Less than a month after the failure of its third launch attempt, the California-based firm Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) is poised once more to loft a Falcon 1 rocket.

Launch of SpaceX’s fourth Falcon 1 rocket is set for sometime between 7:00 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) tonight and 12:00 a.m. EDT (0400 GMT) on Monday, according to an update from the firm’s CEO Elon Musk.

“Of course, if we see anything that requires investigation, the launch will be postponed, but we’ll let you know as soon as we know,” Musk wrote in an update posted to the SpaceX Web site on Saturday.

Tonight’s planned liftoff will be staged from SpaceX’s launch site at the U.S. Army’s Ronald Reagan Ballistic Defense Test Site on the Kwajalein Atoll in the about 2,500 miles (4,023 km) southwest of Hawaii in the central Pacific Ocean.

The launch will be broadcast live on the SpaceX Web site (http://www.spacex.com) when the attempt begins.

SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket is a two-stage rocket with a reusable first stage that stands 68 feet tall (21 meters) and can haul payloads of up to about 1,256 pounds (570 kg) to low-Earth orbit. The $6.7 million rocket weighs 60,000 pounds (27,200 kg), but has failed three consecutive times since its 2006 debut.

On Aug. 2, SpaceX launched its third Falcon 1 test flight only to watch it fail when the booster’s first stage separated, then impacted the second stage as both flew 135 miles (217 km) above Earth. An engine shutdown timing error was cited as the cause and could be fixed relatively easily, Musk said at the time.

“The fix was also very simple, requiring one line of code to be changed,” SpaceX officials said in a weekend update.

While all three of SpaceX’s first Falcon 1 launches have carried small satellite payloads, the fourth rocket is carrying “a a payload mass simulator of approximately 165 kg (364 lbs), designed and built by SpaceX specifically for this mission,” SpaceX officials said.

• Video - Falcon 1’s Third Flight
• Future of Flight: Space Tourism, Investment and Technology

The space grapevine was a buzz late last week - looks like the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico will not be held there October 24-25th.

According to Sarah Becky Ramsey, Director of Communications at the X Prize Cup Foundation, the official word is that “because of some other activities on the base, we will not be able to hold the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge there on our previously scheduled dates.”

Ramsey added that other options are being investigated, “with an eye toward rescheduling the competition as soon as practical in southern New Mexico.”

“While we are eager to see our teams compete,” Ramsey added, “we do expect them to put the extra time to good use, and we know we will have a better competition for it.”

NASA’s mega Mars rover — the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) — seems to be headed for a major decision point next month. Will it fly in 2009 or be delayed until 2011?

A major review meeting on the nuclear-energized MSL is slated for NASA Headquarters in October - with the space agency then or shortly after deciding whether the powerful rover is ready to set sail toward Mars next year.

Meanwhile, the folks building the mechanized wonder at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are number crunching, coming up with current dollar numbers for the already over-budget mission. At last ka-ching of the cash register the planetary mission was roughly $2 billion.

There are cost implications for delaying MSL’s sendoff to the red planet to 2011.

Hall talk at yesterday’s Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) meeting in Monrovia, California seems to suggest that the 2009 launch is still the plan. MEPAG is chartered by NASA Headquarters to assist in planning the scientific exploration of Mars.

The buzz at MEPAG is that the cost of missing the launch is so high that JPL and the MSL team are running hard to get the spacecraft off to Mars in the fall of 2009.

So a go/no go decision on the one-off MSL appears to remain up in the air at the moment…so keep an eye on this one.

China is just a week away from launching its third manned spaceflight into orbit and apparently hoping for a sell-out crowd.

The country is selling tickets to watch for the planned late night Sept. 25 launch of its Shenzhou 7 spacecraft, but buyer beware: Each seat goes for about 15,000 yuan, or about US$2,206 and ticket buyers will need to provide identification and a reference from their employer to vie for the limited spaces, according to the Chinese Web site China Daily and the newspaper Wenhui Daily.

While hefty, the ticket price apparently includes a flight to China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the northwestern Gansu province, as well as a four-day stay to watch the planned space shot, state media reported.

China first invited space fans to buy tickets for a rocket launch last year, when the country launched the Chang’e 1 moon probe from the Xichang launch center in southwestern Sichuan province. But those tickets went for about 800 yuan, or US$117, per person. Some 2,000 people watched the lunar mission’s launch from a pair of platforms about 1.5 miles (2.5 km) away, according to press reports.

But the northwestern-located Jiuquan launch site is much more remote than Xichang, and offers fewer amenities and other tourist hot spots, China Daily reported.

China’s Shenzhou 7 mission will launch atop a Long March 2F rocket carrying the first-three man crew for the country. During what is expected to be a three or four day mission, Chinese astronauts Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng are expected to fly China’s third manned spaceflight and make the country’s first-ever spacewalk.

Zhai, a fighter pilot with the Chinese Air Force, is billed as the one making the 40-minute spacewalk, and will apparently toss out a small satellite designed to beam images of the landmark orbital excursion to Earth, according to Chinese media reports. China is the third nation, after Russia and the U.S., to launch humans into space. It launched a one-man mission (Shenzhou 5) in 2003 and a two-man flight (Shenzhou 6, pictured here) in 2005.

Chinese space officials, meanwhile, are apparently planning their new spaceport - the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island - with an eye towards space enthusiasts.

According to China Daily, the China National Space Administration expects some 21,000 people to be living around the Wenchang spaceport by 2010, which should also sport enough surrounding development to handle up to 12,000 space fans.

So that’s good, if fairly expensive, news for Chinese space aficionados.

Incidentally, China isn’t the only country to sell tickets for space launch viewers.

Here in the U.S., you can put down cash to watch NASA launch space shuttle missions from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., like next month’s Atlantis flight to the Hubble Space Telescope. But you’ve got to get yourself to Florida first.

You can also watch a Russian Soyuz rocket launch astronauts toward the International Space Station from the Central Asian spaceport of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, courtesy of the folks at the Virginia-based firm Space Adventures. Like China’s Shenzhou 7 offer, Space Adventures has an all-inclusive travel package (it is a long way to Baikonur, after all) for the upcoming Oct. 12 launch of Expedition 18 astronauts and millionaire computer game developer Richard Garriott, who is paying US$30 million for a short space station trip.

• China’s First Spacewalk: A Prelude of Things to Come
• Shenzhou Rising: China’s Second Manned Spaceflight
• Special Report: Emerging China, Engaging China

When we all start hearing things about the economy that we never heard of before … nay, when we all start actually paying attention to the economy … you know something must be really wrong.

And try as they might, economists, business leaders, regulators, politicians and business journalists don’t seem to be helping much. I mean, c’mon, do you know what’s going on right now? More important, do you have any clue at all what’s going to happen tomorrow?

Let’s look at just some highlights of the craziness:

Yesterday, people actually bought 3-month Treasury bills — considered one of the safest short-duration investments because they’re backed by the government — that had negative yield. First time since 1940. That means in 3-months time, you get back less than you loaned the government. Nice to see people helping out in this way, as obviously the Feds need that money because …

The Feds just pumped another $180 billion into the markets today (on top of how much in socialistic bailouts and other unfathomably costly measures lately?). That seemed to ease some jitters for the moment. But these dollar figures are getting to sound pretty meaningless to most of us, aren’t they? And where does that money come from (besides the selling of T-bills). Best I can figure, they just print more and the national debt goes up…

The U.S. national debt, as of 1:11 p.m. ET today, was $9,643,005,101,724.49. I think that’s trillions, for whatever perspective that might provide. Given the current population of 304,751,034 at this moment, each citizen’s share is $31,642.24. You have that under your mattress, right? I mean, it’s somewhere, right? Because soon you’ll need a bunch more. 11 minutes later, the total debt had risen by about $35,000. Anyway …

Find someone who really understands all this and you probably have someone who is very, very rich and did not just destroy his huge company. Which brings us to …

The Forbes 400 richest list just came out. These 400 people collectively have a net worth of $1.57 trillion. Maybe they could lend a hand? (Though even if they all liquidated everything, they could not pay off our national debt.) And anyway, who would buy all their stuff? Maybe the Feds …

If you haven’t already, check out our Clara Moskowitz’s account of how the current debacle stacks up to history, and what several economists think about our collective economic future. The range, and they might actually be right this time, is from pretty bleak to really bleak, with some hope that in a few years it’ll get better.

Why is all this on a science Web site? In part because we wanted to take a look at just how inexact the science of economics is. As one glaring example of how little the experts know (and therefore why you should be careful whose rosy pronouncements you trust): consumers, collectively, can predict inflation as accurately as economists.

I have no worthy advice for what you should do with your money, other than to suggest you might as well just use a crystal ball to help you decide.

Listen up…to Mars!

Word from the trenches is that the Phoenix lander team is going forward with turning on the spacecraft’s microphone. Phoenix, like the lost-to-Mars 1999 Polar Lander, carried a tiny microphone to hear the sounds of the descent to the red planet.

The microphone is part of the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) system built by Malin Space Science Systems, but for Phoenix was turned off due to the small risk that it could trip up a critical landing system.

But the go-ahead has been given to turn the microphone on, right there on-the-spot at the Phoenix Martian polar north landing spot. Other good news is that NASA has given the lander an extended lease on life for an additional two months - into November.

If the microphone gives an ear to Mars, no telling what you might hear. Wind? The sounds of the robot’s arm digging away? Howling Mars dogs?

BTW: Is there some sort of a Phoenix song in this, borrowing from Beck:

“Where it’s at!
I got two turntables and a microphone
Where it’s at!”

When people argue about evolution vs. creationism (or the disingenuous alternative to creationism called “intelligent design”) it often comes off as a debate between science and religion.

This is the case with some conservative Protestants in the United States. However, the Catholic Church has made it clear that it has no problem with evolution.

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican’s culture minister, said today that the theory of evolution is compatible with the Bible. The Vatican discourages literal interpretations of the Bible, including the literal interpretation of creationism that is at odds with the very solid scientific theory of evolution.

School districts in many U.S. states have wrestled with whether or not to teach intelligent design, which has no basis in science whatsoever, as an alternative to evolution in science classes. Scientists argue that you have to teach science in a science class, and keep religion (and fantasy ideas, like intelligent design) out of science class. The debate crept into national politics recently with reports that vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin might be a creationist. Meanwhile, a recent Pew survey found that for the first time in more than a decade, a majority of Americans think religious organizations should stay out of politics.

Ravasi said it this way: Creationism belongs to the “strictly theological sphere” and could not be used “ideologically in science.” According to Reuters, however, no apologies are forthcoming for Charles Darwin.

(Worth noting here that the Vatican’s chief astronomer said earlier this year that believing in aliens does not contradict faith in God.)

• God and Science Collide in Nation’s Capital

Look for a new mission to be picked for Mars.

The folks at the University of Colorado at Boulder are holding a news briefing today to announce the selection of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) by NASA to lead a multimillion dollar mission to study the past climate of Mars - supported by the largest research contract ever awarded to CU-Boulder.

And that bit of news seems to indicate they’ve been selected for a Mars Scout mission. Their entry is the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission (MAVEN) - a Mars orbiter that would provide unique, first-of-its kind measurements and address key questions about Mars climate and habitability, as well as improve understanding of dynamic processes in the upper Martian atmosphere and ionosphere.

By the way, this is the selection that got delayed back in December 2007, slipped because of an “organizational conflict of interest” in one of the teams vying for the mission. That problem pushed the Mars Scout from a planned launch in 2011 to a targeted liftoff in 2013, according to a NASA release at the time.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems near Denver is building the spacecraft - the same folks that cranked out the Phoenix Mars lander - also a Scout mission.

The MAVEN orbiter is to be a collaborative effort among CU-Boulder, Lockheed Martin, the University of California, Berkeley, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

New details about a milestone step toward space-based solar power beaming.

A press briefing today in Washington, D.C. will detail a “first-of-a-kind” long-range demonstration of solar-powered wireless power transmission. The experiment made use of a solid-state phased array transmitter planted on the U.S. island of Maui (on Haleakala) and receivers placed on the island of Hawai’i (Mauna Loa) and airborne.

The power demo done May 5-9 was carried out by Managed Energy Technologies LLC of the U.S. - with Discovery Communications, Inc. bankrolling the 5 month project at less than $1 million.

The transmission of radio frequency (RF) energy shot across some 90 miles distance - and that’s almost 100-times further than an experiment done by NASA back in the 1970s.

Even better, a host of technologies were integrated and tested together for the first time, such as a “field-deployable” system.

Project leader of the test was a former NASA technologist, John Mankins, with professor Nobuyuki Kaya of Kobe University in Japan and Frank Little of Texas A&M University also key participants, as was Neville Marzwell of CalTech. Students were largely responsible for fabrication of the hardware for this unique experiment.

Mankins has advised me that the end-to-end efficiency of the experiment was very, very low - but by design. Budget limitations cut into the scale of the testing, with only a tiny fraction of the RF power going “straight” along the plane of the transmitter array.

“That wasn’t really the purpose of this test,” Mankins told me. “Rather, we were after the end-to-end integration” of hardware used in the power beaming experiment, he said.

The wireless demonstration was spotlighted today at a press briefing pulled together by the National Space Society.

The project was sponsored by Discovery Communications as part of its Project Earth series, produced by Impossible Pictures Ltd. of the U.K. Look for the September 12th showing of the series that will detail the wireless power transmission experiment.

By the way, there is increasing chatter in various circles to make use of the International Space Station to carry out a power beaming experiment, coupled with a select receiving site on the ground. So stay tuned, be it via grape vine or radio frequency transmission.

Beaming energy to Earth from space has been more chat than reality over the decades. But things may be changing.

First, look for a National Press Club address in Washington, D.C. this Friday that will detail a demonstration project concerning point-to-point wireless power transmission.

What’s being spotlighted is a project that involved a wireless power transmission effort between two Hawaiian islands 148 kilometers apart - that’s more than the distance from the boundary of space to the surface of Earth.

The press event at the National Press Club is being hosted by the National Space Society.

For those folks that have not been given a positive charge of advocacy regarding satellite solar power, the key idea is that space-based solar power satellites in Earth orbit would harvest plentiful solar energy in orbit - then convert that energy for transmission down to terra firma for distribution over power grids.

Such spacecraft, it’s hoped, would help reduce our carbon emissions to virtually zero as proponents showcase the idea as the only energy technology that is clean, renewable, constant and capable of providing power to virtually any location on Earth.

By the way…that Hawaiian demonstration is to be featured in an hour-long special Friday night on the Discovery Channel - one small part of an eight-part series on geoengineering concepts meant to tackle global climate change - as well as pushing new and sustainable energy source concepts.