It’s been an interesting few weeks here in the universe of space.  Planets are being added, then demoted, Astronauts are getting ready to ride the Space Shuttle Atlantis into space, and media outlets everywhere seem to be having fun with it all.  Time, Newsweek, and ABC are putting space front and center this week.

Got me thinking, after 7+ years of delivering all sorts of amazing news and incredible events on SPACE.com, which has become more popular, human spaceflight or astronomy?

In Spaceflight’s corner, we have:

• Live-on-the-Internet broadcast and reporting of Space Shuttle missions
• Live coverage of the tragedies of human space travel, including the loss of Columbia in 2003
• Moon-to-Mars news and views
• Space Tourists.  Dennis Tito and more
• Space Tourism.  Richard Branson, the X Prize, Bigelow
• The International Space Station

Astronomy’s best and brightest:

• Pluto and the Solar System planets
• Deep Impact
• Earth-bound asteroids
• Solar Flares
• Hubble
• Extrasolar planets
• The Search for Life
• Daily dose of far-out discoveries.

Somewhere in the middle:

• Mars Rovers
• NASA News
• Science issues that affect the long-term health of our own planet

We’ve noticed that over the past 7 years, you:

• Love once-in-a-lifetime events like following the Mars Rovers, rooting for Dennis Tito and cheering for the Scaled Composites team’s winning X Prize flights.
• Grow tired of these events once they start to look easy, happen too frequently or happen too infrequently.  The space tourists that followed Tito, news from the International Space Station, ‘regular’ space shuttle flights.
• Tune out on efforts that can take years and years to come to fruition.  Again, the ISS construction, but we’re also seeing it with the Moon-to-Mars plans.  A loyal audience will follow each and every development, but the general public needs to see milestones more often to become more regularly engaged.
• Love new discoveries.  Extrasolar planet discoveries, new Hubble pictures of a far away galaxy, anything about black holes
• Crave news about pioneers.  Burt Rutan, Richard Branson, Dennis Tito, Elon Musk, Peter Diamandis to name a few.  Leaders with an entrepreneurial spirit and creative vision who are not waiting around for NASA to build the next-great-thing.  Astronauts have lost much of their status as pioneers, becoming modern-day engineers in space
• Have fond memories of space from your childhood.  Who didn’t want to be an astronaut?  Who doesn’t remember studying the original nine planets or the long journey of the Voyager spacecraft?  When the events of today can connect you with an ingrained childhood memory, the public swell of interest and passion around that subject grows significantly.  Pluto anyone?

So, what do you think is more popular, human spaceflight or astronomy?