The SciFi Channel is taking charge of your future with a new campaign to offer a positive view of tomorrow and encourage top thinkers and the community-at-large to tackle the problems of today.

The cable channel unveiled its Visions for Tomorrow campaign Thursday here at the Wired NextFest forum in New York City. The effort includes: an 18-member advisory board of scientists, futurists, artists, writers, political activists and business leaders to examine energy, environment and other issues; an educational outreach endeavour to reach today’s youth and educators view SciFi’s Visions for Tomorrow website

“I think it’s taking a step beyond entertainment for sure,” actress Mary McDonnell, who portrays President Laura Roslin on SciFi’s Battlestar Galactica, told me here at NextFest.

McDonnell is an advisory board member and SciFi Channel’s ad hoc spokesperson for Visions for Tomorrow.

In a Thursday panel, advisory board members credited past science fiction works such as television’s Star Trek and Flash Gordon, the stories of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne – not to mention NASA’s televised Apollo Moon missions – among others for inspiring a generation of people to take charge of technology and shape their future.

“It’s about taking the future in our hands and trying to envision something that’s better and brighter,” said McDonnell.

A new civilian spaceflight venture has entered the space tourism scene – Benson Space Company (BSC).

The upstart company is being launched by Jim Benson, the man who founded SpaceDev of Poway, California. Benson announced yesterday that he has stepped down as chairman and chief technology officer of SpaceDev to shape BSC.

SpaceDev was not a winner in the recent NASA COTS sweepstakes to establish a commercial crew and cargo transportation link to the International Space Station. SpaceDev’s proposal was to reenergize an old NASA piloted space plane concept – the HL-20 lifting body design, dubbing it Dream Chaser.

Benson explained in a press statement that he has completed BSC’s first round of financing and submitted a request for proposal to SpaceDev for the design and development of its SpaceDev Dream Chaser™ spaceships.

BSC expects to be one of SpaceDev’s largest customers, Benson explained, purchasing multiple spaceships, as well as safe hybrid rocket motors for use in personal spaceflight.

Benson Space Company is incorporated in the state of Nevada. 

For more detail on the Dream Chaser idea, go to:
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/060623_dreamchaser_cots.html

The war of words in the global warming debate gets fierce (and even a bit morbid) in a Denver Post article in which Colorado State University hurricane expert William Gray calls global warming “a big scam.” That’s not the morbid part.

The retort from James Hansen at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies: “Some of this noise won’t stop until some of these scientists are dead.”

Interesting concept. Science can trudge ahead with skeptics in tow, but when the skeptics die, a new consensus forms. I don’t I buy that. Science is better than that, and both the supporters and detractors of any given view are more genuine about their disagreements. Yes, this is a highly politicized war of words, but there are also real disagreements over the data and the conclusions.

The Post article is here.

Gray is, as noted, a hurricane expert. He is not known for studying global warming, but he is one of the most vocal critics of studies that indicate humans are largely to blame for the planet’s temperature rise in recent decades. Gray has few serious scientists on his side, but you can bet that if he dies anytime soon, others will vocalize his controversial position.

Hansen, on the other hand, is well-known for studying global warming. This week he and colleagues said temps are dangerously close to the highest they’ve been in a million years. You might remember Hansen as the man who said NASA tried to shut him up.

When Hansen dies, there will be legions of scientists to fill his research shoes, adding to the growing body of evidence that humans are contributing to global warming. It’s not clear if any will speak so frankly, however.

At New Mexico’s Spaceport America it has been an eventful – and long — launch day for UP Aerospace and the firm’s SpaceLoft XL rocket. With some 300 VIPs, including state officials, payload customers, and others arriving in cold, pre-dawn hours today for the first rocket launch from the location, the rocket’s suborbital liftoff has been delayed for hours. Reason for the launch delay: a transponder failed. Specialists had to dive into the rocket to fix the problem, successfully doing so. The electronic transmitter is essential hardware. The weather continues to look good to support the rocket’s departure at Spaceport America. If no other technical snags crop up, the rocket will boost over 50 experiments and payloads from private and educational sectors, worldwide. The launch slip extended from 7:30 a.m. to a hoped for 2:00 p.m. local time blastoff. The New Mexico spaceport site is approximately 70 square kilometers of open, generally level range land north of Las Cruces and east of Truth or Consequences. This location was favored for its low population density, uncongested airspace and high elevation.

Global warming is one of the polarizing issues of our time. This week it’s gone bipolar with some of the zaniest news we’ve seen on the topic yet.

Scientists found a crack at the North Pole, showing just how thin and fragile the ice is becoming. The North Pole, folks! It’s been frozen solid since before Santa Claus was invented.

Then another study revealed that the planet’s oceans have actually cooled since 2003. Global warming is on short-term hiatus, the scientists figure. Don’t expect everyone to buy that analysis. Do expect lots of arguing.

California’s Attorney General filed a lawsuit against six automakers for adding to the problem. The old “hit ‘em in the pocketbook theory.” Good luck, Mr. Lockyer. Some have nothing in their pocketbooks, and they all have a lot of friends in Washington.

Then Richard Branson stole any initiative the automakers might come up with when he announced he’ll *give away* some $3 billion of profits from his various global transportation ventures, over the next 10 years, to fight climate change. Let’s hope that’s not just hot air. I mean, how exactly do you fight global warming? Gloves off, I presume.
You gotta figure Al Gore will announce something any minute now. Maybe he and Branson will form a joint venture to take over Detroit *and* the White House.

The countdown is on for the first rocket flight out of New Mexico’s Spaceport America – an area outside Las Cruces.

The blastoff of the UP Aerospace SpaceLoft XL — an unpiloted suborbital rocket — is September 25. For you early risers, the liftoff clock should read 7:30 a.m.

In a New Mexico Economic Development Department release, be advised that access to the launch site and surrounding areas will be prohibited starting at 6 p.m. on Sunday September 24, at which time law enforcement will erect roadblocks at all access points. These roadblocks will be continuously policed.

The only designated public viewing and parking area will be along Highway 51. All spectators at this site assume their own risk and liability. While the liftoff is set for early morning, the flight could be delayed by as much as 10 hours or be postponed to a later date.

If any person or vehicle enters the hazardous zone on September 25, the launch will be canceled and the trespasser will be held liable, the advisory warns.

Spectators are urged to bring their own water, snacks, sunscreen, hats, chairs and blankets, as it could be a long day.

For more information on UP Aerospace, go to:  

http://www.space.com/news/060831_xprize_upaero.html

 

 

The six-astronaut crew of NASA’s space shuttle Atlantis packed up a bunch of cold bags with biological specimens fresh from science freezer aboard the International Space Station (ISS) today.

While the cold bags now hold a bunch of microbes, bacteria and other little crawlies – which scientists will pore over to learn how genetic changes occur in living organisms in a space environment as part of their POEMS experiment – they were filled with something else when Atlantis rocketed towards the ISS last week.

What was that you ask?

Good old-fashioned ice cream, NASA says.

Apparently, STS-115 commander Brent Jett and his Atlantis crewmates picked up a batch of Blue Bell ice cream cups to fill the apparently empty cold bags as a treat for the space station’s Expedition 13 crew.

NASA spokesman James Hartsfield here at the Johnson Space Center tells me that the Atlantis crew picked up the ice cream at a local Florida store near the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

NASA officials are packing their bags, getting ready for their September 24-28 travels to Beijing and Shanghai.

Taking part in discussions with high-ranking space officials in China, along with NASA chief, Mike Griffin, is William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, as well as veteran astronaut Shannon Lucid who was born in Shanghai, China.

In a background briefing today, a NASA senior advisor made clear that the space agency’s trek to China is truly a get-acquainted affair, although both sides are out to identify areas of mutual interest to talk about – on the spot, or for later discussion.

“I’m sure it will be a two-way dialogue,” the NASA senior advisor explained.

On the travel tour, at NASA’s request, is an expected visit to China’s Jiuquan launch site – liftoff site for crew-carrying Shenzhou missions. Also on the agenda is a visit to the China Academy of Space Technology.

One potential talking point is China’s multi-step robotic lunar exploration program - given the launch next year of that country’s first Moon orbiter.

Discussion of China’s involvement in the International Space Station hasn’t been ruled out, although the NASA senior advisor said that a particular role for the Chinese in ISS is not clear at the moment.

The NASA senior advisor told SPACE.com that the space exchange of ideas could mirror early discussions between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. Those talks between the two spacepowers decades ago led to the joint docking of the Apollo/Soyuz, shuttle flights to the Russian Mir space outpost, as well as a partnership to build and operate the International Space Station.

“This is truly a get acquainted meeting,” the NASA senior advisor told SPACE.com.

For insight into NASA’s visit to China, go to:

http://www.space.com/news/060813_griffin_china.html

This week, NOAA said 40 percent of the United States is in drought. The agency has been saying pretty much the same thing for quite some time now.

We should get used to it.

“Drought is always out there,” says drought policy specialist Donald Wilhite of the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska. “It’s always affecting some part of the country.”

In fact, drought has little to do with rainfall or the lack of it. It has become a political word used to describe inadequate municipal water supplies. Recently, researcher David Meko at the University of Arizona told me that “drought” may now be defined in ways that have little to do with nature. Basically, drought = thirst. “It’s not purely a function of the natural system,” Meko said. “It’s partly a function of need. What might not have been defined as a drought 50 years ago would be now.”

Linda Botterill is a political scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra. The Aussies have lots of dry stretches, so they made the brilliant decision not to view droughts as emergencies.

“We have one of the most variable climates on Earth,” Botterill said today. “We really don’t have a ‘normal’ climate.” Therefore it’s absurd to treat every drought as an emergency, she said. “It should be managed as any other risk. Farmers need to factor in that they are not always going to get needed rainfall.”

America has learned (the hard way) to plan for hurricanes in order to reduce deaths and economic loss. Botterill thinks money spend on U.S. drought preparation would be well spent.

“On average, drought losses are in the neighborhood of $6 to 8 billion per year,” Wilhite said. “They’re right on par with hurricanes and floods.”

She’ll present her ideas Geological Society of America conference in Longmont, Colorado, next week, in an effort to support two bills pending in the House and Senate that would authorize funding for drought planning at the local, state and federal levels.

When some major world event happens - a natural disaster, terrorist attack, political maneuvering - I always wonder how long it will take before that moment becomes “history”. Not in the strict timeline sense, but in the way that the event, at some intangible tipping point, ceases being fresh and newsworthy and drifts into the sterile zone of TV retrospectives, in-depth book analyses and (my personal favorite) history class lectures.

There is no need to discuss the whos and whats of today’s somber anniversary - you already know the facts down to their last detail. What I want to know is when will 9/11 become “the past”? In 2001, my guess was later rather than sooner, and most other journalists tended to agree. But now, five years later, there are stirrings: some are ambivalent about commemorating the day, others are stripping away at the previously untouchable varnish of its heroes, still others are disillusioned with what unfurled after America was attacked. On all fronts, people seem less afraid to look at 9/11 with a critical eye, dissect what happened and how it’s changed the country and the world, for better or for worse.

It’s still early in the game, but I bet the 9/11 survey courses will start popping up at American universities after this fifth anniversary has faded from view.