Endeavour Delayed

The final launch of the space shuttle Endeavour, scheduled for this afternoon, has been delayed due to a malfunction of one of its three power units. Dealing with the problem will delay the launch for at least 48 hours.

Endeavour will deliver an astrophysics experiment, as well as tons of supplies, to ISS as NASA continues to prepare the space station for the post-shuttle era.

Flying To The Moon

Space Adventures, which has been selling trips to ISS aboard Soyuz capsules for ten years, is close to flying the first private manned mission to the Moon. The flight would use a Soyuz, which was originally intended for lunar missions, although no Soyuz has yet left Earth orbit. SA's offering would not include a lunar landing, but the travelers would get views of the lunar surface as yet seen only by Apollo astronauts.

SA needs two people to buy tickets before it can schedule the flight. One person has already committed, and SA expects to have a second sometime this year. That done, the flight could take place within three to five years. Cost of a lunar trip? Somewhere in the nine figures-- maybe $150 million. All things considered, as they say on the radio, that price tag, coupled with factors like physical fitness, no doubt cuts the pool of potential buyers way down.

SETI Slashed

The economic downturn and budget cuts have, at least temporarily, halted the largest and most sophisticated search for radio signals from alien civilizations. The SETI Institute has closed its Hat Creek, California, facility of 42 radio telescopes due to funding problems.

The SETI Institute is a non-profit which gets part of its money from the National Science Foundation; Congress has cut the NSF budget. Another part of SETI funding comes from the University of California-Berkeley, which has had to cut its support due to California's state budget woes. That leaves SETI dependent upon private foundations and individual donors.

The Institute is currently talking to the U. S. Air Force about USAF funding in exchange for using Hat Creek to help track space debris-- a far cry from the facility's original, dedicated purpose.

Orbital Tourism

With suborbital commercial flights scheduled to commence relatively soon, a new study says the orbital tourism industry could be worth $100 billion in a few decades if the price of a ticket for a two week stay can be brought down to $500,000 apiece, or less.

To do that, the study says, requires the development of a completely reusable two-stage-to-orbit craft capable of carrying 40 passengers. Such a craft, according to the study, would lower the cost of reaching orbit to the point that $500,000 tickets would be profitable in a world with enough wealthy people to buy thousands or tens of thousands of such tickets per year. Key to such a craft would be the scramjet-- an engine that operates like a high performance jet in atmosphere and becomes a powerful rocket when the atmosphere is left behind.

The study could be too conservative. As reported in this blog recently, a British firm is currently developing the Skylon, a single-stage-to-orbit reusable space plane. A manned version of the earliest Skylon would carry 30 people. Skylon, too, is propelled by a scramjet-- and that engine is set for critical tests this summer. Assuming all goes well, the company plans to have Skylon in commercial service by 2020.

Vesta

Since, or before, the IAU demoted Pluto from planet status, astronomers have been trying out different designations for certain bodies in the Solar System. One of those is Vesta, known for a couple centuries as the second largest asteroid. It does orbit, after all, in the Main Belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. At 320 miles in diameter, Vesta is much smaller than several moons, and much smaller than Pluto.

On the other hand, Vesta is more than a big rock. It has evolved, developing an internal structure complete with a radioactive core and mantle. Some scientists want to call it a protoplanet-- a planetary core that never attracted enough additional mass to reach true planethood.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft will arrive at Vesta in July, going into orbit around it. The plan is to spend a year studying Vesta. Maybe after that we'll know what to call it.

Sex In Space

Have humans had sexual intercourse beyond Earth? There have been rumors, but a Russian official has recently said he's sure it hasn't happened on the Russian side. NASA has been flying mixed gender crews since 1983-- including at least one married couple-- but the agency insists no sexual intercourse has ever taken place on American flights, either. Astronauts back that up. If true, the program-- not to mention the married couple-- missed a golden opportunity to learn how microgravity may, or may not, affect the human sex act.

This is not just about giggles and sighs. Before humanity can settle the Solar System, we must understand the necessary conditions for procreation. There is evidence that mammalian fetuses do not develop normally in microgravity, for example, but we don't know if that goes for humans, nor do we know how much gravity is required for normal development. Would Mars' roughly 1/3g be enough? Would the Moon's 1/6g? Would pregnant women need special gravitational environments? Does gravity bear on the vitality of sperm? Such questions need answered before we can build a spacefaring civilization.

A Wetter Mars

A new study shows there is 30 times the amount of carbon dioxide in the ice cap over the south pole of Mars than previously thought. That suggests a warmer Mars had a thicker atmosphere than it does now, which also means liquid water could have existed on the surface. That, in turn, suggests conditions were better for life on Mars.

The climate of Mars seems to go through a roughly 100,000 year cycle of wet and dry periods. We just happen to be seeing the planet during a dry period. It is interesting to speculate how the history of the development of science and philosophy would have been different had we first encountered Mars during one of its wet periods.