 times more powerful.  Now is not the time to gut these job-creating investments in science and innovation.  Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race."

Debate over the dollars
The Times' report on the project quoted scientists familiar with the BAM Project as saying they hoped it would receive as much support as the Human Genome Project did, which amounted to more than $300 million a year. That was widely interpreted as implying that more than $3 billion would be shifted over to the effort from other federally supported research over the next decade – a prospect that rankled some observers.

"If there is money for frivolities like the Billion Dollar Brain Project, doesn't it show that NIH has too much money?" evolutionary geneticist Detlef Weigel of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology wrote in a Twitter comment.

Some scientists noted that the European Union has already established a Human Brain Project in cooperation with a range of research centers, including some that are expected to play a role in the BAM Project. The European-led project is due to receive up to 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) over the next decade.

Michael Eisen, a biologist at the University of California at Berkeley, pointed to a blog posting in which he said grand projects in biology such as Project ENCODE for DNA analysis were emerging as the "greatest threat" to individual discovery-driven science because they crowded out less costly, smaller-scale studies.

"It's one thing to fund neuroscience, another to have a centralized 10-year project to 'solve the brain,'" Eisen wrote in a Twitter update.

Emphasis on existing funds
Church said he couldn't speak for the federal government, and he didn't rule out the possibility that the project would receive new funding. But he noted that the concept outlined last year emphasized better coordination of existing publicly and privately supported brain research efforts, which already receive hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

"We want to use existing funds," he told NBC News.

The BAM Project received a strong endorsement from Allan Jones, chief executive officer of the privately backed Allen Institute for Brain Science.

"Our own work over the last 10 years has shown that large-scale brain research and sharing vast data sets and tools publicly for use by scientists around the world accelerate progress and catalyze important research advances across the field," Jones said in a statement emailed to NBC News. "In early 2012, we launched our large-scale initiative to understand brain activity, creating a foundation for other related projects."

The Allen Institute helped organize a workshop that gave rise to last year's white paper proposing the BAM Project, and it is also a partner in the Human Brain Project. Jones said such efforts "complement our work at the Allen Institute for Brain Science and hold promise for helping to bring on new discoveries about the human brain and bring us ever closer to much needed advances in medicine."

More about the brain:

• How scientists are hacking into brain waves
• Paul Allen starts up 'brain observatory' with $300 million
• Flash interactive: Road map of the mind
• Cosmic Log archive on brain science

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Bill Ingalls / NASA

A commemorative wreath adorns a monument to the crew of the shuttle Columbia at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on Friday, the 10th anniversary of the shuttle's destruction and the astronauts' deaths.

President Barack Obama and NASA's leaders paid a 10th-anniversary tribute to the space shuttle Columbia's fallen astronauts on Friday — and pledged that the lessons learned would be applied to future space odysseys, including eventual trips to Mars.

"As we undertake the next generation of discovery, today we pause to remember those who paid the ultimate sacrifice on the journey of exploration," Obama said in a statement released by NASA. "Right now we are working to fulfill their highest aspirations by pursuing a path in space never seen before, one that will eventually put Americans on Mars."

The shuttle Columbia's catastrophic breakup on Feb. 1, 2003, killed seven astronauts, forced a two-year grounding of the three remaining space shuttles and led to stepped-up safety measures at the space agency. The disaster also led Obama's predecessor, President George W. Bush, to plan for the retirement of the shuttle fleet once construction of the International Space Station was complete. The last shuttle mission flew eight years later, in 2011.

Bush's space vision called for a new generation of vehicles to be built for trips back to the moon by 2020 — but Obama shifted the focus of exploration to a near-Earth asteroid in the mid-2020s, with trips to Mars and its moons starting in the mid-2030s.

'We will never forget'
In his own 10th-anniversary statement, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said the sacrifices made by the crew of Columbia's last mission will inspire future explorers.

"We will never forget these astronauts, nor all those who have lost their lives carrying out our missions of exploration — the STS-51L Challenger crew; the Apollo 1 crew; Mike Adams, the first in-flight fatality of the space program as he piloted the X-15 No. 3 on a research flight," Bolden said in an agency statement. "These explorers, and their families, have our deepest respect. We work every day to honor and build on their legacy and create the best space program in the world — to infuse it with the life and vitality that they worked so hard to achieve."

Bill Ingalls / NASA

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden looks on as Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin gives a salute during a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Friday. The ceremony paid tribute to astronauts who died in the Apollo 1 fire of 1967 as well as the 1986 Challenger explosion and the 2003 Columbia tragedy.

Slideshow:

Retrace the final, tragic flight of the space shuttle Columbia, from its launch to its catastrophic end on Feb. 1, 2003.

Launch slideshow

On Friday morning, Bolden laid a wreath in honor of the agency's fallen astronauts at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, where monuments to the Columbia and Challenger crews have been erected. Earlier in the week, he attended a spaceflight conference held in Israel to honor Ilan Ramon, that country's first astronaut, who died in the Columbia tragedy. The other victims included Columbia commander Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla and Laurel Clark.

Memorial ceremonies also were conducted in Texas, where the Columbia wreckage fell to earth, and at Kennedy Space Center's visitor complex in Florida. The focal point of the Florida ceremony was the Space Mirror Memorial, which bears the names of NASA fliers who died in the line of duty.

Roots of the tragedy
At that ceremony, Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, acknowledged that the roots of the Columbia disaster went "all the way back to the first shuttle launch in 1981." Even then, NASA knew that ice and pieces of foam insulation could fly off the shuttle's external fuel tank and strike the orbiter — but the fact that no severe damage was done "reinforced the idea that all was well," Gerstenmaier said.

That view changed dramatically when Columbia was felled. Investigators determined that the leading edge of Columbia's left wing was fatally damaged by a piece of flying foam during launch, setting the stage for the breakup 16 days later during atmospheric re-entry. NASA was reminded that "even small problems can surface as major failures," Gerstenmaier said.

"Ten years ago, it would have been easy to pull back from the frontier of space, and say it was too risky to pursue," he said. "Instead, we dedicated ourselves to improving how we pushed the boundaries of space exploration, and we vowed to continue with our eyes open. We cannot be afraid of risk, and we cannot be ignorant of it, either. Our lasting tribute to those we have lost is to carry on with the cause that they believed was worth the ultimate sacrifice."

Other speakers at the Florida ceremony included Evelyn Husband-Thompson, the widow of Columbia's commander, who has since remarried. She recalled how she and other family members anticipated the return of their loved ones on that fateful Saturday morning 10 years ago, only to be jolted into a nightmare of "fear, uncertainty and horror."

NASA

Evelyn Husband-Thompson, the widow of Columbia commander Rick Husband, speaks at a memorial ceremony conducted Friday at the Space Mirror Memorial at Kennedy Space Center's visitor complex.

"The grief journey has been difficult, complicated and surprising," she said. Over the past decade, she has drawn comfort from her friends, her family and her faith. She noted that the Columbia crew's legacy includes educational initiatives, scholarships, museum exhibits, and even the name of the airport near her home in Texas: Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport.

"Just as a forest fire reduces beautiful foliage to ashes, those ashes ultimately become nourishment for new, healthy growth," Husband-Thompson said. "There are indeed small, green shoots of hope that are springing up in our lives."

More about Columbia:

• 10 years later, Columbia's loss still stings
• Shuttle tragedies serve as warnings to NASA
• 10 myths surrounding the Columbia tragedy
• NASA celebrates its fallen astronauts
• Film finds uplifting story amid Columbia's loss

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASM

This model of the fictional Starship Enterprise was used in the weekly hourlong "Star Trek" TV series that aired September 1966 to June 1969. It is now on display in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

If the Death Star went up against the Starship Enterprise, who would win? When it comes to White House petition drives, it's the Death Star.

The petition calling on the federal government to build a fully operational "Star Wars" battle station attracted more than 34,000 signatures, forcing the White House to issue a hilarious response. But a similar petition supporting a real-life version of Captain James T. Kirk's favorite ride fell far short of the 25,000-signature requirement when the one-month deadline passed on Monday.

At last count, the Enterprise petition had 7,200 signatures, according to its creator, a Trek fan known publicly as BTE-Dan. "I’m disappointed that it didn't reach 25,000, because I would have genuinely liked to have seen the Obama administration respond to it," Dan told NBC News in an email. 

Dan is the webmaster behind the "Build the Enterprise" website — and he says he's serious about wanting NASA to do a feasibility study for an Enterprise-like spaceship.

"I really do think that building an interplanetary spaceship that follows the form of the USS Enterprise would be uniquely inspirational to Americans, and people around the world, too," he wrote. "Once its construction started in space, people would be fascinated by it, and it would constantly be in the news. And it might well inspire a new generation of Americans to study the STEM subjects [science, technology, engineering, math]."

Dan likes the basic idea behind the Obama administration's "We the People" program, which provides an opportunity for petitioners to get a response from the White House if enough people sign on.

"Unfortunately, having a short 30-day window to gather signatures makes the petition system geared to getting high signature counts mainly for the most emotionally charged current events of the moment, like pro-gun control, or anti-gun control, or the desire of some to deport Piers Morgan," he said. "People are motivated by humor, too, like in the Piers Morgan case and for the Death Star petition, and there is nothing wrong with having some fun with the petitions. But I’d like to see the system changed so that more substantive petitions get considered."

Maybe the problem was that BTE-Dan's proposal was too substantive, especially for a concept that sounds like classic science fiction. The same issue might be working against another space-themed petition, calling on the federal government to build a nuclear thermal rocket. (NASA actually pursued a nuclear-rocket development program in the 1960s, and may do so again.) That campaign has attracted fewer than 2,300 of the required 25,000 signatures with 10 days to go before the deadline.

One thing's for sure: It'll be even harder for slightly wacky petitions like the Death Star plea, or an earlier effort to crack the alien conspiracy, to make their way into the spotlight in the future. That's because the White House raised the signature requirement from 25,000 to 100,000 last week. BTE-Dan's effort just might stand as the most ambitious effort to build a real-life Starship Enterprise until the year 2063 — when eccentric genius Zefram Cochrane achieves the first warp drive flight and brings the Vulcans in for first contact.

More about starships and petition drives:

• Scientists say warp drive is more feasible than they thought
• Empire strikes back with response to Death Star petition
• Video: White House petition calls for VP reality TV show

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA

Nuclear thermal propulsion was studied during the 1960s and early 1970s as a follow-up to the Apollo program, but the tests were canceled due to budgetary concerns.

First there was the Death Star petition, then there was the Starship Enterprise petition, and now there's a petition calling on the White House to build a nuclear rocket for fast interplanetary travel. Unlike the spaceships cited in those first two petitions, this one isn't just science fiction.

There was a time when the federal government tested nuclear thermal rocket technology for the flights that would follow the Apollo moonshots. Back in the 1960s, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and its industrial partners set up Project NERVA, which stands for Nuclear Energy for Rocket Vehicle Application. The idea was to use a nuclear reactor to heat up liquid hydrogen propellant and blast a rocket out of Earth orbit. A trip to the moon would take just 24 hours. Going to Mars? You could make the voyage in just four months.

The initial plan called for NERVA technology to power the first manned mission to Mars in 1981. More than 20 rocket tests — conducted under names such as KIWI and Phoenix, Peewee-1 and Nuclear Furnace-1 — were carried out at a Nevada test range. But qualms about nuclear power, and about the multibillion-dollar development cost, led to Project NERVA's cancellation in 1973. Instead, the Nixon administration went with the space shuttle program.

Nuclear rocket propulsion briefly returned to the spotlight in 2003, when NASA considered developing a reactor-based system for deep-space missions such as the Jupiter Icy Moon Orbiter, as part of what became known as Project Prometheus. The initial missions would have used a small reactor to generate electricity for an ion drive, rather than implementing the NERVA concept. But like NERVA, Prometheus came to be perceived as too complex and risky. NASA canceled the program in 2005.

Pat Rawlings / Bill Gleason / NASA

One concept called for a detachable module to be sent into space, then placed on a nuclear thermal rocket for a 24-hour trip to the moon.

Now Aaron VanAlstine, an Army major at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Seattle, is floating a petition through the White House's "We the People" program that urges the government to "rapidly develop and deploy a nuclear thermal rocket":

"Harness the full intellectual and industrial strength of our universities, national laboratories and private enterprise to rapidly develop and deploy a nuclear thermal rocket (NTR) adaptable to both manned and un-manned space missions. A NTR (which would only operate in outer space) will jump-start our manned space exploration program by reducing inner solar system flight times from months to weeks. This is not new technology; NTRs were tested in the 1960s (President Kennedy was a guest at one test). The physics and engineering are sound. In addition to inspiring young Americans to careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, a working NTR will herald a speedy and economical expansion of the human presence in the cosmos."

The petition needs 25,000 online supporters by Feb. 2 to trigger a White House response. So far it has ... three, including VanAlstine.

"I don't have anything to do with the aerospace industry," VanAlstine told NBC News over the weekend. "I'm just into space."

VanAlstine said he decided to try the petition drive after hearing about a "We the People" petition criticizing CNN talk-show host Piers Morgan. "I thought, well, what can I do to get something started?" he said.

"A lot of the scientists say the only way to get enough mass up and get the travel time down is to go with NTR," VanAlstine said. "I'm not an engineer or anything, but that's what all the smart guys are saying. ... It's never going to be like '2001' without going with the nuclear thermal rocket."

NASA already has a big rocket project on its hands: the effort to develop a new Orion exploration spaceship and a conventional heavy-lift rocket capable of sending humans beyond Earth orbit by the early 2020s, at a cost that could amount to $35 billion. It may turn out that taking on nuclear thermal propulsion right now is as unrealistic as building a Death Star or the Starship Enterprise. But VanAlstine is soldiering on — and dreaming of the day when spaceflight will be as quick and easy as it looked in "2001: A Space Odyssey."

"It's not me that's going to go into space," said VanAlstine, who turns 49 on Wednesday. "But maybe my nephew will be riding this."

What do you think? Feel free to weigh in on the prospects for space nuclear power in a comment below.

Update for 9 p.m. ET Jan. 9: It turns out that NASA is still studying the nuclear thermal rocket concept, using non-nuclear materials. Today, the space agency provided an update on the Nuclear Cryogenic Propulsion Stage project. The project's researchers are using Marshall Space Flight Center's Nuclear Thermal Rocket Element Environmental Simulator, or NTREES, to test various composite materials as potential fuel elements. Check out the full report.

Update for 3:30 p.m. ET April 2: The White House petition didn't receive the required 25,000 online signatures by the Feb. 2 deadline. "However, we didn't do too bad: 2,937 signed it," the campaign said on its Facebook page.

More about nuclear power in space:

• Time to reconsider the nuclear option in space
• Air Force space plan calls for nuclear reactors
• Next step in space travel: fission-fueled rockets
• Antimatter fusion drives considered for deep space

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NGTV / Lion TV via PBS

UCLA Professor Jared Diamond has studied traditional cultures for decades, laying out his findings in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Guns, Germs and Steel" as well as "Collapse" and his just-published volume, "The World Until Yesterday."

In the wake of a high-wire "fiscal cliff" performance that wasn't exactly their finest hour, members of Congress would do well to learn a lesson from the tribes of New Guinea and the Amazon: Listen to your elders. At least that's the lesson passed along by UCLA Professor Jared Diamond, the author of "The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?"

Diamond documented the reasons why European invaders overwhelmed less technologically advanced cultures in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies." He laid out cautionary tales of social breakdown in the follow-up book, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed." In his newly published book, Diamond draws upon his decades of research in far-flung locales to lay out lessons for us less traditional types.

"Tribes constitute thousands of natural experiments in how to run a human society," he told a capacity crowd Thursday night during the kickoff of his international book tour at Town Hall Seattle.

Diamond says the useful findings from those experiments run a wide gamut, from the benefits of multilingualism to the right way to carry a baby ("vertically upright, facing forward"). But one of his biggest themes has to do with the way older people are treated, or mistreated. He noted that a Fijian friend was shocked to see how often America's senior citizens are shunted aside by the younger generation. And although some traditional societies have their own quirks about dealing with the aged — for example, strangling them when they become a liability — Diamond agrees that American attitudes need an adjustment.

Penguin

"The World Until Yesterday" is the latest book from Jared Diamond, a geography professor at UCLA.

"The lives of the elderly constitute a disaster area of modern American society," the 75-year-old Diamond said in Seattle. "We can do better."

He'd like to see senior citizens restored to the roles they have always held in traditional societies, but in a modern-day context: for example, as baby-sitters in a world where both parents work, or as fonts for the kind of wisdom you can't get through a Web search. He'd even like to see age given more respect on Capitol Hill, where the median age is 57 in the House and 62 in the Senate. That was the theme of my interview with Diamond on Thursday. Here's an edited version of the Q&A:

Cosmic Log: How would traditional societies deal with something like the fiscal cliff? What advice can you give to Congress for dealing with the kind of gridlock that we've seen?

Diamond: "The unrealistic answer is to say that the only senators and House members who are permitted to vote on fiscal-cliff issues are those who are over the age of 70. That's not realistic. But the realistic idea is to say that we should give disproportionate weight to the opinions of older politicians who have experienced a much wider range of financial conditions than have the young members of Congress. That is to say, we should listen to people who have gone through the Great Depression, the bubbles of the '80s, the soaring interest rates of the '70s. They've seen a variety of conditions, whereas younger people have seen only recent conditions, and they don't realize that things can be different. That's what comes out of traditional societies. 

"Most traditional peoples talk about 'tribal elders.' The reality is that the leaders of traditional peoples are always the older people. And the reason is, it's good. They have lots of lifetime experience under very different conditions.

"The same also applies to modern societies: Sometimes I'm asked to talk to hedge-fund groups. I'm struck by the fact that most of the people are in their 20s or 30s. There may be a few people in their 40s, and maybe a couple in their 50s. When you look at the statistics, about half of all hedge funds fail within the first five years, although many of them do spectacularly well for a couple of years. The reason is, the whiz kids are very good at algorithms that make money under good conditions. But they don't realize that conditions can be very different, that there are tough conditions — soaring interest rates, financial setbacks. So they don't have the long perspective. That's an example of how a long perspective is necessary for financial policy, just as it is for governing, for deciding about war and peace."

Q: Is there any institutional reform that can do that, or is it beyond modern society to get back to those ways?

A: "It's not beyond modern society, because if you look around at different modern societies — and I'm talking about rich industrial societies — some of them give a lot more deference and weight to older people than do others. The United States is an extreme in this respect. We are perhaps the modern rich society that has the biggest cult of youth. For example, when was the last time you saw a commercial with an 83-year-old raising a bottle of Coca-Cola? The Coke ads are all about 25-year-olds. That's our cult of youth. But in Europe, there is much more deference given to older people. In China, even more. In Japan, too, and in Mexico and Italy. So there's an area where the United States, in its own self-interest, can learn from the experience of its older people."

Q: I'm struck by one of the comments that a House Republican made during the fiscal-cliff deliberations, complaining about the "sleep-deprived octogenarians" in the Senate. ...

A: "Sure, but the octogenarians have had 80 years to see the advantages of taxes. Taxes are an investment, they're not money taken away from you. They're your own money that's being used for long-term purposes. Our taxes are paying for roads, they're paying for schools, they're paying for armed forces, they're paying for inspectors, they're paying for regulators. The more we put in, the more we get out. Now, this is not to deny that every government wastes some tax money. Nobody has figured out how to spend taxes in a way that there's no waste. But the basic mindset is that taxes bring benefits. The longer you live, the more you see those benefits."

Q: Is there an analog to taxation that has worked for traditional societies?

A: "There is, but it's not until you get to medium-to-large societies. Small traditional societies of a few dozen to a few hundred people really don't have anything like taxation. Once you get to a society of a few thousand people, where there's a chief — big enough that you can't have a face-to-face discussion, but you've got to have a chief — chiefs practice an early form of taxation. They require that the commoners turn over a fraction of their agricultural products to the chief. Part of that is used to support their own lifestyle, and part of that is also held in reserve to redistribute to the commoners in a time of famine. One could say that that's a precursor to state government taxation."

Q: Are there other things on your short list of lessons that could help break the societal gridlock we see today?

A: "Another whole area that's open for discussion is the area of conflict resolution. The American system of conflict resolution in the courts is a system of determining right and wrong, with winners and losers. But in traditional societies, conflict resolution has a different goal. The goal is to achieve and maintain peace between people who are going to have to deal with each other for the rest of their lives. The society is small, so you know everybody. In the United States, a big society, if you have a traffic accident, the other person is likely to be someone you never saw before and will never see again. So who cares whether they're unhappy with the result? But the reality is that anybody who's been involved with the American civil or criminal justice system knows that its goal is not to achieve reconciliation. And the result is emotional agony, often for the rest of one's life.

"It's particularly sad when that agony involves divorcing spouses, or so often it involves brothers and sisters, or parents and children who end up suing each other in inheritance disputes. That's because when you use courts and lawyers, the goal is not to achieve emotional clearance, but the goal is to decide right and wrong. That is another big subject area we could happily talk about for a few hours."

Q: Another big subject area would be how to deal with the emotional scars left by the string of mass shootings we've seen lately. Are there any lessons that can be drawn from traditional societies addressing that issue?

A: "My one-liner there would be the balance between individual interests and communal interests. The United States' laws provide that if an individual wants a gun, that individual is going to have a gun, even if that is bad for society as a whole. Today I'm talking from Seattle, which is 100 miles from the Canadian border. Here we have a neighbor that is as affluent as the United States, but has a different balance — with much more emphasis on communal interests and much less interest on individual rights. Among other things, Canadians do not feel that everybody should exercise their God-given right to carry a gun."

Think there's enough in what Diamond says to get a discussion going? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

More from Jared Diamond:

• Bilingualism is good for the brain
• Why the Navajo have thrived
• How to prevent a pandemic
• Video: Corporations vs. collapse

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.