Outer Space

The new NASA Administrator, Mike Griffin, is a real space enthusiast and a man of great accomplishments. And best of all, he's made clear the course for the next few years--and the ultimate goal.

Efforts to save the Hubble Space Telescope seem to have run aground; does the great observatory now have only a few years of life left, or might we still find a way to rescue it?

New findings of water, ice, and methane on Mars are pointing not only to the likelihood of past life on the Red Planet, but also to the possibility of life at present.

For a manned mission to Mars, two needs must be addressed: available electrical power, and propellant for the trip home. Nuclear power and In-Situ Resource Utilization promise to address both.

A few items of note as 2005 gets underway; the year holds much promise for space exploration, with missions to Mars and Saturn underway and a mission to a comet coming up.

A new approach to artificial gravity suggests a possible solution to the health risks of long-term zero gravity, without actually abolishing weightlessness or requiring the construction of vast centrifuges.

SpaceShipOne claimed the Ansari X-Prize, but that's not the end of the story. Now near-term suborbital tourism has hit the fast track, and people are jumping on the bandwagon. Could you be flying in space within a few years?

The new movie "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" is an irresistible piece of entertainment, a dazzling and heartbreaking look back at a future that never was, and a song in the air for anyone who ever wished he could fly over the rainbow.

As the number of planets discovered outside our solar system continues to grow, is it possible that one day soon we will find an Earth-like planet orbiting another star--perhaps even one with life?

A recent movie "suggested by" the work of Isaac Asimov is renewing interest in a subset of science fiction. One of the early masterworks is surely Jack Williamson's The Humanoids, whose Prime Directive is "to serve and obey, and guard men from harm."