NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

This graphic shows the relative sizes of Earth, Mars and Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter.

A British astrobiology conference has revived a years-old debate over the best place to look for life elsewhere in the solar system: Mars, or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn?

"For reasons I don't really understand, the wider solar system and the potential for life there has not been high priority," The Telegraph quoted Robert Pappalardo, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as saying on BBC Radio 4.

Pappalardo's remarks were occasioned by this week's astrobiology conference at the UK Center for Astrobiology in Edinburgh, Scotland. The center recently established the International Subsurface Astrobiology Laboratory, or ISAL, half a mile (1 kilometer) beneath the surface in Yorkshire's Boulby mine. Biologists will use that facility to see how organisms hold up in extreme environments, learn about life's chemical signatures, and test instruments that could look for those signatures on other worlds.

Someday, one of the worlds may well be Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter. With a diameter of 1,945 miles (3,130 kilometers), Europa is just slightly smaller than Earth's moon, and yet it is thought to contain more water than Earth's oceans beneath a miles-deep layer of ice. Researchers recently suggested that hydrogen peroxide in the ice could serve as an energy supply for simple forms of life in the ocean hidden below.

Europa is the focus of Pappalardo's research, and for months he has been urging NASA to support a $2 billion mission to study Europa at close range. However, proposals for NASA missions to Europa have been losing out, in part because of the cost of missions to Mars. Last week's federal budget proposal for the next fiscal year provides no funding for a Europa mission, but it does fund Mars missions such as Maven (launching this year), InSight (launching in 2016) and a new science rover (launching in 2020).

Kevin Hand (JPL-Caltech) / Jack Cook (WHOI) / Howard Perlman (USGS)

If Europa's ocean is 100 kilometers (62 miles) deep, and all that water were gathered into a ball, it would have a radius of 877 kilometers (545 miles). This graphic compares that hypothetical ball of Europan water to the size of the Jovian moon itself, as well as all the water on planet Earth. Europa is thought to have two to three times the volume of water in Earth's oceans.

At February's annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Pappalardo worried that NASA's study of the outer solar system would go "radio-dark" in 2017, when the Cassini mission to Saturn and the Juno mission to Jupiter are both due to end. He continued that theme in this week's BBC interview.

"I worry that if Europa exploration is delayed, but then finally it happens some day, we might look back and say 'Why didn't we do that sooner?' Imagine 50 years from now, we get a lander there and find signs of life. All this time we'll have been looking in the wrong place," he was quoted as saying.

Europa isn't the only moon that intrigues astrobiologists: In the Jovian system, Callisto and Ganymede also have icy shells and may hold hidden oceans. Meanwhile, Cassini has repeatedly observed geysers of water ice rising from the surface of the Saturnian moon Enceladus — suggesting that liquid water and perhaps life may lie beneath the surface. Saturn's largest moon, Titan, has a thick atmosphere and seas of hydrocarbon that some scientists think could harbor a totally alien kind of life.

As for Mars, astrobiologists say hints of life could well lurk beneath the surface. To some extent, the Red Planet has been winning out over Europa and Enceladus because it's easier to get to. Moreover, NASA's vision calls for sending astronauts to Mars and its moons in the 2030s. NASA's robotic missions serve as precursors for those human voyages, as well as steps in a long-term program to learn about life in the universe.

Europa's fans can take heart in the fact that the European Space Agency is planning its own mission to Jupiter's moons: The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or JUICE, is due for launch in 2022 and arrival at the Jovian system in 2030. There's also talk of a sample return mission that would target Enceladus' geysers, and a proposal to drop a boat onto Titan's seas.

So what if all of these worlds — Mars and Europa, Callisto and Ganymede, Titan and Enceladus — turn out to be lifeless? Charles Cockell, who heads the UK Center for Astrobiology, addressed that scenario in an interview with the BBC.

"A lot of people think astrobiology is some sort of hunt for life, and if we don't find life, it will be a big disappointment," Cockell said. "But in fact, that's not the case. The discovery of many lifeless planets across the universe, the discovery that the Earth might be unique as a place for life, would be an astonishing discovery in itself. It would be a very lonely discovery, but it would be an astonishing discovery."

More about the search for life:

• Which alien worlds are most livable?
• Maybe we are alone, after all 
• Cosmic Log archive on astrobiology

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 / JPL-Caltech /ASI

This radar image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, acquired on Sept. 26, shows a vast river system on Saturn's moon Titan. Check out the full-size version from NASA or the European Space Agency.

NASA's Cassini orbiter has spotted a river system on the Saturnian moon Titan that's reminiscent of the River Nile — except that this river is presumably filled with liquid ethane and methane instead of water.

The Titanic Nile shows up on a grainy, black-and-white picture from Cassini's radar imager, which can look through Titan's thick, smoggy atmosphere to map the surface features beneath.

The picture was taken on Sept. 26 and released today by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the European Space Agency. It shows a branching river valley, running more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) from its headwaters to Titan's Kraken Mare, a hydrocarbon sea that's somewhere between the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean in size.

Just as Earth has a water-based hydrological cycle, Titan has a weather cycle that moves ethane and methane around its surface and through the atmosphere. That's due to Titan's surface temperature (averaging minus-290 degrees Fahrenheit, or -179 degrees Celsius) and atmospheric pressure (one and a half times that of Earth's atmosphere).

"Titan is the only place we've found besides Earth that has a liquid in continuous movement on its surface," Steve Wall, the radar deputy team lead, said in JPL's news release. "This picture gives us a snapshot of a world in motion. Rain falls, and rivers move that rain to lakes and seas, where evaporation starts the cycle all over again. On Earth, the liquid is water; on Titan, it's methane; but on both it affects most everything that happens."

During the eight and a half years that Cassini has been passing over Saturn and its moons, the bus-sized orbiter has mapped Titan's seas, lakes and rivers in amazing detail. The orbiter even dropped a mini-probe known as Huygens down to Titan's surface for an on-the-ground view of the terrain.

Scientists have proposed sending out another, more sophisticated probe that would parachute through the atmosphere and float on one of the moon's seas — either Kraken Mare or another huge lake called Ligeia Mare. Two proposed missions are in the works, nicknamed TiME and TALISE. So far, neither of the missions have gotten the go-ahead for launch — but who knows? Maybe this view of an alien Nile will whet our appetite for a taste of Titanic seas.

More about Titan's lakes and seas:

• Tropical lake found on Titan
• Could Titan's seas harbor life?
• Orbiter sends images of Titan's seas
• One moon's forecast: Chance of methane rain
• Titan has a soft and crusty surface

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 / JPL-Caltech / SSI

Saturn and its rings provide a backdrop for the planet's largest moon, Titan, in a true-color picture captured by NASA's Cassini orbiter on May 6.

Saturn's shades of blue and butterscotch are changing along with the planet's seasons, as illustrated by a fresh batch of true-color photos from the bus-sized Cassini orbiter.

When Cassini arrived at Saturn, seven years ago, the planet's northern hemisphere had a tint of azure blue. Since then, Saturn has gone through an equinox and a significant shift in seasons. Summer is approaching in the north, and winter is coming to the south.

The seasonal change means ultraviolet radiation is intensifying in the north, resulting in an increasing amount of yellowish haze. Meanwhile, there's a reduction in radiation hitting the southern hemisphere, and the haze is clearing as a result. The presence of the ring shadow enhances the effect in Saturn's south.

"The reduction of haze and the consequent clearing of the atmosphere make for a bluish hue: the increased opportunity for direct scattering of sunlight by the molecules in the air makes the sky blue, as on Earth," Cassini's imaging team reports in today's advisory. "The presence of methane, which generally absorbs in the red part of the spectrum, in a now-clearer atmosphere also enhances the blue."

Although Saturn has seasons like Earth's, the fact that a Saturnian year lasts 29.5 times longer than an Earth year means that the southern hemisphere's winter solstice won't occur until May 2017. And if Cassini's mission managers have their way, the orbiter will be around to see it.

"The Cassini mission was recently given rave reviews by a panel of planetary scientists and NASA program managers for its contributions to our understanding of the solar system, a circumstance that bodes well for a well-funded continuing mission over the next five years," the imaging team's leader, Carolyn Porco of the Colorado-based Space Science Institute, reported in an email today. "Despite the fact that we can't know exactly what the next five years will bring us, we can be certain that whatever it is will be wondrous."  

Saturn's largest moon, Titan, takes center stage in one of Cassini's newly released views. The moon measures 3,200 miles (5,150 kilometers) across and is covered with its own brand of hydrocarbon-rich haze. Titan is the only moon in the solar system to have an opaque atmosphere. Cassini snapped the picture you see above from a distance of about 483,000 miles (778,000 kilometers).

Here are more pictures that show Titan's true colors:

NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI

Saturn's rings obscure part of Titan's disk in an image from NASA's Cassini orbiter. Parts of the rings appear dark near the center of this view because of the shadow cast by the planet. This image was obtained on May 16 at a distance of about 1.9 million miles (3 million kilometers) from Titan.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI

Titan's recently formed south polar vortex stands out in this natural-color view of Titan from the Cassini spacecraft. The vortex may be related to the approach of southern winter and the development of a polar "hood" of denser, high-altitude haze. This picture was acquired on July 25 at a distance of about 64,000 miles (103,000 kilometers).

NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI

NASA's Cassini spacecraft looks toward the night side of Titan and sees sunlight scattering through the periphery of the moon's atmosphere, creating a ring of color. The picture was taken on June 6 from a distance of about 134,000 miles (216,000 kilometers).

More colors from Cassini:

• Slideshow: Cassini's greatest hits
• Saturnian storm goes wild
• Take the ultimate flight around Saturn
• Saturn floats on gossamer rings

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 file

Astronauts on Mars would probably speak with each other on the surface through radio links — but if they were to pick up voices or sounds transmitted through Martian air, would they sound different? Acoustics experts say they would.

If you could speak on Venus, you might sound like a deep-voiced Smurf — while on Mars, your voice could have the shallow ring of a higher-pitched Shrek. And if you enjoy the sound of a waterfall on Earth, wait until you hear what that tinkling would sound like on Titan. Researchers at the University of Southampton have simulated all these sounds, based on the physics of planetary atmospheres.

"This is the real deal," Tim Leighton, an acoustics professor at the British university, said in a news release. "It's as close as we can get to the real sound of another world until a future probe or astronaut actually goes there and listens to what it really sounds like."

The sounds are being shown off over the next week at the Astrium Planetarium at INTECH, near Winchester, as part of a show titled "Flight Through the Universe."

"Hearing the sounds communicates ideas about the different atmospheres and highlights the sheer alienness of the other worlds in our solar system," planetarium manager Jenny Shipway said. "There is interest in this software from other planetariums worldwide, and we're very proud to be hosting this world first."

Simulation software
Leighton and his colleagues have been developing the audio simulation software for years, in part to determine what sounds a Titan probe might record if it were to splash down in a lake of hydrocarbons during a future space mission. The software can tweak the pitch and timbre of sounds ranging from thunder and whirlwinds to music and the human voice, depending on atmospheric composition, pressure and fluid dynamics.

"On Venus, the pitch of your voice would become much deeper," Leighton said. "That is because the planet's dense atmosphere means that the vocal cords vibrate more slowly through this 'gassy soup.' However, the speed of sound in the atmosphere on Venus is much faster than it is on Earth, and this tricks the way our brain interprets the size of a speaker."

He suggests that our brain has been fine-tuned this way "to work out whether an animal call in the night was something that was small enough to eat, or so big as to be dangerous." On other planets, however, that fine tuning can lead to different impressions.

"When we hear a voice from Venus, we think the speaker is small, but with a deep bass voice," Leighton said. "On Venus, humans sound like bass Smurfs."

He said the situation would be different on Mars. "The lower sound speed on Mars does not lower the pitch of the voice," Leighton told me in a follow-up email. "It makes the speaker seem slightly larger, but still in pitch. In fact, the atmosphere of Mars would raise the pitch of the speaker's voice slightly, because of a density effect."

Microphone missions
Other groups have produced simulations of extraterrestrial sounds, based on their own assumptions about atmospheric effects. The nonprofit Planetary Society actually helped set up experiments to record and send back sounds from the Martian surface — but one mission that carried the Mars Microphone failed (Mars Polar Lander, in 1999), while a French mission that was due to carry another microphone was canceled (Netlander). NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander had a small microphone on its Mars Descent Imager, but it produced no data during that 2008 mission.

Leighton told me he didn't think the Planetary Society's simulated sounds were quite right, and he sent along a sampling of his own simulations. The differences between the sounds are actually subtler than I expected them to be, except for the Titanian waterfall, which actually sounds pretty alien. See what you think after listening to these sound clips:

• A reading of "Mary Had a Little Lamb," Earth-style
• "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on Venus
• "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on Mars
• "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on Titan
•  Waterfall on Earth, and the simulated analog on Titan
• Simulated rumble of thunder on Earth, Mars and Venus
• Simulated crash of thunder on Earth, Mars and Venus
• Splashdown of probe in Earth lake and in Titan lake
• The simulated winds of a Martian dust devil

More about the sounds of space:

• Solar storm soundtrack recorded on video
• Video: Hear the sound of a black hole
• The sights and sounds of space

In addition to Leighton, the Southampton team members who are researching extraterrestrial acoustics include Professor Paul White and M.Sc. students Nikhil Banda and Benoit Berges. Leighton has also worked with Andi Petculescu at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette to study how voices and musical instruments would sound on other worlds.

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.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI

This infrared image from the Cassini orbiter shows the hydrocarbon lake known as Kraken Mare toward the northern edge of the disk. The dark Senkyo sand sea dominates the central area of the image.

A fresh photo from the Cassini orbiter shows the hydrocarbon-rich seas and dunes of Titan, a Saturnian moon that might be capable of sustaining life as we don't know it.

The picture, published today on the websites of NASA's Saturn mission and Cassini's imaging team, shows the huge sea known as Kraken Mare as a dark spot on the northern edge of Titan's disk. The dark Senkyo dune field is front and center. Cassini's narrow-angle camera captured the view in near-infrared wavelengths from a distance of 1.2 million miles (1.9 million kilometers) on Sept. 14.

Titan is totally shrouded in smog, but Cassini's camera filters are set up to pierce through the haze and spot details on the surface below. The cold condtions on the moon are such that hydrocarbons such as ethane and methane can exist in liquid form. This rare picture from Cassini shows the glint of sunlight off the sheen of Kraken Mare, which is larger than the Caspian Sea on Earth. (And yes, Kraken is named after the mythical sea creature. "Mare" is Latin for "sea.")

NASA / JPL

This image, obtained using Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer, shows the first observed flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn's Titan moon.

Titan's seas, lakes and rivers of hydrocarbons are among the reasons why the murky Saturnian moon ranks higher than Mars on a recently published list assessing planetary habitability. That may sound strange, considering that the typical temperature on Titan is 289 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-178 degrees Celsius). But Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist at Washington State University who helped put together the list, told me that it makes sense to rank Titan as the top prospect for extraterrestrial habitability.

"If you think about it, Titan has a thick protective atmosphere like Earth's, similar to the early Earth atmosphere," he said. "It has a lot of nitrogen and methane in it, and Titan has hydrocarbon lakes, energy sources. There's a lot of possibility on Titan — if you objectively evaluate the possibility of life on Titan, I would agree."

He cautioned, however, that life on Titan may not take the form of life on Earth. Titanian life would have to thrive on methane rather than oxygen or carbon dioxide. Last year, some researchers were wound up by reports that hydrogen was flowing down through the moon's atmosphere and disappearing at the surface, and that acetylene was less abundant than expected. That could be consistent with the behavior of methane-based life forms. There are other possible explanations, however. It'll be another decade at least before another probe can go to Titan to sort out the truth.

Schulze-Makuch cautioned that comparing Titan with Mars and Earth "is a little like comparing apples and oranges."

"Current Titan seems to be more favorable to life than current Mars, but it's 'life as we don't know it,'" he said. "It would have to be different. For Mars, though, the thing is, early Mars and current Mars are very different. Early Mars was more favorable to life. Early Mars comes out better than Titan."

That's the main point of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission, which was launched over the weekend. The mission's Curiosity rover isn't suited for detecting present-day life on the Red Planet, but it should give scientists a far better idea of what conditions on early Mars were like and whether life could have gained a foothold billions of years ago.

The real value of the Planetary Habitability Index developed by Schulze-Makuch and his colleagues would be to help scientists focus on potentially livable planets beyond our solar system. "Right now we have more than 700 exoplanets," he said. "In a few years, we'll have several thousand. You'll need to have something that you can use to prioritize. ... We have to have some way to assess what is the likelihood of life on them."

Schulze-Makuch acknowledged that the index as currently devised has lots of question marks attached to it. "One of the major points of the paper was that this classification system can always be updated, and it should be as more information becomes available," he said.

Where do you think we should focus our attention? On Titan? Mars? Ice-covered Europa? Ice-spewing Enceladus? Or on the hundreds of planets beyond the solar system? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

More about the search for alien life:

• Mars life? New rover may uncover clues
• Liquid water on Enceladus could support life
• Life-bearing lake possible on icy Europa
• Alien Earths: 2 billion of them are out there

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. 

NASA

An artist's conception shows a future Titan Explorer probe that would float through the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, from the end of a cold-temperature balloon. Near Space Corp. of Tillamook, Ore., has been testing the cryogenic capabilities of such a balloon.

NASA is working with a little-known Oregon company on a variety of trial balloons, ranging from suborbital near-spacecraft to a probe that would float through the smoggy atmosphere of a Saturnian moon.

The launching point for these trial balloons couldn't be more bucolic. Near Space Corp. is based in a World War II-era blimp hangar, out in the countryside south of Tillamook, Ore., a locale that is better-known for cheese and ice cream than for space exploration.

"Out of the 4,000 people in Tillamook, not more than one in 10 knows we're here," Tim Lachenmeier, Near Space Corp.'s president, told me during my late-summer visit to the cavernous hangar.

The company's location and its small workforce (about 15 employees) aren't the only reasons why you hear so little about them: Many of the high-altitude balloon projects that Near Space takes on are hush-hush experiments for military or commercial clients. During my visit, Lachenmeier and other workers took care to cover up the areas they didn't want a visiting journalist to see.

But the NASA projects are different: For example, Near Space won funding from the space agency to test the material that could be used on a balloon-borne probe to be sent to Titan, Saturn's biggest moon and the only moon in the solar system to have a dense atmosphere. An aerobot for Titan would have to stand up to temperatures around 300 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-180 degrees Celsius). Yards of Titan-worthy material are hung up in a workroom at the hangar.

JPL / Caltech

A test blimp for a future mission to Titan, designed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and manufactured by Near Space Corp., floats inside the Tillamook Blimp Hangar in Oregon.

The most impressive room is the hangar's 1,072-foot-long, 192-foot-high giant blimp bay, which was designed for the balloons that kept watch for enemy submarines in World War II. By the time the blimp patrols started, the Pacific threat had largely passed, and Naval Air Station Tillamook was decommissioned in 1948. Since then, it has been used as a lumber mill and a research facility for blimps and balloons. Today, Near Space shares what's billed as "the largest wooden structure in the world" with the Tillamook Air Museum, which displays an array of historic airplanes on the hangar's floor.

The huge, contained space comes in handy for testing the prototype balloons that Near Space builds. "We've had a 60-foot sphere in here," Lachenmeier said. But most of the real testing happens outside rather than inside. Because it's hard to predict exactly where a balloon payload will come down, Near Space prefers test sites with lots of wide-open space — such as rural Oregon, or a test range in Hawaii. "The locals there always call us the 'Martians,'" Lachenmeier said.

One of the company's most ambitious projects for NASA involved testing the components for an airplane that would be flown to Mars inside a spacecraft, then unfold itself and fly through the Red Planet's thin atmosphere.

Near Space did the tests by flying prototypes up to high altitudes aboard a balloon, then setting them loose. "We can simulate the Mars atmosphere that they would have to pass through," Lachenmeier explained. It turns out that the air at an altitude of 115,000 feet or so (35 kilometers) is a good analog for the Martian atmosphere.

In the end, NASA decided against going ahead with the Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey mission, also known as ARES. But this summer, Near Space got in on another one of the space agency's frontiers: the commercialization of suborbital research payloads.

Suborbital mission
Near Space Corp. was one of seven companies selected to receive NASA contracts totaling $10 million for suborbital flights. Over the next two years, Near Space and the six other companies will help NASA try out various technologies for getting experiments to the edge of space and back.

Lachenmeier said the program is aimed at giving NASA a range of options for future space research. "We'll help them do early-stage risk reduction for technology," he said.

High-altitude balloons alone can't carry experiments all the way up to the 62-mile (100-kilometer) boundary of outer space, but they can rise high enough to provide a good test for equipment that would eventually go farther out — like that Mars airplane or that Titan balloon. At the end of a typical balloon-borne experiment, the payload would float down on a parachute. But Near Space is also working on a new type of aircraft that could fly itself back to the landing strip once it's cut loose from its balloon.

Near Space Corp.

Near Space Corp.'s High-Altitude Shuttle System comes in for a landing at the end of a demonstration flight in 2009. The system can carry payloads from a high-flying balloon back to a runway autonomously.

The company's 8-foot-wide High Altitude Shuttle System, or HASS, has already shown that it's capable of autonomous flight back to its base. The HASS craft can carry a 22-pound (10-kilogram) payload at altitudes of 100,000 feet (30 kilometers) for an extended period of time.

Over the years, the U.S. military has funded HASS' development as an aerial battle-coverage platform in Afghanistan and Iraq.  NASA's flight contract, in contrast, would focus on the use of HASS and other balloon platforms for research and for testing high-altitude technologies. "They could range from sensors, to communication, to guidance — you name it," Lachenmeier said.

NASA has awarded the company its first task order to integrate and fly space technology payloads. "Up to 15 flight campaigns may be provided under this award," Eric Byers, who is in charge of project management and business development for Near Space, told me today in an email. (Last week, UP Aerospace said it received a launch contract from NASA for up to eight rocket launches over the next two years as part of the same suborbital program.)

How low can they go?
Near Space Corp.'s goal is to provide lower-cost solutions for near-space applications. But how low can it go? In the past couple of years, there have been scads of reports about college students, and even a 7-year-old and his dad, who have sent picture-taking smartphones to the 100,000-foot level for $150 or so. Lachenmeier admitted that Near Space can't beat that price.

"It's not hundreds of dollars for us," he told me. "It's tens of thousands of dollars."

But he went on to point out that there's a big difference between sending up a smartphone and lofting hundreds of pounds of payload to the edge of space. "It's not like, 'I hope we get it back.' We've got to get it back," he said.

What's more, Near Space's capabilities for testing high-altitude platforms, and communicating with them once they're launched, are at a much higher level. "Most of the $92 guys don't have a chamber where they can simulate an altitude of 130,000 feet," Lachenmeier said.

That being said, Lachenmeier welcomes the growing interest in do-it-yourself high-altitude ballooning. Who knows? Today's 7-year-olds with a high-flying iPhone could well be tomorrow's aerospace engineers. Some of them might even be working in a blimp hangar in rural Oregon.

"Almost anybody can get something up there," Lachenmeier said. "And that's pretty cool."

Correction for 9:55 a.m. ET Oct. 13: I've revised the reference to HASS' flight capability to emphasize what it can do now, rather than what it might eventually do. I've also amended the caption for the picture of HASS to indicate that it's an actual photograph rather than an artist's conception. Sorry for thinking the image was so cool it had to be computer-generated.