• How to check the X Files of physics

    CERN file

    The Large Hadron Collider, shown here during its construction phase, is the locale where physicists hope many of their most puzzling cases will be solved. But there are other mysteries to ponder in the cosmos.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News


    They may not be on a par with alien goo or liver-eating mutants, but there's a whole collection of real-life X Files that physicists are puzzling over. Some cases eventually will be solved, like the hunt for the elusive Higgs boson. Some will fizzle out, like the case of the faster-than-light neutrinos. And some will baffle the boffins for years and years, like the mystery of dark energy.

    Two sharp-eyed truth-squadders discussed how scientists investigate the X Files of physics — and how you can tell when a scientific case is really, truly closed — on "Virtually Speaking Science," an hourlong talk show hosted by yours truly on Wednesday.

    Sean M. Carroll and Matt Strassler aren't FBI agents, although they could probably teach Fox Mulder and Dana Scully of "The X Files" a thing or two about critical thinking. They're theoretical physicists (Sean at Caltech, Matt at Rutgers) as well as accomplished writers and bloggers. Carroll is the author of several books, including "The Particle at the End of the Universe," his account of the Higgs boson search. Strassler performs reality checks on the Higgs quest and other big topics in physics on his blog, "Of Particular Significance."

    What kinds of X Files are we talking about? Here a sampler:

    The proton problem is "one of those classic scientific puzzles where what's actually going on is probably some other type of issue in the experiment, or the interpretation of the experiment, that doesn't have anything to do with the radius of the proton," Strassler told me during our pre-show interview. "There's a small chance that it's something fundamental and really deep, but it's more likely to turn out to be some little detail."

    That sort of thing goes on all the time in science, he said. In fact, some degree of uncertainty surrounds many of the experimental results produced by the scientific process. Professional scientists understand that's "par for the course," Strassler said. "The only thing that's unusual is the level of media attention."

    Rutgers

    Rutgers physicist Matt Strassler

    Sean Carroll via Google+

    Caltech physicist Sean Carroll

    Are there any tricks of the trade that regular folks can use to figure out how to judge a scientific claim's solidity? Actually, there are plenty. But Strassler's top tip is to develop a better understanding of how news outlets work, and how scientific announcements work.

    "We all know how to read advertisements. We know they're selling us something," he said. "But we don't necessarily know how to read an article on the front page of The New York Times or an article in Newsweek. They have a big, exciting topic, but when you look closely, you realize that it's only one person saying this. Or there's been one experiment that shows this. If there's only one, it may be nothing. It may go away."

    Carroll said scientists themselves are getting into the public outreach field — either by blogging, as he does on Preposterous Universe, or by creating videos and other user-friendly materials about their research. "It'd be great if more scientists wanted to become regular contributors, to at least try to explain their most recent work," Carroll said.

    "I can play devil's advocate on that one," Strassler said. "I worry about us generating so much information that no one's able to sift through and get to the meat of what we really know and what we don't." 

    "That's a very interesting topic," Carroll replied. "There's a lot of information out there. In some sense, we could still use more, but it's a matter of finding it. That's the big challenge."

    To find the podcast for Wednesday's show, just follow this link. You can also cruise through the "Virtually Speaking Science" podcast archives at BlogTalkRadio or iTunes, or click on the links below.

    'Virtually Speaking Science' podcasts:

    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.

    "Virtually Speaking Science" airs on Wednesdays on BlogTalkRadio. In addition to Alan Boyle, the hosts include Tom Levenson, director of MIT's graduate program in science writing; and Jennifer Ouellette, science writer and "Cocktail Party Physics" blogger.

    First published at 7:08 p.m. ET Feb. 6, last updated at 10:30 p.m. ET.

  • When the aliens call, who'll answer?

    Gail Shumway / Getty Images

    In a recently conducted poll, 19 percent of the respondents said they thought Washington, D.C., would be the most likely landing zone for a UFO. But if that ever happened, who's the best person to lead the welcoming party? About 65 percent said they'd rather have Barack Obama than Mitt Romney handle the situation.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News


    A new poll suggests that 77 percent of Americans think there's evidence that aliens have already visited Earth. The same poll suggests most Americans think President Barack Obama would do a better job than presumptive GOP challenger Mitt Romney if we had to fight off an alien invasion. And if we have to rely on a superhero to save us, they'd rather go with the Hulk than Batman.

    That somewhat silly survey was conducted to tout a "Chasing UFOs" TV series on the National Geographic Channel, but the results raise a serious question: If an alien civilization does get in touch with us, who's in charge of figuring out what to do?

    "Nobody's in charge," says Seth Shostak, who is senior astronomer at the California-based SETI Institute as well as the chairman of the International Academy of Astronautics' SETI Permanent Study Group. Shostak and I talked about SETI — the search for extraterrestrial intelligence — as well as its serious and silly implications tonight on "Virtually Speaking Science." The hourlong talk show is archived as a podcast on the Web and on iTunes.

    As the poll done for National Geographic suggests, a good number of people suspect the aliens have already arrived, presumably on UFOs or through interdimensional travel. Most scientists scoff at that idea. "Why would they appear only to cranks and weirdos?" British physicist Stephen Hawking asked earlier this month. But Shostak thinks it's only a matter of time before extraterrestrial civilizations actually do make themselves known, by sending signals across the light-years. Almost a decade ago, he predicted that we'd detect those signals by the year 2025, and today he told me he's sticking by that prediction.

    During our pre-show interview, Shostak laid out his rationale for the 2025 date and discussed how an alien-contact scenario is likely to go down. Check out this edited transcript of the Q&A.

    Cosmic Log: Do you still feel that 2025 is a good time frame for alien contact? And maybe more importantly, how do we know we're getting closer to the date?

    SETI Institute

    Seth Shostak is senior astronomer at the SETI Institute.

    Shostak: People ask, 'Are you getting close?' And we no more know whether we're getting close than Chris Columbus knew he was getting close to the Americas — we might some palm fronds a day or two out, but other than that, we don't know. In some sense, it'll come as a complete surprise if we get a signal. We know that from false alarms. They never occur when you expect them, because you never expect them.

    But in terms of the prediction, that's based on the following: We're looking for needles in a haystack. If you ask, when are you going to find a needle, you need to know three things: How big is the haystack? How fast are you going through the hay? And how many needles are in there? We know two out of three. The haystack's the galaxy, and we know how fast we're going through it. We don't know the number of needles. So I took estimates of the number from the Drake Equation, and figured that it's two dozen years out. What's happened in the meantime is that the funding crisis has slowed things down a bit.

    Q: Do you think you need to revise the 2025 date?

    A: I think 2025, 2030 is about right, given that we can continue to do the experiment.

    Q: Is it a steady process, or is there an increasing rate of hay examination?

    A: This is all predicated on an increasing rate. That's the march of technology, which is mostly digital electronics. Computers keep getting faster and faster at any given price point, and that's good news for us. We can look at a larger chunk of the radio dial at once. We can go through the stars faster. Or we can look at bigger hunks of sky at once. It's mostly computing power that is responsible for the increasing speed of SETI. We're not sitting around with earphones the way Jodie Foster was.

    Q: Could it be that the patterns of communication by extraterrestrial civilizations take a form completely different from what we assume?

    A: We kind of know what areas SETI is weak in. It's been slow, in the sense that you've got a couple of hundred billion star systems in the galaxy, and if you can look at only a couple a day, that's really slow going. That might take forever. Can we look at more stars in a given time, with adequate sensitivity?

    The second thing is, it may be that you really have to look for a long time at any given star system. Of course, we don't do that. We look at any given star system, at any given frequency, for at most a few minutes. Some other search programs look for one and a half seconds at any given star system. If the aliens are broadcasting in our direction once a week, or once a day, or once an hour, we're not going to see it. We know that's a problem.

    Another issue is that the aliens may not know we're here because they haven't picked up 'I Love Lucy' yet. They don't know Homo sapiens is here, they just know that Earth is a planet with biology. They may not be motivated to target us relentlessly with reality television. They may broadcast now and then, with a little ping just to see if anybody's here. You really need an experiment that can pick up an intermittent, maybe one-off signal that's designed to ping the planet. Everybody knows that. That's a technology issue, but it's an issue that's getting better.

    "Daily Show" writer Kevin Bleyer joins "The Last Word" on MSNBC to talk politics and aliens.

    Q: Has anybody come up with a concept for an all-sky, all-the-time receiver?

    A: Yeah, well, all-sky, all the time, all frequencies — that's what you'd looove to have. On paper, you can design an instrument that can look at the entire sky. All frequencies, that's another problem, but you can certainly cover more frequencies than we do. It's all a question of whether you can afford to build such an instrument. The answer is, no, not now. It takes an enormous amount of computing power to do that. However, one thing you can say about the future is that there will be more computing power. This is not impossible. This is not like building rockets to go at 99 percent of the speed of light. That might work on paper, too, but in practice, that's a long way off. But this is something where you can say, with the computing power of a few decades hence, it becomes a practical thing.

    Q: Assuming that alien signals are detected by 2025, is humanity ready for that?

    A: Well, I don't know how much planning has been done. We've revised some protocols, but those are just the immediate steps you take if you pick up a signal. They deal with practical matters, like checking the signals out and alerting everybody. But I don't know that there's any large-scale effort to prepare humanity, any more than there was any preparation by the Indians in the Caribbean in case a Spanish ship showed up. I don't think that's a problem, to be honest. In poll after poll, the public has said they believe the aliens are out there. They see them on television every night, and at the movies every third weekend. A third of 'em think the aliens are already here, but they don't see a problem with that, either. Nobody's staying home. Everybody's still going to work.

    I think that psychologically, everybody could handle it. It's just going to be a big news item. Whatever it would be, people would find it interesting. But they'd be savvy enough to realize there's no immediate threat. The aliens would be 500 light-years away, and we pick up their signal.  There's no reason to think that people would go just completely non-linear.

    The long-term consequences are less predictable. People would ask, should we broadcast back? Should we send a rocket in that direction? What should we do?

    Q: Who would be in charge if there was an alien signal? Assuming that scientists confirm that there's an anomalous signal pattern, hinting at extraterrestrial intelligence, what's the procedure?

    A: I don't think that there's anybody designated to be in charge. There was a flap a few years ago, involving an official at the U.N., but that was all a red herring. She quickly admitted that she's not in charge. Nobody's in charge.

    Look, the real people who will be in charge will be the media, because they'll be reporting it. In some sense, whoever finds the signal is probably in charge. If it's us, then somebody at the SETI Institute will be called. Or suppose it's the Berkeley group. Well, they're in charge. Or maybe it's a group that comes across the signal by accident. There's no hierarchy. Anyway, you know how the media work — they're not going to follow the rules.

    MSNBC's Ed Schultz, host of "The Ed Show" puts a political spin on a poll from National Geographic that suggests Americans prefer President Barack Obama over Mitt Romney on the alien-invasion issue.

    There's no danger in any of this, except for one thing: That's the idea that you're sitting around, and suddenly there's a signal, and you call a press conference. That's not the way it will happen. We get signals all the time, and someday one of those signals will pass all the tests, and it slowly emerges as a real signal. But it takes something on the order of five days before you're convinced. During all that time, the media knows about this, because there is no secrecy. But there's no press conference yet, because the scientists aren't yet sure themselves. This time lag means there will be all sorts of stories before the official word is out. It isn't because of leakage, it's because anytime anybody finds something interesting, they may mention it. They'll put it on their blog. Who knows what they'll do?

    It'll be very, very messy. And the corollary to this is that you can probably expect a lot of false alarms. There'll be something interesting, and a lot of people will write about it, and three days later it turns out to be nothing.

    Q: Some people worry that our own radio signals are advertising our presence in what could be a rough neighborhood, but I take it that's not a concern of yours.

    A: There are people who get their knickers in a knot about this deliberate broadcast stuff. National Geographic is supposed to be collecting tweets to broadcast as an answer to the "Wow Signal." I personally don't get heartburn about broadcasting. The fact is that NBC is broadcasting all the time, right? You can say, well, that's a weak signal. Sure it is. But if you're really worried about broadcasting into space, don't just shut down the publicity stunts. You better shut down the radars at the Seattle-Tacoma airport, too. They're broadcasting into space all the time.

    Tune in "Virtually Speaking Science" on BlogTalkRadio or in Second Life — and bring lots of questions. Seth Shostak and I were at the StellaNova Small Auditorium, courtesy of the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics, at 9 p.m. ET (6 p.m. PT/SLT) tonight. If you missed the live event, don't worry: It's archived by "Virtually Speaking" on BlogTalkRadio as well as iTunes.

    More nuggets from the National Geographic UFO poll: 

    • The "Aliens Among Us" survey polled a random nationwide sample of 1,114 Americans between May 21 and May 29. The poll was conducted by Kelton Research, which used email invitations and online surveys. Quotas were set to ensure reliable and accurate representation of the total U.S. population ages 18 and older. Margin of error is +/- 2.9 percent.
    • More than one-third of those surveyed (36 percent) believe UFOs exist. Eleven percent are confident they've spotted a UFO, and 20 percent know someone who claims to have seen one.
    • Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) said Obama would be better-suited than Romney to handle an alien invasion. Seventy-nine percent believe the government has kept information about UFOs a secret from the public. Nineteen percent think Washington, D.C., is the most likely landing zone for a UFO, while 28 percent think a UFO would touch down in Roswell, N.M.
    • Seventy-seven percent think there are signs that suggest aliens have visited Earth. Most of these people said that the evidence came in the form of photographs (60 percent) and videos (57 percent) of UFOs.
    • If aliens landed, 22 percent said they would try to befriend the visitors. Fifteen percent said they would run away, 13 percent said they would lock their doors, and 2 percent said they would try to inflict bodily harm.
    • Seventy-one percent think that aliens are more likely to exist than are superheroes, vampires and zombies. But if aliens attacked Earth, 21 percent said they would most likely call on the Hulk to deal with the havoc, compared with Batman (12 percent) or Spider-Man (8 percent). Fifty-five percent believe there really are officials like the "Men in Black" who claim to be agents and threaten those who come forward with UFO sightings. 

    Previous episodes of "Virtually Speaking Science":

    Seth Shostak has a talk show, too! Hear it at "Big Picture Science."

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.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. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Get set to chase a solar eclipse

    Exploratorium

    Paul Doherty, a senior staff scientist at the Exploratorium, Paul Doherty, sets up telescopes for observations of the 2001 total solar eclipse in Zambia. This year features an annular solar eclipse in May, a transit of Venus in June, and a total solar eclipse in November.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News




    Over the next several weeks, skywatchers will thrill to a couple of astronomical wonders playing out in daytime skies: a solar eclipse on May 20 — and then, on June 5, a "micro-eclipse" of the sun that involves the planet Venus.

    As senior staff scientist at San Francisco's Exploratorium, Paul Doherty will be keeping a careful eye on both of those wonders (with appropriate eye protection, of course). He'll let you in on his eclipse-chasing secrets on Wednesday night during a "Virtually Speaking Science" chat on BlogTalkRadio and in the Second Life virtual world. I'll be the host for the hourlong show, starting at 9 p.m. (6 p.m. PT/SLT).

    Doherty says the solar eclipse and the micro-eclipse will be well worth chasing.

    "By all means, go out of your way to see 'em," he told me this week. "They are rare events ... You'll have things to talk about for years after."

    Each event offers a special kind of rarity: This month's eclipse is of the annular variety, which means that the moon's disk isn't quite big enough to cover the sun completely. At its darkest, the moon's black circle will be surrounded by a spectacular "ring of fire." That sight can be seen only along a narrow track running along Earth's surface, from China across the Pacific to the western United States. But a partial solar eclipse will be visible across a much wider swath of territory. It'll take about three and a half hours for the moon's umbral shadow to race across Earth's surface, from 6:06 to 9:39 p.m. ET.

    Next month's micro-eclipse, more formally known as a transit of Venus, is even rarer. The planet's tiny black disk will march across the sun over the course of several hours (roughly from 6 p.m. ET June 5 to 12:50 a.m. ET June 6). Most of the world will get in on at least part of the show, but the best viewing will be had once again from the Asia-Pacific region. This will be the last transit of Venus most of us will ever get a chance to see: The next one is due in the year 2117.

    Even if you're not in the viewing zone, or the skies are cloudy, you can still get in on these events via online presentations that will be sponsored by a variety of organizations — including the Exploratorium, of course. The combination museum and science center is planning a webcast of the transit as well as a Second Life teach-in timed to coincide with the annular eclipse. Doherty will be in on all the action — in Nevada for the eclipse, and at San Francisco HQ for the transit.

    Jeroen Frans

    Second Life residents watch a virtual presentation about eclipses on Exploratorium Island, in an image by Jeroen Frans (a.k.a. Frans Charming) of VesuviusGroup.com.

    Over the past 40 years, Doherty has been chasing astronomical events in locales ranging from Cape Cod to Zaire. In this first of two postings about the coming attractions, Doherty discusses the appeal of eclipses and transits, plus a little bit of the science behind them. Here's an edited transcript of the Q&A:

    Cosmic Log: You've been in on a number of solar eclipses in your time — what is it that draws someone to become an eclipse-chaser? A lot of people talk about how sun-observing satellites have come so far that eclipses aren't as crucial for scientific observations as they used to be. So what's the appeal?

    Paul Doherty: It's certainly true that an eclipse is not a scientifically significant as it was a century ago, but I will tell you there's something special about the experience of an eclipse — even a partial eclipse. You'll be outdoors, looking around, and you'll notice that the light is getting very strange. There's a beautiful clear sky, and it starts to get dim. Your body knows that something really different is happening. It's great for people to know what's causing that feeling: The moon is blocking the sun. (But don't look at it directly with your unprotected eyes.)

    Then, for totality, you have the experience of seeing a clear sky go dark at midday, so that the brightest planets and stars are visible. You see that black disk where the sun should be, surrounded by bright rays like big fat spider legs of white around the sun. That will set the hair on your back standing up, even if you're a scientist and you know what this is. It is just so awesome to see it.

    So I look at modern eclipses as places for people to come in contact with a great event in our solar system, and it shouldn't be missed.

    Q: Do you find that it's an inspirational experience? Do eclipse-chasers go on to "harder drugs" in astronomy?

    A: I've met so many eclipse-chasers who are already into the harder stuff. You just can't tell which came first. But I'm sure that the sight of a total eclipse just inspires them. I've seen eight solar eclipses myself, and I keep running across the same people. I know that they're inspired to really take time out of their lives, and take money out of their bank accounts, and invest it in these few minutes of a great experience, surrounded by an hour of interesting shading in the sky, surrounded by days of travel to wonderful places on Earth and meeting people with the same passion they have.

    Q: What are the differences between a total solar eclipse like the one in November, and an annular eclipse like the one this month?

    A: The moon is in an elliptical orbit around the earth. When the moon is at its farthest point from the earth, its angular size in the sky is a little smaller, and when it's close to the earth, it's a little bigger. Also, the earth is in an elliptical orbit around the sun. It gets smaller and bigger. When the moon is farthest from the earth, it's small enough in the sky that it cannot totally block the bright part of the surface of the sun called the photosphere. That's where the bright light comes from on the sun. At that point, the rim of the photosphere shines around the edge of the moon. That light is so bright that it can damage your eyes if you look at it without eye protection. It overwhelms the dim light coming from the chromosphere and the corona of the sun.

    But during a total solar eclipse, the moon is big enough in angular size to block out the photosphere completely, and with your naked eye you can see this million-degree gas glowing in the corona, like rays reaching out quite a ways from the sun. You can see the red chromosphere quite near the edge of the moon. You can even see prominences reaching out from the sun and moving during the course of the eclipse. The total eclipse offers many more things to see than the annular eclipse does.

    Jan. 15, 2010: Astronomers believe this rare solar eclipse seen across Africa, Asia and the Indian Ocean may be the longest annular eclipse in more than 1,000 years. Msnbc.com's Dara Brown reports.

    However, an annular eclipse provides you with a bright circle of the sun. Let's say that sunlight is streaming through the leaves of a tree, and you look at the ground. Normally, you'd see round circles of light at your feet. During an annular eclipse, those all become the letter "O." That is really something, to look at the ground underneath a tree and see it covered with bright Cheerios.

    If you're not on the center line of annularity, and it's a partial solar eclipse, then those images become the letter "D," or a really nice letter "C."

    There are more total solar eclipses than there are annular eclipses, because it takes this special combination of the moon being a little farther away from the earth than average, and the sun a little closer, to create this annular eclipse opportunity.

    Q: It seems as if people in the know are getting as excited about next month's transit of Venus as they are about the eclipse. Why is that?

    A: Well, the transit of Venus is a much rarer occurrence. And it is kind of a micro-eclipse. Venus is one-thirtieth the diameter of the sun in angular size, and it's moving across the sun's disk in this stately procession that lasts six hours. It happens in this amazing pattern: There'll be one transit, and then eight years later there'll be another one, and then it's 121.5 years, then eight years, then 105.5 years. It's a really weird pattern.

    June 8, 2004: Stargazers around the world got a special treat when Venus passed between Earth and the sun. MSNBC-TV's John Elliott talks with NASA's Phil Plait about the event, which will be repeated in June 2012.

    You wouldn't even notice a transit was happening unless someone told you. The light on the ground is not going to change. You're not going to see anything. But it's different if you know it's happening, like Jeremiah Horrocks did in 1639. He noted that Johannes Kepler, his hero, missed the calculation that Venus was going to transit the face of the sun. Horrocks actually set up a telescope to project the sun's image into his darkened room, and became the first person ever to see a transit of Venus and record it.

    Now, knowing what we do, we can tell you that on this day, at this time, if you project an image of the sun safely or use a sun-viewing filter, you can see this tiny black disk going across the face of the sun. That's interesting — but what's really interesting is that in 1761, they used the transit observations to measure the size of the solar system. Good old Halley, of Halley's Comet, figured out how to do that. They did it kind of roughly, during transits.

    Q: And even today, astronomers are using alien transits to learn about new planets beyond our solar system...

    A: That's right. In 1761, a Russian astronomer named Mikhail Lomonosov discovered the atmosphere of Venus during a transit. He noted that as Venus approached first contact with the sun's disk, it was completely surrounded by a bright glow, which was the sunlight being refracted by Venus' atmosphere and being sent to Earth. That's how scientists first detected Venus' atmosphere. And during the transit eight years ago, scientists used the sunlight going through the atmosphere of Venus to measure its composition.

    We're doing that exact same thing with exoplanets. We're studying the light going through the atmosphere of those exoplanets, and we've actually found the constituents of the atmospheres of some of those exoplanets. They've found water vapor, and carbon dioxide, and sodium gas. We're using the very same techniques we used on Venus to study the air of exoplanets.

    On Wednesday, we'll talk about some of the best places in America to see this month's annular eclipse, how to pick out an advantageous viewing spot near you, and how to make sure you see the eclipse and the transit safely. Then, be sure to tune in "Virtually Speaking Science" on BlogTalkRadio or in Second Life — and bring lots of questions. Paul Doherty (a.k.a. Patio Plasma) and I will be at the StellaNova Small Auditorium, courtesy of the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics, starting at 9 p.m. ET (6 p.m. PT/SLT) on Wednesday. If you miss the live event, don't worry: It'll be archived by "Virtually Speaking" on BlogTalkRadio as well as iTunes.

    On Friday, head on over to the Cosmic Log Facebook page for our weekly "Where in the Cosmos" picture puzzle. If you're the first to solve the riddle, you'll be eligible to receive a pair of sun-viewing safety glasses for this month's eclipse and next month's transit. In the meantime, check out these podcasts from previous episodes of "Virtually Speaking Science," plus links to eclipse-related resources:

    More about eclipses:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

  • Science: Political poison ... or cure?

    ScienceDebate.org

    Uncle Sam's famous appeal gets a science-minded twist in this poster from Science Debate 2012.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    Some might argue that GOP hopeful Newt Gingrich blew his political chances by emphasizing big scientific ideas like the establishment of a moon colony — but what's really needed is more science, not less.

    That's the way Shawn Otto sees it, anyway. Otto, a filmmaker who was born and raised in Minnesota, is the co-founder of ScienceDebate.org and the author of "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America." He's also my guest tonight on "Virtually Speaking Science," a talk show about the scientific frontier that happens on BlogTalkRadio and in the Second Life virtual world.

    I hope you can join us at 9 p.m. ET (which is 6 p.m. PT and Second Life time), but if you can't, you can catch up with the podcast via BlogTalkRadio or iTunes.

    Even though Otto and his colleagues at ScienceDebate.org didn't get a full-bore, live-action presidential debate on science and technology issues during the 2008 campaign, they got the next best thing: A rundown from Barack Obama as well as his Republican rival for the presidency, John McCain, on 14 key issues. ScienceDebate is planning to reprise the "14 Questions" exercise this year, augmented by other questions from the general public. The organizers are even talking with TV networks again about having a broadcast science debate at some point during the presidential campaign.

    ShawnOtto.com

    Shawn Lawrence Otto is an author, science advocate and filmmaker.

    Are people really interested in scientific perspectives when it comes to politics? Some studies suggest that increased scientific knowledge about political issues just confirms pre-existing cultural attitudes rather than changing anyone's mind. And there's experimental evidence that Gingrich's support in the Florida primary campaign went down dramatically last week after he highlighted the idea of creating a U.S. colony (and perhaps eventually the 51st state) on the moon by 2020. He ended up losing to Mitt Romney by a substantial margin in Tuesday's primary.

    "I don't think he handled it well," Otto said of Gingrich's moon moment.

    But Otto also said there should be room in a political campaign to debate big ideas — even the idea of going to the moon, Mars and beyond. "When have we gotten to a point where painting a big vision is seen as outside the mainstream?" he asked.

    You can bet we'll be talking about big ideas on "Virtually Speaking Science" tonight. For a warmup, here's an edited transcript of my pre-show Q&A with Otto:

    Cosmic Log: How are science and technology issues being addressed this time around, as compared with 2008? Any big differences?

    Otto: Yeah, it's quite a bit different. Last time, because there was an open seat, we were getting to know candidates on both sides. Nobody knew for sure what their science positions were. We were trying to figure out where the candidates stood on a lot of these issues.

    This time, that's still true in part, but some of their views are quite well known. Obama has broadly been viewed as being pro-science, and he's appointed a lot of well-known scientists to top positions. But he's also taken some surprising stances, such as his support of Kathleen Sebelius' overruling of the recommendations of her scientists about Plan B. [The decision means "morning-after" birth control pills won't be made available over the counter to girls younger than 17.]

    There's also been the back-and-forth over the Keystone XL pipeline, and the fact that his administration has pretty much banished the words "climate change" and is only talking about green energy. And how he has cut back on NASA's plans, for instance. So there are some less than thrilling aspects from the science perspective, but he's much more of a known entity now.

    On the Republican side, particularly because of activism around climate change that's funded by energy industry money, and energy-industry-funded libertarian think tanks that are supporting Republican candidates in the primary process, there's been a lot of increased activism on the climate issue — and a lot of denial of the results of science.

    Also, ALEC has been suggesting that state legislatures should require schools to teach skepticism of evolution and climate change in science class. That appeals to the foot soldiers, largely on the right and in the Republican Party. It seems that whenever a candidate on the Republican side has been slipping in the polls, they've taken a vocal anti-science position to recapture some momentum. Which is the opposite of what you would have expected even 10 years ago. 

    Whoever the winning candidate is on the Republican side is going to be interested in not appearing unreasonable or anti-science to the moderate, mainstream, middle-of-the-road swing voters once they get the party endorsement. So whoever gets the nomination is going to be anxious to moderate their views on science.

    Q: Right. You secure the base, and then you move to the center.

    A: Both Newt and Mitt have been very careful not to paint themselves too tightly into a corner — for instance, on climate change. Newt has said, very adroitly, that it "hasn't been fully proven." He's smart enough to know that nothing in science is ever fully proven. That is in fact a true statement. But most of his constituency may not realize that. So that's a careful nuancing on his part that I thought was quite clever. Mitt has gotten himself in trouble by his various recorded statements on the issue that seem to be contradictory. So I think Newt has handled it in a smarter way.

    But it's interesting to see what happened to Newt with the whole space theme last week. When have we gotten to a point where painting a big vision is seen as outside the mainstream? The big science issues are about the future. Certainly it's not a central plank in the campaign platform this time around, but it is worth talking about, I would think, especially in Florida.

    Q: It's similar to what happened when President George W. Bush announced the plan to return to the moon. It was easy to lampoon that, with the bumper stickers saying "Send Bush to Mars." I heard the same thing this time around ... "Send Newt to the moon." You could print the same bumper sticker. Was it a good thing that a scientific issue somehow captured the attention, or a bad thing because his stock went down as soon as he brought it up?

    A: I don't think he handled it well. I don't think his stock went down because of the subject matter, but more probably because of the emphasis that he placed on it relative to the other topics that the GOP base is concerned about — space and the moon or Mars is not high on the list when people are worried about the economy, or keeping jobs, or Social Security, or addressing housing foreclosures. If he emphasized it a little differently, I don't think it would have come out the way it did.

    Q: Do you think science and technology issues will play more of a part, or less of a part, compared with 2008?

    A: I think it's already clear that they're playing more of a part. The topic of science, and the denial of science, is much more of a politically charged issue. Unfortunately, science has come to be viewed as more of a partisan topic. I don't think that's right. I don't think that's healthy for America or the Republican Party. I'd like to see the Republicans get away from that, but it's part of the fabric, and people are much more keyed in on it. They're curious whether there are other areas where candidates don't see eye to eye with science.

    Q: You mean besides climate change and evolution?

    A: Wherever they pop up, whether it's HPV vaccine or other issues. Newt has said that embryonic stem cell research is killing children for research material. So it's getting a little extreme.

    Q: At one time you suggested that scientists should consider becoming Republicans. Is that still your counsel?

    A: Well, there are a couple of reasons there. One is that there are relatively few voters or activists involved in the grass roots of either of the political parties. So few, in fact, that if scientists actually did become heavily involved, for instance in the Republican Party, they could take over a lot of the process. There's a reasoned argument to be made that there's a leverage point there. Whether scientists would feel comfortable doing that is another matter entirely.

    I've had some long and interesting conversations with science writers and scientists about this question ... whether or not that's the way to do it, or whether the Republican Party will have to experience a time-out that's so painful that they'll change their anti-science, anti-reason, anti-intellectual ways. I don't know if that actually would happen. There's enough fervor fueling the constituencies in the Republican Party, and enough money supporting that fervor, that I'm not sure whether they'd abandon those views or just become more clever about marketing them. I think change has to happen from both within and without, as it usually does.

    Personally, I don't care what party scientists belong to. We just need their voice to be raised in our civic dialogue right now, more than we have in many decades. 

    Join us at 9 p.m. ET tonight on "Virtually Speaking Science," which is broadcast on BlogTalkRadio and in the Second Life virtual world at the MICA Small Auditorium at Stella Nova. Many thanks to the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics for co-sponsoring the Second Life event. Tonight's hourlong show will be archived on BlogTalkRadio and iTunes. Check out these other podcasts from the "VSScience" show:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

  • Is Apollo's past spoiling our future in outer space?

    Eugene A. Cernan / NASA and Space Frontiers via Getty Images

    Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt stands next to the U.S. flag on the lunar surface during a moonwalk at the Taurus-Littrow landing site in December 1972. Earth is visible in the far distance.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    NASA's Apollo moonshots still have a powerful hold on the imagination, but is all that nostalgia actually holding us back on the final frontier?

    Rand Simberg, a self-confessed "recovering aerospace engineer" who's now making his mark as an analyst and commentator on space policy, suspects that's the case. Simberg and I discussed the problems with the past and the challenges facing America's future space effort on "Virtually Speaking Science," a talk show you can listen to over the Web.

    The power of the Apollo paradigm has been in full view over the past week — at movie theaters, where the horror flick "Apollo 18" pulled in $10.7 million over the Labor Day weekend; and on the Web, where the release of new pictures showing the Apollo landing sites created a sensation.

    How long will it be before the next politician calls for an energy "Apollo project," as Barack Obama and  Mitt Romney did during the 2008 presidential campaign? (John McCain, ever the maverick, called his proposed Apollo project the "Lexington Project.")

    Even NASA has been taking pages from the Apollo playbook, at one time calling its plan to return to the moon "Apollo on steroids." But Simberg argues that Apollo's big-government approach provides exactly the wrong lessons for future space exploration. The way he sees it, spaceflight in the post-shuttle era has to become much less dependent on government funding.

    CEI

    Rand Simberg is an adjunct scholar at the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute.

    "That's going to start happening a lot more in the future, particularly now that we've moved out into this era where the government can't afford to do it anymore," he said during a recent interview for the MoonandBack website. "If the people who want to do things in space don't fund it, it's not going to happen, and that's a reality people need to accept. They're not going to do it with the taxpayer's money anymore, probably. Apollo's over."

    Today, on the Competitive Enterprise Institute's OpenMarket weblog, Simberg referred to the brouhaha over whether NASA might abandon the International Space Station due to a Russian Soyuz glitch — and complained that the space agency's aversion to risk is a "symptom of our continuing to pretend that we understand why we are sending people into space at all with federal money."

    "Until we have a grown-up national discussion about that, shed of nostalgia for Apollo and 'national greatness,' not to mention the white-collar welfare aspects and myths about technology spin-off, the vast majority of taxpayer funds spent on this endeavor will be wasted," he wrote.

    It's not that Simberg, an adjunct scholar at CEI, is an Apollo-hater. Far from it: He's one of the folks behind the creation of "Evoloterra," a secular liturgy aimed at commemorating "the wondrous accomplishments achieved by the human beings of planet Earth" each year on July 20, the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

    Simberg still believes the Apollo moon landings were "a historic achievement" from a technological and even spiritual perspective. It's just not the way to run a sustainable space program.

    "I tend to think of Apollo as not having much to do with space in terms of opening it up" as a frontier, he told me.

    Is the space frontier even worth opening up? Simberg said policymakers see the space program as more of a jobs program. "The reason space policy is a mess is because it's really not 'important' ... to the people who make the decisions about it," he said.

    Although Simberg shies away from being pigeonholed as a Republican or a conservative, he's in favor of free-market, small-government solutions. That means he often finds himself in the camp opposing Obama — except when it comes to space policy. He's strongly in favor of the Obama administration's push to commercialize spaceflight to low Earth orbit. His weblog, Transterrestrial Musings, keeps close track of the ups and downs of SpaceX, Blue Origin and other players in the commercial space race.

    In Simberg's view, the worst thing about Obama's space policy is that Obama is behind it. "It's just very unfortunate that it's this administration that managed to come up with this one enlightened policy," Simberg said. "The biggest political challenge is trying to make sure that if/when the Republicans take over ... they don't have a kneejerk reaction to everything that came out of the White House."

    Simberg is working on that challenge, through his writings for the Washington Examiner, Pajamas Media, The New Atlantis, Popular Mechanics and other outlets. Sometimes it's an uphill battle.

    "People ought to think space is important, but the problem is that we've never had an intelligent discussion of why we send people into space," he told me.

    Did we see that discussion during tonight's debate for GOP presidential hopefuls? Not really: They had other issues on their mind. But Rand and I had that discussion tonight on "Virtually Speaking Science."

    Previous podcasts from 'Virtually Speaking Science':

    This post was updated at 11 p.m. ET to include the archived podcast of tonight's installment of "Virtually Speaking Science."

    Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

  • How tycoons will fuel spaceflight

    NASA announces funding to four experimental spacecraft. WESH's Dan Billow reports.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    With the shuttle program winding down, the future of American spaceflight may well depend on how starry-eyed tycoons spend their money — and some of NASA’s money as well.

    Three of the four companies that are in line to receive $269.3 million from NASA for building future spaceships are privately held, and what's more, they're led by well-off individuals who have at least a hint of intrigue about them. The fourth company, Boeing, is partnering with Bigelow Aerospace, which was founded by hotel-chain billionaire Robert Bigelow and has its own orbital aspirations.

    NASA has laid out a plan for paying out the money over the next year or so, with the aim of promoting the rise of a new set of spaceship operators in the post-shuttle era.

    In a commentary, George Washington University communication researcher Linda Billings picks up on the fact that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are going to ventures that are headed up by folks who already have hundreds of millions of dollars.

    "Why do these 'commercial' space companies need government handouts?" she asks. "The awardees are not hard-up start-ups (and these government handouts are not their first)."

    It's true that all four companies have received money from the federal government previously, but none of those companies would characterize the payments as "handouts" or "subsidies."

    They'd see them instead as payments for services rendered, goods delivered, or milestones achieved along the path that NASA wants them to take. And the $50 million that's been paid out so far under NASA's Commercial Crew Development program, or CCDev, is dwarfed by the $9 billion paid to commercial providers such as Lockheed Martin for the development of NASA's now-canceled Ares 1 rocket and now-downsized Orion crew capsule.

    Although the financial details are hard to come by, it's virtually certain that the four companies have already spent far more than they've received for their spaceship projects. It's also virtually certain that not all four projects will make it into orbit. Because NASA is spreading out its bets, failure is definitely an option.

    Here's a recap on the four spaceship development projects that NASA will be supporting for the next year under the second phase of the CCDev program. I'll be focusing on these efforts on Saturday during a Second Life chat about the post-shuttle spaceflight era, presented by the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. SLT/PT):

    Blue Origin

    Blue Origin's orbital space vehicle is designed to take on trips to the International Space Station.

    Blue Origin: The venture getting the least amount of money ($22 million) is arguably the most mysterious of the bunch. Amazon.com's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, set up Blue Origin in 2000 to follow through on his childhood dream of going into outer space. He has the country's only privately owned spaceport, nestled amid his 165,000-acre ranch in West Texas — and until CCDev came along, most people assumed he was targeting solely suborbital space tourism.

    CCDev made clear that Bezos had higher ambitions: Blue Origin's agreement with NASA, made public in redacted form this week, shows that the company aims to build an orbital launch system capable of getting seven passengers to the International Space Station (or other destinations in low Earth orbit). Its space vehicle would initially be launched on an expendable rocket such as United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5, and eventually Blue Origin plans to field its own reusable rocket.

    The suborbital effort is now seen as an interim step along the way to orbit. "The suborbital vehicle will be fully reusable and capable of flying three or more astronauts to an altitude of over 328,000 feet (above 100 kilometers) for science research and adventure," Blue Origin said. "The suborbital booster is currently undergoing integrated testing. ... The suborbital capsule will baseline key technologies for the orbital space vehicle, and is currently undergoing final assembly."

    With rare exceptions, the only information publicly available about Blue's plans comes from government documents that must be made publicly available, such as the one released this week. Thus, it's hard to tell how much money Bezos has put into his rocket venture so far. But when you consider the construction costs for Blue Origin's production facility in Washington state, plus its facilities in Texas, plus all the testing it's done to date, it's unquestionably more than the $3.7 million the venture received under CCDev1 plus the $22 million it's due to get under CCDev2.

    Blue Origin's partners include NASA's Ames Research Center and Stennis Space Center, United Launch Alliance and Lockheed Martin, Aerojet and the Air Force Holloman High Speed Test Track in New Mexico. The company's agreement with NASA says that Bezos "recognizes that successful development of an innovative space launch capability is a long-term endeavor and is committed to steady funding for development efforts to achieve a commercial orbital vehicle."

    The company said NASA's support would "accelerate" the development of a reusable crew transportation system. "We are very pleased to continue working with NASA on development of our Crew Transportation System, and appreciate the confidence NASA places in Blue Origin," the company's program manager, Rob Meyerson, said in an emailed statement.

    Sierra Nevada Corp.

    An artist's conception shows Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser near a space station docking port.

    Sierra Nevada Corp.: Sierra Nevada received $20 million during CCDev1 and is getting $80 million in CCDev2 to continue development of its Dream Chaser space plane, which is based on the HL-20 lifting-body design that NASA pioneered back in the 1980s. The concept was revived by high-tech entrepreneur Jim Benson at SpaceDev and inherited by Sierra Nevada when it acquired SpaceDev in 2008. (Benson had left SpaceDev two years earlier and came up with a different spaceship concept, but he passed away in 2008 before he could get very far with the idea.)

    Sierra Nevada's top corporate officers are in the public eye far less than Jeff Bezos. After all, Bezos is still the head of a publicly traded company, but CEO Fatih Ozmen and his wife, company president and chief financial officer Eren Ozmen don't have much reason to go public. Three years ago, a story about Sierra Nevada in the Las Vegas Sun called Fatih Ozmen a "mystery man."

    The Ozmens started out as employees at Sierra Nevada and acquired the Nevada-based company in 1994. Since then, Sierra Nevada has grown into a big-time defense contractor with 29 locations in 15 states. Inc. magazine listed its 2009 revenue at just under a billion dollars.

    Sierra Nevada's website lists numerous awards, including recognition as "the top woman-owned company demonstrating excellence in applying innovative IT solutions to the federal government." But the company has also experienced the occasional hiccup, such as recent questions over the development of an imaging pod for the Air Force, called Gorgon Stare.

    The company's agreement with NASA lists 11 partners, including Boeing, United Launch Alliance, United Space Alliance, Aerojet, Draper Lab, NASA's Langley Research Center, AdamWorks, SAS, the University of Colorado, the U.S. component of Canada's MDA robotics company and Virgin Galactic (which is working with Sierra Nevada on "global marketing, sales and commercial operation" of the orbital Dream Chaser).

    SpaceX

    An artist's conception shows SpaceX's Draco thruster engines firing to separate the Dragon spacecraft from the Falcon 9 second stage. Side-mounted thrusters could be used as a launch abort system and landing system.

    SpaceX: This California-based company, founded by high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk in 2002, has notched a surprising number of space successes lately, including last December's launch-to-splashdown test of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo capsule. NASA is supporting the development of the Falcon-Dragon system with $278 million under a separate program for cargo craft development, known as Commercial Orbital Transport Services or COTS. If SpaceX hits its marks, it will be in line for $1.6 billion worth of NASA contracts to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.

    Musk has said it would take $1 billion and three years of work to adapt the Falcon-Dragon system to carry crew, primarily because of the expense of developing an emergency launch abort system. This week, he said the $75 million in CCDev2 money would put SpaceX on track to meet that schedule.

    "The award will accelerate our efforts to develop the next generation of rockets and spacecraft for human transportation," Musk said in a statement. "With NASA's support, SpaceX will be ready to fly its first manned mission in 2014."

    Musk has made no secret of his long-term goal: to open the way for colonizing Mars and turn humanity into a multiplanet species. This week's statement referred slyly to those ambitions by noting that SpaceX's thruster system would "provide the capability for Dragon to land almost anywhere on Earth or another planet with pinpoint accuracy, overcoming the limitation of a winged architecture that works only in Earth's atmosphere."

    A couple of years ago, Musk said that he invested $100 million of his fortune in SpaceX — but there have been more recent indications that the spigot has been turned down on his personal cash flow. SpaceX recently reported raising $50 million in additional funds, and Musk said an initial public offering may take place next year. Last year, there were a flurry of reports about Musk's financial straits, which led him to discuss the situation candidly in the Huffington Post.

    SpaceX's agreement with NASA says the $75 million would accelerate crew-transport development by 50 percent compared to an internally funded baseline. So what does that say about SpaceX's investment? That figure is blacked out in the agreement posted online, but if time is money, that might imply SpaceX is bringing $75 million of its own to the project. The section listing SpaceX's partners and institutional investors is also blacked out, but the company notes that it works in "close collaboration with four NASA centers and eight leading aerospace companies."

    Boeing

    Boeing's CST-100 craft approaches the International Space Station in an artist's concept.

    The Boeing Co.: This aerospace giant is something of an outlier. It's publicly traded, and has been involved in the U.S. space effort for decades. Among other things, Boeing served as the prime contractor for construction of the International Space Station. Billings' knock against Boeing was that with $3.3 billion in profit for 2010, the company didn't need a government "subsidy" for its spaceship-building operation.

    However, Boeing's John Elbon repeatedly said in the run-up to the CCDev2 announcement that NASA had to serve as the anchor customer for the company's proposed CST-100 crew capsule. Without NASA support, the financial underpinnings of the project just didn't stand up. The $92.3 million in CCDev2 money, added to the $18 million from CCDev1, will keep Boeing on track to have the capsule ready for flight by 2015.

    "By the end of CCDev2, our design will be firmed up and we'll have it synced up with NASA requirements so we understand our vehicle will meet those requirements," Boeing's John Elbon told reporters.

    Boeing's go-ahead is also good news for Robert Bigelow, whose aerospace company has already put up two inflatable test modules into orbit on Russian spacecraft. Bigelow Aerospace is hoping that the CST-100 — perhaps launched on an Atlas 5, Delta 4 or Falcon 9 — can bring paying passengers to its future private-sector space stations as well as to the government-supported International Space Station.

    In addition to Bigelow, Boeing's agreement with NASA lists Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, Airborne Systems, ILC Dover, Spincraft, XCOR Aerospace, United Space Alliance and ARES Corp. as teammates and investors. Boeing also notes its agreements with Bigelow, Space Adventures and an additional blacked-out entity "to increase market growth."

    Orbital Sciences Corp.

    Orbital Sciences' Prometheus space plane, shown in this artist's conception, was one of the proposals that NASA passed up. Orbital is now reportedly planning to mothball the concept.

    What separated the winners and losers: NASA has now released the full list of companies proposing CCDev2 spaceship projects, plus short rundowns on why particular proposals were chosen or eliminated. It's fascinating reading for space geeks.

    The also-rans included alphaSpaces, Andrews Space, ATK Aerospace Systems, Excalibur Almaz, ILC Dover, Innovative Space Propulsion Systems, KT Engineering, Oceaneering International, Orbital Outfitters, Orbital Sciences Corp., Orbital Space Transport, Paragon Space Development Corp., PlanetSpace, Spacedesign Corp., TGV Rockets, Transformational Space Corp. (a.k.a. t/Space), United Launch Alliance and United Space Alliance.

    Philip McAlister, acting director of NASA Headquarters' Commercial Spaceflight Development program, said Boeing and SpaceX were clear standouts from the rest of the pack. "They were the only ones to receive 'very high' confidence ratings, which I consider significant," he wrote.

    ATK, Excalibur Almaz and United Launch Alliance were among the finalists, but McAlister said Excalibur Almaz was eliminated due to low ratings, especially on business considerations. He opted not to go with ATK and United Launch Alliance in part because of their lack of linkage to a crew-carrying vehicle. Those two companies were proposing only to build launch vehicles, and McAlister put somewhat less weight on that side of the equation.

    "Within the U.S. industrial base, there is considerable launch vehicle development expertise, as many companies have successfully developed new launch vehicles over the last few decades," he explained. "In contrast, no U.S. company has successfully developed a crew-carrying spacecraft in over 30 years."

    In other words, not since the space shuttle ... unless you count the private-sector SpaceShipOne rocket plane, which made three suborbital space trips in 2004. 

    Lockheed Martin

    Lockheed Martin's Space Operations Simulation Center in Colorado can simulate on-orbit docking maneuvers using mockups of the Orion spce capsule, left, and the International Space Station.

    So what's next? The CCDev2 covers the development timeline through May 2012, but NASA is looking for another $850 million to cover the third phase of the program, CCDev3. Being a CCDev2 winner doesn't guarantee that you'll get CCDev3 funding, and it's possible that a company not receiving money in one phase of the program could be funded for a future phase. For example, SpaceX didn't receive any funding in CCDev1 but was awarded $75 million in CCDev2.

    The agreements with NASA spell out milestones that must be met in order to receive incremental payments. It's not guaranteed that all the companies will meet all the milestones. For example, Rocketplane Kistler was awarded up to $207 million from COTS, NASA's cargo spacecraft development program, but the company couldn't reach its investment target and was cut off after receiving $32.1 million for hitting earlier milestones.

    If the CCDev process is successful, NASA should be able to choose from new U.S.-built spaceships for launching astronauts to the International Space Station in the 2014-2015 time frame. In the meantime, the space agency will have to rely on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft for crew transport. NASA expects to begin sending cargo up to the International Space Station on remote-controlled craft provided by SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp. as early as next year.

    Separately, NASA is also funding Lockheed Martin's work of the Orion crew capsule, which is currently envisioned as a NASA-operated emergency crew escape vehicle. Such capsules would be launched to the space station without a crew, thus minimizing the flight risk.

    The Orion may well turn into the multipurpose crew vehicle that Congress wants NASA to develop for trips beyond Earth orbit. Congress has set aside $1.2 billion in the current fiscal year for the Orion-based crew vehicle, plus $1.8 billion for a heavy-lift rocket capable of putting 130 tons of payload into orbit. Lawmakers want to see that mission accomplished by 2016, but NASA isn't sure the job can be done. 

    Even if the beyond-Earth space transport system is ready by 2016, NASA is expected to use commercial transports to get astronauts to and from the space station. Using a heavy-lifter to send astronauts to low Earth orbit would be like using a semi to get from one end of town to the other. It's better to call a taxi ... which is exactly what NASA plans to do once its commercial "space taxis" are ready to fly. 

    More on the space race:

    If you're a Second Life user, please join me at the StellaNova Amphitheater on Saturday at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. PT/SLT) for "From the Shuttle to Mars," a talk about the post-shuttle era presented by the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics. If you miss the talk, you'll still be able to listen to the full hourlong podcast via MICA's audio archives. (You'll also find links to the archived podcasts from my three previous MICA talks.)

    Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about my book on Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto."  

  • Science thrives in virtual worlds

    Courtesy of George Djorgovski

    Second Life residents Desdemona Enfield and Curious George work on a virtual-reality visualization that classifies stars, galaxies and quasars according to their colors, brightness, distance and morphology.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    Does the virtual-reality world known as Second Life have anything to offer for real-world scientists? Absolutely — and a trailblazing researcher says the payoffs are sure to increase when the Internet goes 3-D.

    "We are really meant to interact in 3-D, with other people and with information," Caltech astronomer George Djorgovski, director of the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics, told me today during an interview in Second Life. "Because this works so well with the human perception system, as soon as there is an easy and 'good enough' 3-D approach, people will switch en masse."

    Djorgovski will talk about the past, present and future of virtual worlds on "Virtually Speaking Science," a talk show that's simulcast in Second Life and on the Web via BlogTalkRadio. I'm one of the co-hosts of the hourlong show, which airs on Sunday at 7 p.m. SLT/PT (10 p.m. ET).

    Virtual worlds have been around for decades, if you count immersive gaming environments such as World of Warcraft. But jacking into virtual reality still isn't exactly a mainstream phenomenon. Some might be scared off by the fact that online worlds can offer havens for cyber-sex and other virtual vices. Others might see Second Life as downright clunky, compared with the photorealistic, hyper-responsive graphics of present-day video games or the all-consuming interaction available through Facebook or Twitter.

    But when it comes to scientific collaboration and outreach, Djorgovski thinks Second Life is a thick slice of awesome.

    "This technology is already basically a killer app," he told me. "Even with its crappy graphics and user interface, it already works astonishingly well. And that's only going to get a lot better."

    Djorgovski joined Second Life three years ago, and today his avatar ("Curious George") seems totally comfortable in the world. (I, on the other hand, still walk over chairs, even though I've been an occasional Second Lifer for four years.) The Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics presents a series of professional seminars, workshops and popular talks in Second Life, including a couple that I've presented. In addition, Djorgovski regularly meets with scientific collaborators in Second Life to work on his real-world research, which focuses on galaxy formation and evolution, quasars, sky surveys and data visualization.

    "Even if they're in Pasadena, we meet in Second Life," Djorgovski said of his colleagues. "We prefer doing that over Skype, even if it's just one-on-one. It feels better."

    Why is that? Djorgovski points to a couple of analyses suggesting that immersive telepresence is more engaging than phone or video conferencing — partly because multiple senses (hearing, sight, kinesthetics) are in play, and partly because there's more of a sense of inhabiting 3-D space. But those advantages apply to any type of virtual-reality interaction. Djorgovski goes on to say that scientific applications in particular can be more fruitful because you can immerse yourself in your own data.

    The road to virtual worlds
    That's why he took up residence in Second Life to begin with. Djorgovski has long been interested in finding better ways to work with massive databases, such as the Palomar Digital Sky Survey he worked on back in the 1990s. "With sky surveys, we suddenly had so much informational wealth that it was actually irresponsible not to make the data public," he said.

    Djorgovski played a part in articulating the concept of a "Virtual Observatory" that could be used by astronomers as well as the general public — a concept that gave rise to the National Science Foundation's National Virtual Observatory as well as Google Sky and Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope. (Microsoft is a partner in the msnbc.com joint venture.)

    Djorgovski's not the only one interested in 21st-century tools for handling large data sets. "There is a worldwide community of aficionados of what is variously called e-Science, informational science or cyberinfrastructure," he said. "I would say there are about 1,000 researchers worldwide, and it's very much the start of an S-curve."

    He compares the current situation to the situation that faced scientists in the 19th century, when the field of statistics was developed to handle kilobytes' worth of data. Djorgovski believes a new set of tools will be needed to cope with terabytes, petabytes and exabytes. "That's exactly what led me into this virtual-reality business," he said.

    In a 2008 posting to the Cosmic Variance blog, Djorgovski describes how a couple of research papers written by Piet Hut, a stellar-dynamics expert at the Institute for Advanced Study, pointed him toward Second Life. "I was very skeptical ... until I tried it," Djorgovski told me. "Then I became a convert."

    Today, Djorgovski's little corner of virtual property contains one 3-D simulation that charts categories of stars, galaxies and quasars, and another that lets you fiddle with gravity in triple-star systems.

    Djorgovski said virtual worlds can offer opportunities for budding scientists as well as the professionals. "I can totally see that this would be a very powerful way to provide experimental experience to students who don't have access to a real lab," Djorgovski said. "Maybe it's not 100 percent fidelity, but if it's 90 percent, that's still better than zero."

    You'll find plenty of virtual experiments in SploLand, the Second Life science center operated by San Francisco's Exploratorium.  "We're using it as an extension of our exhibit space, to do things for our online visitors that we can't do in the real world," Rob Rothfarb, the Exploratorium's project director for online engagement, told me today.

    For example, Second Life visitors can shoot themselves out of a virtual cannon to learn about Newtonian orbital mechanics, visit the center of the big bang, or sit on top of an atom to feel the jiggles of Brownian motion.

    They can also gather together in cyberspace to witness live events such as a total lunar eclipse. "In those cases, we're creating extensions of our public programs," Rothfarb said. "We're able to share exciting images, along with commentary from scientists, and we're creating a context for conversation among people who come there from all over the world."

    Just last week, SploLand was the venue for the Exploratorium's Second Life celebration of Pi Day, the science-centered holiday that celebrates 3.14 as well as Albert Einstein's birthday.

    Djorgovski said such events show that virtual worlds can make a valulable contribution to science education. "It's actually very impressive what goes on in the education community," he said. "We're thinking, 'OK, obviously what's happening is that people who can't come to Caltech or the Exploratorium can do this here in Second Life.'"

    This video from the Exploratorium's Teacher Institute guides you through SploLand.

    The future of virtual worlds
    So what's next? Djorgovski said Second Life is still too limited to handle the kinds of high-data applications that scientists will require in the years ahead. He pointed to his own stellar-classification simulation and said, "If I were to put in another 12,000 data points here, it might crash the server."

    The future may well lie in open-source virtual environments, created using tools such as OpenSim. Djorgovski can easily imagine an immersive 3-D version of Facebook, for example, or an interface that displays websites as objects in virtual 3-D space rather than as rectangles on a 2-D screen.

    "To my mind, really, it has to be a full immersive 3-D version that draws upon content that's already on the Internet," he said. "Humanity's information content is all on the Internet now. We use it to access all kinds of information, to access each other, to access entertainment. That's not going to change. Whoever builds 3-D, immersive, virtual-reality environments will pretty much have to do it in a way that is entirely compatible with the mainstream cyberspace that we're using. It can be a year. It can be 10 years. But I'm confident that someday it will happen. I wouldn't be surprised if the immersive 3-D Web will be as fundamentally transformative as the Web itself."

    What do you think? Weigh in with your comments below, and be sure to tune in to "Virtually Speaking Science" on Sunday. And if you miss the live show for some reason, never fear: It'll be made available as a downloadable podcast next week. 

    More about virtual reality:

    My co-host on "Virtually Speaking Science" is Robin Snelson of the Space Studies Institute. Check out these links for podcasts from previous shows:

    Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about Alan Boyle's book on Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto."

  • Let's talk about the final frontier

    Rocket City Space Pioneers

    The Rocket City Space Pioneers are working on a concept to develop a lunar lander and rover for the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize competition. The X Prize race to the moon is just one of the space ventures promising a rich payoff for rocketeers.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    New business ventures could find a profitable place in space — in Earth orbit, on the moon and beyond. Suddenly, private-sector spaceflight is becoming one of the biggest things in the solar system. I'll be chatting about these developments during an online event this weekend, and I hope you'll join the conversation.

    Sunday marks the premiere of "Virtually Speaking Science" on BlogTalkRadio and in Second Life, at 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT/SLT). My co-host is Robin Snelson of the Space Studies Institute, and our first guest is Tim Pickens, the team leader for the Rocket City Space Pioneers, one of the teams entered in the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize.

    We'll be talking about the Space Pioneers' bid to put a lander and a rover on the moon. Tim provides an overview of the competition in this YouTube video:

    The competition sets aside millions of dollars for the first private-sector team to land a probe on the moon and meet all of the X Prize's mission objectives, as long as the deed is done before the end of 2015. The action is already heating up: Just this week, another GLXP team, Astrobotic, announced that it's reserved a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch for a moon mission to take place as early as 2013. Pickens' team, meanwhile, is well into its design phase as well as its educational outreach effort.

    We'll also talk about the general state of private spaceflight. Suborbital space ventures such as Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo could be ready to take on paying passengers in "this coming year," the company's president and CEO told me recently. And on the orbital side of things, lots of companies are going after NASA's money for the development of crew transport vehicles capable of reaching the International Space Station. The program — known as Commercial Crew Development Phase 2, or CCDev 2 — could award as much as $200 million next month.

    This month, word emerged that United Space Alliance, the venture that currently operates the shuttle fleet on NASA's behalf, was proposing to continue flying space shuttles as commercial spaceships. This week, ATK, the company that builds the shuttle's solid-rocket boosters, said it was partnering with Europe's Astrium aerospace company to offer a rocket called Liberty for NASA's use. And today, t/Space's Gary Hudson confirmed that he and his colleagues have submitted a proposal for CCDev 2 funding as well. Here's the design concept:

    T/Space's concept for a crew transfer vehicle is aimed at sending up to eight crew members to the International Space Station. The craft would offer "launch-vehicle-independent crew capability," t/Space's Gary Hudson says.

    In an e-mail, Hudson said the proposal calls for the development of a spaceship that could be sent into space on a variety of launch vehicles. For the rocket fans among you, here are some of the details, straight from Hudson's e-mail:

    "Up to eight crew, Soyuz-like architecture (recoverable reusable crew element, expendable orbital/cargo module).  Incorporates HMX's patented integral abort system (uses OMS/RCS propellant in separate abort engines).  Can fly on Atlas 401 [a configuration for the Atlas 5 rocket], F9 [SpaceX's Falcon 9] or Taurus II (enhanced) but with a reduced cargo and crew capability on the latter vehicle.  Goal is to be the lowest-price provider on a per-seat basis.  Nominal land recovery with water backup (not revealing the technique until after CCDev 2 awards)."

    T/Space is the latest CCDev 2 competitor to come to light, joining United Space Alliance and the ATK/Astrium venture as well as Boeing, Orbital Sciences, Sierra Nevada Corp., SpaceX and United Launch Alliance.

    No matter who wins out in the CCDev 2 contest, it's clear that commercial spaceflight is the wave of the future (or, to paraphrase President Barack Obama, the way to "win the future"). The first mission to Mars may well turn out to be a privately funded affair, if a novel plan drawn up by a team of experts becomes a reality.

    All this public-private enterprise should give us plenty to talk about over the weekend. If you can't tune in, please feel free to leave your comments and questions below — and I'll try to get to them while we're on the air.

    Click here for the "Virtually Speaking Science" show at 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT/SLT) on Sunday.

    On Saturday, I gave a talk in Second Life about this month's findings from NASA's Kepler planet-finding probe. The event was sponsored by the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics. The audio podcast is being archived with other MICA talks (including my discussion of "The Case for Pluto" last May).

    Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about Alan Boyle's book on Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto."

  • Virtual haven set up for combat vets

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    One of the best things about virtual reality is that it isn't real — and the Pentagon is taking advantage of that fact by offering a virtual realm that can take combat vets and their loved ones through the whole cycle of post-traumatic stress disorder.

    PTSD and depression are thought to affect 10 to 30 percent of the U.S. military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, depending on how you define the disorder. For some vets, the trauma left behind from combat experiences can lead to alcohol abuse, aggressive behavior, family problems or even suicide.

    Typically, therapists help PTSD sufferers get through the experience by having them relive and talk through stressful experiences in a safe environment. That's where virtual reality can make a difference: For several years now, therapists have been using online worlds such as Second Life to simulate the stresses in a therapeutic context. Studies have shown that such simulations can lead to a clinically significant lessening of PTSD symptoms. Some researchers are even using simulations to identify potential PTSD sufferers —and deal with their problems — even before the warfighters are sent into combat.

    Therapists only wish that vets would take greater advantage of the treatment tools at hand.

    "Far too many of our warriors come home and, despite difficulties they are having, are not going to come and see a psychologist, a social worker, a psychiatrist," clinical psychologist Greg Reger said this week in a news release announcing the establishment of the Pentagon's virtual world for vets.

    The world was created in Second Life by the National Center for Telehealth and Technology, also known as T2. Reger, who is acting chief of the center's innovative technology applications division, said the T2 Virtual PTSD Experience can help tech-savvy warfighters and their families learn more about PTSD in the comfort of their own homes.

    Second Life gives users the opportunity to create virtual-reality avatars, and then send those avatars walking (or flying) through computer-graphic environments that are similar to real-world locales. On T2's turf, for example, avatars can visit a welcome center anonymously and learn more about the psychological difficulties associated with combat deployment.

    T2Health.org

    A virtual experience on an Afghan street helps vets and loved ones understand the causes of post-traumatic stress disorder.

    "The cornerstone of the experience is when they leave that area and go into an area that teaches about the causes of post-traumatic stress disorcer," Reger said. "They enter a space where they get into a Humvee and are taken through a computer-generated simulation that includes [intense fighting on an Afghan street and] an explosion."

    While this is happening, the virtual visitors receive audio instruction that puts the stressful experiences in perspective. There's even a simulation that's set in a Stateside shopping mall — because many PTSD sufferers say they feel heightened anxiety when they're in a mall or other public gathering place.

    The T2 experience isn't just about stress, however. The virtual environment also offers relaxation zones, guided meditations and forums where real-life vets can talk about their experiences using the computer-generated interface. "Second Life provides the opportunity to interact with anyone who is in that space," Reger said. "Any warrior who goes in there will be able to talk with whoever is in that space."

    T2Health.org

    A Second Life simulation shows a relaxation exercise in progress at a virtual resort.

    The center's aim isn't to keep stressed-out vets bottled up in cyberspace. Rather, the goal is to provide an virtual avenue that leads to a healthier life in the real world. "We created an environment that lets people learn by doing, rather than reading text and watching videos on two-dimensional websites," said Kevin Holloway, the psychologist who led T2's virtual-world develoment. "They can learn something new each time they visit."

    Click on the links below to learn more about T2:

    Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle). Boyle has also written a book about Pluto as well as the past and present search for planets. To learn more, click your way to the website for "The Case for Pluto."