• 15-year veteran NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao's column about flying in the Space Shuttle and Soyuz, and living on the International Space Station for six months. The little things matter most, and Leroy described the minutiae of zero-g daily life in a way that was both charming and shocking at once. Here are all of his Astroblogger entries.

• In Carmel Hagen's thrilling heist story about a guy and a girl and a locked-up pile of moon rocks, we learned how an intern stole NASA's most treasured possession.

• We had a teaser and then a real honest-to-God taste of spaceman food (without the benefit of floating forks and knives).

• We looked back, on heroes like Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard, mistakes like the horrifying Nedelin disaster, and all kinds of memorable phenomena ranging from space chimps to space Lego to Space Camp.

• More importantly, we looked ahead to the next space shuttles, the development of space tourism, the next moon mission and our ultimate destiny as interstellar pioneers.

Where didn't we go? Maybe where no man has gone before—we left that to JJ Abrams and the ghost of Gene Roddenberry. God speed, Giz readers. And stay tuned for the next thrilling theme week. Any guesses? [Get Me Off This Rock]

Yes, I know what you are thinking: "It's impossible."

And right now, you are right. Our current propulsion engines are, simply put, pathetic. We are still in the Stone Age of space travel. As cool as they are, rocket engines—which eject gas at high speeds through a nozzle on the back of a spacecraft—are extremely inefficient, requiring huge volumes of fuel runs out faster than you can say "Beam me up, Scotty."

We have cleared the tower

Solid boosters, hybrid, monopropellant, bipropellant rockets... all these would be impossible to use in interstellar travel, with maximum speeds going up to a maximum of 9 kilometers per second. Rockets won't work even using the effect of planetary gravity to gain impulse. Voyager—the fastest man-made spacecraft out there racing at 17 kilometers per second—would need 74,000 years in deep space to reach Proxima Centauri, the red dwarf star located at 4.22 light-years in the Alpha Centauri system, the closest to our Sun.

But even if we were able to build a massive spacecraft with today's experimental—but feasible—propulsion technology, it will still take thousand of years to reach Alpha Centauri. Using nuclear explosions—like the ones proposed in the Orion project—would be more efficient than rockets, achieving a maximum of 60 kilometers per second. That's still a whopping 21,849 years and a couple months.

Using ion thrusters—which use electrostatic or electromagnetic force to accelerate ions that in turn push the spacecraft forward—would only reduce that amount marginally. Even theoretical technology—like nuclear pulse propulsion, with speeds up to 15,000 kilometers per second—won't cut it. And that's assuming we can find a way for these engines to last all that time. And let's not even get into the resources and engineering needed to create a vessel capable of sustaining life for such a long period of time.

All to reach a stupid red dwarf with no planets to explore. We may as well not go, really. You know, let's just save Earth from our own destruction and colonize Mars or Titan or Europa (if the aliens let us do that.)

Our ignorance is our only hope

It gets even worse. Our current understanding of physics—which says that nothing can travel faster than light—basically establishes that we will never be able to achieve space travel in a way that is meaningful to Humanity. In other words, even if we are able to discover a propulsion method that could get a spacecraft close to the speed of light, it will still take hundred of years to reach an star system with planets similar to Earth. By the time the news get back to us, we all will be dead.

And that's precisely the key to our only hope to reach the stars: Our ignorance. As much as we have advanced, we are still clueless about many things. Physicists are still struggling to understand the Universe, discovering new stellar events that we can't explain, and trying to make sense of it all, looking for that perfect theory that will make everything fit together.

That fact is that, since we don't know how everything works, there still may be something that opens the way to faster-than-light space travel. Discovering the unknown—like physicists have been doing since the Greeks—and harnessing new math and theories into new technology is our only way to spread through the Universe in a way that makes sense to Humanity as a whole. You know, like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica or Star Wars: Travel across the Universe in hours or days, not in centuries or millennia.

I'm giving her all she's got!

One of those yet-to-be-unraveled things is the Big Bang, the origin of the Universe itself. Our origin, the final question that we have been trying to answer since we came out of the cave and looked up the night sky. We still don't know exactly what happened, but the observation of the Universe from Earth and space probes have caused some physicists to propose many different models. One of these models says that, during the initial inflation period of the Universe, space-time expanded faster than light. If this turns out to be the case, it would make possible the creation of warp drives.

Yes, the warp drives.

Warp drives were first proposed in a logical way by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre. He theorized that, instead of moving something faster than the speed of light—which is not possible under Einstein's relativity theory—we could move the space-time around it faster than the speed of light itself. The spacecraft will be inside a warp bubble, a flat space that will be moved by the expansion of the space behind it and the contraction of space in front of it. The spacecraft won't move faster than light, but the bubble will. Inside the bubble, everything would be normal.

A way to understand the effect, as Marc Millis—former head of the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project at NASA's Glenn Research Center—explains, is to look at the way a toy boat reacts in the tub when you put some detergent behind it. The bubbles will expand the space behind the boat, impulsing it forward. In the same way, a spaceship with a warp drive would be able to do the same thing.

But while there have been already experiments in the laboratory that suggest that this may indeed be possible, we are still far, far away from developing the technology that would make warp drives a reality. To start with, the amount of energy necessary to bend space like this is way beyond anything we can produce today. Some scientists, however, suggest that antimatter may be the fuel that will make this possible.

Again, there are a lot of question marks surrounding antimatter, but this is precisely part of our only hope: Somewhere, still hiding, is the breakthrough that will make interstellar travel possible. The possibility is still there.

Why should we go to the stars?

So call me an optimist if you have to. It may be all this sun shining in New York right now. Or maybe it is because I saw Star Trek yesterday (and it was as good as I hoped it to be and then some more.) The fact is that I'm convinced that interstellar travel will happen. You and I will probably not see it, but if Humanity can survive self-annihilation, I'm sure we will achieve it.

No, "will we reach the stars?" is not the question to answer. We will. The more important question is why do we need to go?

The answer to this is the reason why we have celebrated humans in space all this week, now coming to its end. As I said when we started Get Me Off This Rock, space exploration is the most epic and most important adventure Humanity has ever embarked upon. When we travel to space we are opening the way to the preservation of Humanity. We are trying to contact other civilizations. We are trying to answer the biggest questions of them all: Who are we? Why are we here? How did we get here? Are we alone in this rock we call Earth?

But there is more. A lot more. Ultimately, the most important thing will not be getting the answers to these eternal questions. The most important thing will be the process of reaching for the stars. Because if we manage to get there, it would mean that we managed to survive as a species. That is the only way we can develop the engineering and the resources needed to build something like the Enterprise. Survive self-destruction, solve the problems we have here, collaborate, work as species, not as countries or corporations.

That's what space exploration and interstellar travel is all about. Only if we manage to go beyond our petty fights and stupid wars, only if we work together towards a better future, we will be able to go where no one has gone before. And be back to tell about it before dinner gets cold.

Recommended reading: Wikipedia, The Warpdrive: Hyper-fast travel
within general relativity by Miguel Alcubierre (PDF), Assessing Potential Propulsion Methods (PDF)

Ares V Unmanned Cargo Rocket, EDS and Altair: The Gear Goes Up First
First it's the turn of the giant unmanned Ares V, carrying most of the real hardware you'll need on your journey. You and the rest of your astronaut compadres walk around the pad hours ahead of the launch—a metaphorical kicking of Ares' tires. Man, that thing seems hellish big.

Six hours later you're watching the countdown from VIP bleachers, and all 360 feet of rocket looks even more ominous. You all have on the "spaceman" face for the news cameras—confident, professional, all smiles. But when the five RS68 engines at the bottom of that rocket light up, followed by the two solid boosters, and that thundering noise finally reaches you, you're all suddenly kids on Christmas morning. Literally tons of fuel is burned every second, pushing a blunt needle skywards. It makes a heck of a show, and the noise of Ares V racing to space barely covers your whoops. Quickly you remember to use your crappy little digicam to snap the rocket's launch—there'll be thousands of official photos, but these will be yours.

Minutes later, you and the crew watch monitors in a nearby viewing room as the rocket makes it to orbit. Everyone's quiet, as they see the final stage, the Earth Departure Stage, fire its engines. The huge aerodynamic nose cone isn't needed any more and it pops off, revealing the lunar lander, an Altair. It's bolted at the top of the EDS, and looks more like a sci-fi fantasy than a real moon ship. Eventually, the instruments aboard the EDS all phone home to NASA with a digital OK, and the spacecraft pauses. It's waiting for you to join it out in space.

Ares I Crew Rocket, Orion Capsule: Time For You To Hit the Road
Twelve hours later, it's your turn to go up. All six of you are suited-up and sardined into an Orion capsule, 280 feet above the launch pad at the top of an Ares I rocket. While ticking off mission control's checklist, you think about the imminent journey. If Ares V is a giant space truck, the smaller Ares I you're strapped to is a crazy-ass custom-engined dragster—a dragster without a parachute brake, that is.

Eventually the time ticks down to T-Zero: The booster's solid fuel is ignited, and acceleration slams you and the crew in the back as "The Stick" races skywards. Holy crap, it's a wild ride: Pure rocket chemistry, raw chest-squeezing thrust from a giant Roman candle. The booster burns out in just 150 seconds, and detaches with a wrenching noise and a jolt—the external camera view you see of it tumbling away behind you is awesome. Then comes thrust from the liquid-fuel J2X engine—the first taste of Apollo-era tech, updated for the 21st century. The ride is now smoother, a little less like Aliens, a little more like 2001.

Rendezvous in Orbit: The Delicate Mating Dance of Spaceships
Switches are thrown and your ship's computer matches the Orion's orbit with the waiting Earth Departure Stage with Altair moon ship. Your skin feels alternately hot and cold, which has nothing to do with the air conditioning or the sunlight stabbing through the capsule window—just excitement. And finally there it is: The EDS, clear in the sunlight, spinning gently as the laser-guided rendezvous process with your capsule begins. At one point the Altair's given name is visible, hand painted in copperplate by some techie a thousand miles away: Rama. That had given you a shiver. You hear the clunk of mating adapters as Orion joins the EDS, greeted by cheers from Houston over the radio and a bunch of zero-g hand shaking with the rest of the crew.

Moon Shot: Leaving Earth's Orbit
"The Stick" has become "The Stack," and all is ready to leave earth orbit, and head out toward the moon. The mood is calm: No one aboard will let themselves believe it yet. But twelve hours later, when long checklists are complete, and the magic words, "Go for lunar orbit burn," come over the radio, emotion arrives with a rush. "Want a drink?" comes a request from behind you, and the accompanying wink made you curious. Sipping at the plastic squeeze bag you suddenly weren't surprised to taste a tiny stab of whiskey: Totally against the rules, but frankly the people who made those rules weren't riding a flimsy steel, titanium and composite can mated to a couple dozen tons of explosive gases in outer space.

The EDS's engine fires up again, this time pushing the Altair and the Orion forward and you—tucked inside—into a head-back, eyeballs-out position as you fly, backwards as it were, to your date with history.

When its fuel is gone, the EDS is ejected, leaving you racing to the moon for three days in the combined Altair/Orion moon ship at 25,000 miles per hour. You're just desperate to take a walk.

The Lunar Landing: Pulling a Neil Armstrong, 50 Years Later
40m... 35m... The counter in the middle of the Altair's hi-res display screen has simulated LEDs, like an old alarm clock, and it makes you smile. Those numbers are a serious wake up call though: They're exactly how far above the dusty surface of the moon this little spacecraft hovers. Altair—wasn't that the name of an old computer? Probably had more CPU power than the original Eagle did, you think. Armstrong landed that old thing on a wing and a prayer. Now it's your turn, and your mind's free to wander because computers are largely in control, steering, firing the RL10 rockets and monitoring radar. It's just a question of checking in case you need to intervene. Your hand hovers over that big red "LANDING ABORT" button, which you hope never to push.

25m... 20m... A lateral shove from a thruster shakes you and your fellow moonwalkers behind you, a minor course correction. 15m... "Kicking up a little dust," you say over the radio, and you know the guys behind are grinning. "Aye captain!" quips back the mission's chief engineer.

10m... 5m... And here came history. Dust really does stream up in the bright sunlight past the windows as the final meters pass. At least you know the surface you'd be arriving on—the Apollo guys had no idea if they were landing on concrete or cake icing.

0.8m... 0.6m... 0.4m... The Altair's descent rocket shuts down so very suddenly that the silence is a shock. With less of a jolt than you get when riding on a roller coaster, it's touchdown. Velcroed to the control panel, the tiny nodding dog trinket—a present from some young fan—had been wobbling broken-necked in zero-gravity, but now it begins to behave properly, and nods its approval of the landing.

You're on the moon.

If you want to ask a question, just tape yourself asking it in 30 seconds or less, upload to YouTube, and then post the link on Polansky's Twitter. He'll be answering a few questions per week, so if you've got a question our fantastic guest blogger Leroy Chiao didn't get around to covering, this'll be a great way to get an answer. [Press Release via Gadget Venue]

Has anyone had sex in space? To date, I can tell you emphatically, no. Why am I so sure? It's simple. Guys are guys. If a guy had sex in space, he would not be able to stand not bragging about it. Am I right, or am I right? Sorry to disappoint you, but there it is. We would all know about it. Or, I should say, we will all know about it when it happens.

So, what's the deal? Do we have blow up dolls or robots to take care of business? No, and not that we'd really want such a thing! Humans look a lot better.

Besides, would sex in space—bragging rights aside—really be so great? This week, I've given you a look at the difficulties of doing things in microgravity, and the potential for making some pretty disgusting messes. So, apply all you've learned, and honestly assess whether or not sex would be better up there. You'd have to anchor yourselves, somehow (in all six degrees of freedom), otherwise it would be more than the headboard you might bang up against. And, some objects, while not sharp (we are careful about that), might really hurt to run into during a moment of passion!

So what do we have? What do you think? There is a rule that even alcohol (for drinking) is not allowed onboard, because NASA is worried about bad PR. Can you imagine NASA wanting to address the issue of sex? Ha!

What about the future, as we fly longer and farther into space? That's easy. Crews are already mixed, and crews will become larger. As this happens, there will be a gradual transition from crew to colony (for example, a permanent moon base). Just like in your office now, romances will sprout (which the participants will think are secret) and things will take their natural course.

And, people back on Earth (the guy's friends) will hear about it, almost immediately after it happens. The news will quickly spread from there. And then, you'll know.

People are people, even in space!

Check out astronaut Leroy Chiao's previous illuminating, insightful columns, a centerpiece to our weeklong celebration of human life in space, "Get Me Off This Rock". If you love Leroy as much as we do, you can book him to speak at your business or school, by reaching him at the Leading Authorities Speakers Bureau.

Some argue that this budget does not reflect Obama's campaign promises about the future of the space program. Again, this figure is preliminary, but there are definitely opposing viewpoints on how much money should be spent on NASA. So, my question to you is: are we spending too much or not enough?

Slooh controls a global network of mountain top telescopes located in Chile, Australia, and Europe, offering 24 hour views of the night sky. The coolest part is that the images seen on your computer screen are captured live, rather than taken by someone else a while ago. You're able to zoom in and learn about the celestial bodies encountered during each mission.

150 minutes of space time costs only about $15. And since you can't afford a multi-million dollar rocketship ride into space, this is definitely the ticket to get closer to the stars. [SLOOH Press Release]

In the early days, there were no restroom facilities onboard spacecraft. The first flights were only supposed to last minutes, so it was thought that there was no need. The story of Allen Shepard having to relieve himself in his suit became common knowledge, after the event was dramatized in the movie, "The Right Stuff." Later spacecraft, including the Apollo spacecraft, also had no toilet facilities. The crews of these vehicles used modified piddle packs (used by the military), which utilized a condom, attached to a hose and bag, for collecting urine. What about women? Back in those days, there weren't any in the space programs (except for Valentina Tereshkova, who probably used a diaper), so it wasn't an issue.

For collection of number two, modified sealable bags were used. There was no privacy aboard the Gemini and Apollo capsules, so imagine doing all of this in close quarters with your buddies! To make matters worse, these bags were (are) clear. They are still carried aboard US spacecraft, for use in the event of irreparable toilet failure.

Fortunately, things got a lot more civilized in the Shuttle program. As I mentioned before, the Shuttle is a business class affair. It contains a relatively large toilet area, which features a privacy screen.

The Soyuz capsule also has a toilet in the upper living module. When someone has to use it for number two, the other two crewmembers can retreat to the descent module, to give the third guy a little privacy. Usually, that toilet is not used for that purpose, though. Crews go through a preflight enema, which usually is enough to clean you out for the two days of flight it takes for the Soyuz to phase, rendezvous and dock with a space station.

The toilet aboard the International Space Station (ISS) is the same as the one that flew on the MIR station. This is also a civilized affair, in a relatively large area, with a privacy screen.

So, how do these toilets work? They all basically work the same way. In the absence of gravity to help you, airflow is used to try to collect everything and point it in the proper direction. To urinate, it is pretty simple. Use the long hose, which has a funnel attached to the end. Turn on the system, and make sure there is good airflow before relieving yourself. Make sure not to actually contact the funnel with your valuable parts; it's a disgusting thought first of all, and second of all, you wouldn't be able to shut the system down before you really regretted getting the life sucked out of you, so to speak! By the way, this system works for women too. The suction is adequate to make sure that the liquids go to the right place.

For number two, the seat lifts up, revealing a small hole. You've really got to get to know yourself, and get good at lining things up for this operation! The system again uses airflow to collect and hold things down where they're supposed to go. After you're finished, the bag is tied off and pushed down into the replaceable silver can.

Accidents do happen, and by international agreement, you clean up your own mess!

Is it worth it? One of my crewmates on Space Shuttle once told me that he wished that we could land every morning, so that he could take care of business there, before launching back into orbit. Yeah, it's not pleasant, but you get used to the hassle of doing these hygiene tasks. It's not so bad.

Follow astronaut Leroy Chiao in his guest column, as we celebrate human life in space with our "Get Me Off This Rock" week.

So how did everything taste? On the whole, surprisingly good! But before we delve into our detailed taste test, a word about what we were eating. I spoke to Vickie Kloeris, the Subsystem Manager for Shuttle and ISS Food Systems—NASA's head chef—and she walked me through exactly what goes into the vittles consumed in orbit by our astronauts.

Essentially, NASA does exactly what the army does with its MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), with a few exceptions: MREs are designed to keep an 18- to 22-year-old, extremely active soldier fueled and ready, whereas space food must be nutritionally tailored to older and less-active adults, so in general, space food is lower in fat, calories and salt.

For space food, the main criteria are spoilage resistance, easy preparation and consumption in microgravity (ie no potato chips), plus storage-space considerations. There are five classifications of space foods: rehydrateable (just add water), thermostabilized (already wet, heat in its metallic/plastic pouch and eat), irradiated (cooked irradiated meats ready to eat), intermediate moisture (meaning dried fruits, jerky, and such) and natural form (better known as junk food—ready to eat without any prep or storage concerns).

On the Space Station, there is a food prep area in the Russian half that has a fold-down dining table along with food package heaters. But soon, as the station is expanded to accommodate a crew of six later this month, a second, smaller food prep area will be added—this time equipped with a chiller, which is a first for the station—refrigeration specifically for food products. Cold drinks in space!

Vickie was kind enough to ship out a batch of goodies that didn't make it into orbit from the last ISS mission, and we dined on them for lunch. We didn't have a specialized thermostabilized pouch heater—and you can't microwave these puppies—so we just dunked them in boiling water for a while until they heated through. We made it through six courses including dessert:

Here, our menu in detail:

First Course: Southwestern Corn, Potato Medley
While it may have looked a little rough in the thermostabilized packet, corn was actually pretty tasty, and had the correct consistency. The Southwest was apparently represented by flecks of red and green pepper and a mild spiciness.

But the potato medley—oh the potato medley. Don't know what to say—there was a really strange chemical bitterness, from where it came I do not know. But not good.
Rating: Two Stars

Second Course: Breakfast Sausage Links, Curry Sauce w/ Vegetables
Awesome. Fingering pork sausage links inside a packet is not super pleasant, let me tell you, but out of the packet they were perfectly edible—fairly salty and a little stringy and dry, but with good taste. And dipped in the curry sauce? Yes. Sausages and curry go incredibly well together here on earth, and in space it's no different.
Rating: Four Stars

Third Course: Beef Enchiladas, Baked Beans, Tortillas
Wow. Delicious. As the busted enchiladas slid out of the packet, we were scared. But the flavor was right on—equal to if not better than any frozen enchilada you can get at the store. And the baked beans—oh my—Adam had three helpings. Taste was great, consistency perfect—and wrapped in a tortilla, which Kloeris says is one of the most versatile space foods (understandable), the combination was fantastic. I could fuel my spacewalks with this combo for months.
Rating: Five Stars

Fourth Course: Chicken Teriyaki, Creamed Spinach
Yikes. As you saw in the video, the chicken teriyaki was nasty. I don't know if we got a bad pouch or what, but the chicken was mushy to the point of being hardly recognizable as chicken. And the smell. Oh the smell. Not sure what went wrong here, but this was more akin to dog food than teriyaki. AVOID!

As for the creamed spinach, that was our only freeze-dried food item. In space, you would use the small tube opening to inject hot water with a syringe and smush it around in the package until it was done, but we reconstituted it in a bowl, and it came out alright. Kind of bland, but edible. We didn't spend long on it though because we wanted that chicken teriyaki out of our sight as soon as possible.
Rating: Zero Stars

Fifth Course: Chicken w/ Peanut Sauce, Green Beans w/ Potatoes
Definitely an improvement. The chicken here was in more recognizable texture and shape, and the peanut sauce, while not particularly delicious, was certainly more edible than the teriyaki sauce. And the green beans and potatoes were pretty much the same as your typical canned fare, so not bad at all.
Rating: Three stars

Dessert: Brownies, Cocoa, Kona Coffee
The brownies were basically Little Debbie brownies—in fact, they may have been exactly that, as NASA does purchase off-the-shelf snacks to send up after they're evaluated and repackaged. And the drinks were essentially the same as their earthly equivalents—only in space, you rehydrate with the same syringe-in-bag technique. Both were tasty.
Rating: Four Stars

You may be surprised to see no freeze-dried ice cream here for dessert—the item most commonly associated with "space food." Well, that's because actual freeze-dried ice cream was only eaten on one Apollo mission—its flavor is just too unlike ice cream to be enjoyed, and its excessive crumbliness made it especially difficult to eat and clean up in microgravity. Thus, its relegation to museum gift shops and novelty stores everywhere.

So in conclusion, I'd say our lunch was highly enjoyable. We went through what every astronaut does before their missions—a sampling of the available foods to see what they like. If Adam and I were going up, you can guess our containers would be full of beef enchiladas, baked beans, sausages and curry sauce, and there wouldn't be any chicken teriyaki in sight.

Now I want to try everything on the menu:

OK, so someone wanted to know what the International Space Station smells like. After we opened the hatch, I noticed a moderate smell of plastics, not unlike that new car smell. That's from the various synthetic materials onboard, outgassing. It's not too bad, and after an hour, I stopped noticing it.

We do scrub the atmosphere, though. We have carbon dioxide removal systems, as well as a micro-impurities removal device. Oxygen is added of course, as it is consumed. We use an electrolysis device to crack water, dumping the hydrogen overboard. (See gallery for all the air-processing machinery described here.)

That device is a bit cantankerous, so we also have oxygen candles, which we "burn" periodically. These are the same kinds of systems that are onboard nuclear submarines, which face similar technical requirements.

One interesting fact is that nitrogen is not replaced, except to compensate for leakage. The human body does not really utilize the inhaled nitrogen, so it is recycled.

What else? What is the temperature onboard? The temperature was set by the mission commander—me. I live in Houston, so I like air conditioning. The cabin was set to about 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

Follow astronaut Leroy Chiao in his guest column, as we celebrate human life in space with our "Get Me Off This Rock" week. You can check out tons of great shots from Leroy's ISS mission in his NASA gallery.

It's an amazing work, penned by the pioneer's of America's space program—Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley, Heinz Haber and even a few Americans who didn't come from Germany after the war, such as Joseph Kaplan and Fred Whipple, with detailed illustrations by Chesley Bonestell and Rolf Klep.

It was my dad's book as a kid, fueling his imagination, and it was mine when I was a wide-eyed innocent pre-Space Camp astronaut wannabe. It was wonderful, but never close to correct. I think they even assert that we'd use hypergolic fuels, and we all know where that will get you. Science guys, have a look at some of that stuff in the gallery—I am certain you'll have a good belly laugh. Too bad the thing's out of print, but Amazon does list vintage copies, so get one if you can. [Amazon - Thanks Dad, for sending it!]

I remember watching the very first Space Shuttle launch ever, in April 1981. We were sitting on the floor in the hallway of my school, gathered around a little TV that had been brought out for the purpose. It was amazing, the way the four-piece futureship—the Columbia with its then-all-white fuel tank and boosters—ripped through the sky, rotating and tilting a bit towards the earth as it reached escape velocity, as if to ensure all spectators would get sweaty palms and an elevated heart rate.

For five years, the Shuttle was the thing, and every kid worshiped it. By 1986, my friend Clint and I had finally ditched plans to become doctors like our dads, and were firmly set on joining the astronaut program when we were old enough. (This is before we decided to be rock musicians, which is what Clint actually is.) Space Camp had been started at Huntsville's US Space and Rocket Center in 1982, and was picking up a rep as a healthy, educational kids summer activity, so it wasn't hard for Clint and I to convince our parents to sign us up.

But before we made it to Space Camp, something happened that made a lot of kids think twice about becoming astronauts.

On January 28th, everyone at my school was gathered around a TV again, this time in the gymnasium. The Space Shuttle Challenger was about to send a teacher, Christa McAuliffe, into space, so it was a big deal. At the end of the countdown, we watched as the whole launch system lifted off of the gantry, until a little over a minute into the flight, when something went horribly wrong. The Challenger broke apart, exploding in all different directions in a nasty swirl of hot smoke. I don't remember if anyone cried, but I do remember the feeling of utter emptiness, helplessness, in my gut as I watched.

We coped with our grief through the spring, with jokes like "What does NASA stand for? Need Another Seven Astronauts" and "How do you know Christa McAuliffe had dandruff? They found her head and shoulders on the beach." Every kid lamented out loud that if they were going to have to pick a teacher to go on that particular ill-fated mission, why didn't they pick mine. The humor was just a stage of mourning; we all loved our Space Shuttle. But the tragedy, and the fact that the Shuttle was grounded until further notice, made it a strange time to want to go to Space Camp.

It was also a strange time to release a film about Space Camp—and accidental shuttle launches—but that summer, before Clint and I arrived in Huntsville, that movie starring Lea Thompson and a young Joaquin Phoenix came out. We all saw it. Much of it was shot on the campus, though somehow, through movie magic, Huntsville became a suburb of Cape Canaveral. So when we got there, we knew sorta what to expect.

After bidding goodbye to our parents for the week, we were divided into groups, named after astral bodies, and issued visors. My team was the Sun—we had orange visors, and in true nerd form, referred to ourselves the Solarians. There were like eight of us, Clint and me, plus these cool guys from South Carolina named Sean and Comer (seriously, how can you not be cool with a name like "Comer"?), a couple of other geeks and two girls—bookworm types but hey, they still counted. We went to classes together: NASA trivia on Apple IIe's with monochrome monitors, piece-by-piece walkthroughs of Mercury and Apollo capsules, demonstrations of rocket engines, even a spacesuit try-on.

In Space Camp: The Movie, there's a piece of equipment made up of three rings attached to each other at different points, so that the human body in the middle could be spun in every direction. In the movie, it's controlled with a stick, and whoever can use that stick to stabilize the machine technically has the skill to right a spacecraft that's tumbling into the earth's atmosphere during re-entry. Remember that thing? Well, it was 89% bullshit. The device existed, and a lucky few (I'm thinking the older kids) got to be strapped into it, but it's just an orientation trainer, and has no stick, and can't be controlled, except by spotters who spin it around manually.

The pool was for drills. The older kids in "Space Academy" got to do full spacewalk drills under water, like real astronauts do, with suits and everything. We youngins got some basic zero-buoyancy training. The most fun we had was emergency drills—a low-budget re-enactment of the scene where Gus Grissom is pulled out of the water in The Right Stuff.

Looking back, Space Camp was largely an opportunity for the US Space and Rocket Center to sell a bunch of crap (t-shirts, pins, flight suits, hats) and promote its more edutaining rides. The best by far was the centrifuge, that zoetrope-shaped spinning room whose floor would fall out once centrifugal force had successfully usurped gravity as the main force holding you to a surface.

There was an IMAX theater, and we were there every night, seeing The Dream Is Alive, the greatest Shuttle film ever (I think Christa McAuliffe and the other doomed astronauts are shown training in that movie), and a bunch of others, including some science stuff in 3D. It was a little bit like spending a week living at a museum—we even ate in the same cafeteria that visitors did. We lived on freeze-dried icecream that we bought from the concession stand, and one night we were fed an entire meal of freeze-dried or reconstituted foods. I remember the peas, preferable dry, but not much else.

Our counselor was a big handsome fighter pilot named Ty or something, who told us more than once that he was a) a graduate of Top Gun and b) that he'd hung out with Lea Thompson when they shot the movie. Because of this double cred, we obeyed everything he said, and adhered to the lights out.

The focal point of the week at Space Camp was the shuttle mission, but even there, like in the pool, the younger kids got screwed. Our "shuttle" was this half-assed wooden play set, more or less the size of a shuttle, with a ladder that carried you from the flight deck to the crew deck, and an "airlock" that led to the cargo bay. Up top there were screens switches, but mostly they were simple PC screens to show wireframe flight-simulator type visuals, and switches leading to little lightbulbs and not much else. Down below, we had computer screens, and we had jacks for the headset intercom, and not much else. It was good enough for make-believe, but the Space Academy kids had a real frickin' shuttle.

We weren't even allowed in it. It was a shuttle mockup that was, I think, used by the astronauts themselves, complete with all the same hardware. Everything about it was 100X more real than our plywood construct, and every glance we stole at it was one of jealousy. It was featured in every brochure on the camp, apparently without fine print that you had to be this old—or maybe this tall—to see its insides. Crashing that thing would be like crashing the shuttle for real, dangerous and scary and expensive. Good thing I only crashed the POS junior edition.

Yep. When we were assigned roles, I didn't get any of the good gigs: One of the girls, Cathy I think her name was, got a freakin' space walk. Either Sean or Comer got to be the pilot (naturally), Clint I think was somewhere on the flight deck too. Me? I was shoved down in the crew deck with a couple of paste-eaters, "mission specialists" with nothing to do but report on fake experiments—probably involving mice or plants germinating or something. Maybe it was out of resentment, then, that I caused the whole mission to fail, epically.

Remember I said we learned trivia on Apple IIe's? Well, I guess I didn't learn enough, which is ironic, cuz I'm usually an ace at Trivial Pursuit. The thing about our make-believe mission was that it wasn't sophisticated enough to be a true flight sim—instead, our counselors told us what was going on, and hit us with multiple-choice decisions on the computer screens—kind of a realtime choose-your-own-adventure—that would guide our craft safely home or into flaming oblivion.

We'd made it through the whole mission and were about to re-enter when our window of opportunity somehow closed, and we needed to pick a new landing site. The multiple choice options included White Plains and White Sands. White Plains. White Sands. They sound similar, right? I mean, I grew up in Indiana, so they were equally distant from my geographic frame of reference, and I was the product of the American education system, so I probably didn't even have a geographic frame of reference. I suggested that we go to White Plains. Stressed it, over the weak protests of my teammates. I was damn sure. I reasoned with them over the intercom: It was a plain, and if we were in trouble, hell, we'd at least be able to put this sucker down on flat land.

I was wrong. White Plains, being a densely populated NYC suburb, is not a good place to land the Space Shuttle. Not only that, it's in the wrong direction, if you miss your window over Florida. White Sands, New Mexico, all you Yeager fans surely know, is a fine place to crash land just about anything.

It was a fun week, Space Camp, but needless to say, I never went back. And I never became an astronaut. [Space Camp]

The problem? Nobody makes nukes anymore.

Deep space probes beyond Jupiter can't use solar power because they're too far from the sun. So they rely on a certain type of plutonium, plutonium-238. It powers these spacecraft with the heat of its natural decay. But plutonium-238 isn't found in nature; it's a byproduct of nuclear weaponry.

So where can NASA turn to in order to get the 11lbs of plutonium it needs each year? Fortunately, the Department of Energy has come to the rescue and decided to spend the $150 million or so it would take to re-start production. Man, it feels like the Cold War all over again. [Yahoo]

The Earth is blue. How wonderful. It is amazing.

And amazing it was. It was an obvious thing to say, but it was spoken from an honest heart, touched, and humbled by the breathtaking view of his true home. Born son of a peasant in Klushino, Russia, Gagarin was the first man to reach space and the first to orbit Earth. When he said that phrase he was orbiting from an altitude of 300 kilometers over the surface of our home planet, expressing the exact same feeling that every single astronaut has had since then. A sentiment of total awe at the beauty of our little planet. Reaching for the stars, Gagarin and the rest of the Humanity realized how unique and precious Earth is.

His feat was amazing at the time. The US was stunned at the news and NASA rushed to get an astronaut into space. It wasn't until May 5, 1961, that Alan Shepard was rushed into space to became the first US astronaut, following a ballistic missile trajectory. It wasn't until the next year that the US put an astronaut in orbit, when John Glenn circled the Earth for 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 23 seconds aboard the Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962.

Sadly for him, after becoming a hero of the Soviet Union, Gagarin was grounded forever, too precious to be lost for the propaganda machinery of the draconian communist regime. He returned to Star City—where the Soviet Union developed their space program—to work on reusable spacecraft designs, but he never got into one himself again. In fact, after Vladimir Komarov died in the the first Soyuz flight, Gagarin—who was his backup pilot—was even banned from training for spaceflight.

It was ironic because only a few years later Gagarin died in a routine fighter pilot training flight, on March 27, 1968, aged 34. A tragic loss, no doubt, of a true hero not only for the Soviet Union, but for the entire world. They don't make them like these anymore.

Godspeed Yuri Alekseyevich, godspeed.

Since there's very little gravity in space, is there an elastic strap to pull the guy down toward the treadmill to simulate gravity? Or is the guy just whirling his legs around like the Roadrunner? [Orlando Sentinel via TV Squad]

Being TNG fans here at Giz, we're not exactly sure what prompted one video editor to assemble 172 full-length Voyager episodes into one mega collage in Final Cut Pro. Then again, we're still not sure what drove Jason to spend much of this week calculating the Enterprise's ever-fluctuating screen sizes.

So in other words, we're not judging. But we really would have liked to hear the unintelligible audio track. [artvierkan via infosthetics via Red Ferret]

Yesterday, I wrote about what launching aboard a Space Shuttle is like. This time, let's consider the Russian Soyuz rocket and spacecraft. Why? Isn't a rocket a rocket? Is it really that different? Yes and no, no and yes. They both get astronauts into space in around nine minutes. But, they are very different.

First, consider the two spacecraft. They look pretty different from each other. One is a part of a missile, the other a winged vehicle, attached to a rocket assembly.

If the living space inside of the Space Shuttle is Business Class...

...then the Soyuz is decidedly economy.

However, I must say that the Soyuz has a very special place in my heart. It is a robust, capable spacecraft and launcher. It has the best-demonstrated safety record of any manned spacecraft. And, it just feels hearty.

So, what is it like to launch on a Soyuz?

Well first, you almost wear the Soyuz rather than strap into it. Squeezing down the hatchway into my seat, I got an idea of what claustrophobia must feel like. If anyone is the least bit claustrophobic, this would bring it out. Your legs are bent up into your chest. It's not very comfortable. Like with the Shuttle, you strap in about two and a half hours before launch. But, it gets worse. The Soyuz requires two orbits to get enough telemetry to the ground, for the Mission Control Center to verify that the spacecraft is healthy. During that time, you must remain strapped into your seat, in case you have to perform an emergency deorbit. Total time in that position? About six hours.

So there's no dozing off in the Soyuz. You're too uncomfortable. You wait. And follow along in the checklist, of course. T-Zero is totally different—there is no kick, since there are no solid rocket strap-on boosters. The liquid engines are very smooth. The thrust builds up gently until the rocket simply rises off of the pad. You have to go by your watch, and the announcement from the launch control bunker, to know that you are flying!

There is a deceleration just prior to staging, and then a muffled "Bang!" as the four liquid strap-on boosters separate. Same for the third stage. What surprised me (startled the hell out of me, actually), was the very loud "BANG!!" followed by an instant flash of bright light. Just for a split second, I thought we were exploding, but it was just the shroud and escape tower separation! I could now see through the porthole, and look down at the familiar view of the Earth, and the bright, fluorescent blue line of the atmosphere on the Earth limb.

You know the rest.

Follow astronaut Leroy Chiao in his guest column, as we celebrate human life in space with our "Get Me Off This Rock" week. Crazy Soyuz rocket engines shot up top from Wikipedia.