Geek Gestalt

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for iPhone.

OK, that's probably a little overly dramatic, but the new NASA iPhone app, which was released Friday, is pretty cool.

With NASA's iPhone app, space geeks can access all kinds of information about their favorite missions.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Designed to provide information, updates, and images on all current and scheduled NASA missions, the app--which can be found in Apple's App Store under the name "NASA app for iPhone--nicely allows you to search for any specific mission, say, Constellation, and then find information and images just for that project.

"Users can access NASA countdown clocks, the NASA Image of the Day, Astronomy Image of the Day, online videos, NASA's many Twitter feeds," and more, the space agency said in a press release about the app. It also allows users to track where the International Space Station is at any moment, as well as other spacecraft orbiting the planet, in three different views: maps with labels and borders, available visible imagery of satellites, and satellite positions overlaid on maps with country labels and borders.

Already, NASA nuts--you know who you are--have had access to much of this information online. But now, having it all available in a free iPhone app is going to keep these people happily staring down at the screen of their devices no matter where they are.

And for NASA, anything it can do to get more people excited about its various missions and projects is a good thing as it struggles for public resources and attention in an era where the economy is in trouble and people are increasingly distracted by other things.

On Thursday night, three days before the gates open to Burning Man, the Man is up and looking fine atop his forest of wooden, sculpted trees, but is still roped off.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

BLACK ROCK CITY, Nevada--It's Thursday night, three days before the gates officially open to Burning Man, but already a lot of people have arrived here for set-up. The arts festival is quickly taking shape.

On this night, it's oddly quiet on the Black Rock desert. Oddly because if you've ever been to Burning Man, you're used to nights being filled with noise of all kinds--music, explosions, screaming, laughing--coming from every direction. But because the only people here right now are helping to build things--art projects, theme camps, public infrastructure--people are plumb tuckered out.

But it was clearly worth a quick bike ride to see what's up already, and two of the most obvious pieces are the Man--the centerpiece of the festival, this year built atop a forest of wooden sculptures of trees--and the Raygun Gothic Rocket, a 1940s-era spaceship gracing the desert with its stylized presence.

From here on out, it will only get bigger, louder, and more outrageous. But tonight, amidst the vast emptiness of a Burning Man only partially pieced together, some beauty is quietly on display.

The Raygun Gothic Rocket ship, a 1940s-era spaceship, which has a planned launch a week from Friday at Burning Man.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

The Raygun Gothic Rocketship is a 1940s-era rococo rocket that Burning Man attendees will have a chance to climb through. They may even get to see it launch.

(Credit: Raygun Gothic Rocketship)

OAKLAND, Calif.--Want a trip back to the romanticism and innocence with which space travel was associated in the 1940s? Then get yourself to Burning Man, starting August 31 in Nevada's Black Rock Desert.

That's where the Raygun Gothic Rocketship, a retro rocket "made" in 1944, will be on display for the thousands of participants at the annual countercultural arts festival to play in and around.

In reality, of course, the rocket wasn't made in the 1940s; It's being made as we speak in a warehouse in a run-down part of Oakland, just across the bay from San Francisco. But don't bother telling the more than 60 artists, scientists, engineers, and others who are putting countless hours of their time and energy into creating the rocket ship that their narrative is fiction: they're having too much fun crafting that narrative as they go to listen to any naysayers.

The project, which is led by artists Sean Orlando, David Shulman, and Nathaniel Taylor, is one of 25 that received funding from the Burning Man organization. It is almost certainly the only one that will take visitors back in time to a place where space travel wasn't beset by some of the real-life failures and inefficiencies of NASA and other space agencies, and the disappointments that can come from mixing politics with science.

Rather, the Raygun Gothic Rocketship is pure whimsy, mixed, of course, with some serious research into what a rocket of this era and style would be like.

Photos: The Raygun Gothic Rocketship

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For the most part, the rocket and many of its components were designed using a CAD program called SolidWorks, Orlando explained when I visited the warehouse Friday.

In the real world, though, it will be a 40-foot-tall retro masterpiece, complete with 17-foot-tall legs and three main compartments rising another 23 feet in the air. Once installed in the desert, it will be attached to an adjacent 25-foot-tall gantry by a 10-foot bridge. Visitors will be able to climb up through the three compartments and then go down via the gantry.

The plan, Orlando said, is to have a launch event on the evening of Friday, September 4. Prior to the event, a very, very loud siren will be set off to announce to the thousands of Burning Man participants that fueling is about to start, and then those participants will begin to gather outside a 500-foot safety perimeter. Come launch time, be prepared for some special surprises, Orlando suggested.

Making the rocket

Featuring a solid steel frame, the rocket will be skinned entirely in brushed aluminum. And befitting a Burning Man ethos of "do-it-yourself," every bit of that aluminum is being made in the warehouse in Oakland on a set of what are known as English wheels, contraptions that can shape the metal into pieces with the rounded edges necessary for making a rocket.

It will feature 42 aluminum panels, as well as the three legs, and it will all be held together by thousands of rivets. All in all, complete with its rococo shape, the rocket will very much like look like what it's supposed to be: a spacecraft built 55 years ago that has traveled through time and found its way to 2009.

Asked where it was built, Orlando and Shulman laughed and admitted they needed a little more work on their back story.

Just above the legs will be a main compartment serving as the engine room, armory, and life and biosciences lab. Participants will be able to look down through the floor at the rocket's engine (see video below), which will feature six power cells, each of which will display a high-voltage lighting effect. That effect, courtesy of 12,000 volts of electricity, was crafted in conjunction with a professor from the department of engineering at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

Participants will be invited to climb through each of the three compartments and to explore the many displays they'll come across. The idea is to give visitors a sense of what such a rocket would be like inside. The second compartment will feature crew quarters, navigational and observational tools, and audio and video communications and scientific instruments. All of these things will be available for participants to play with.

There will also be a telescope that participants will be able to look through for "deep scanning" of space. The idea there, said Shulman, is that crew members would need to look out into space to determine approach trajectories for when the rocket docks when it lands.

Similarly, there will also be a probe launcher, which will fire off small rockets. Sticking with the narrative, the rockets are intended to travel one-to-two parsecs. Practically, they may fly three or four hundred feet, where they can be picked up by passersby, who, hopefully, will return them to the main rocket ship in exchange for small gifts.

The rocket features a telescope that crew members used to peer into space for docking.

(Credit: Raygun Gothic Rocketship)

At the top of the rocket is the cockpit, where a lovely pilot's chair will be installed. The chair will be made to rotate around, and allow the pilot to engage with the ship's flight controls. The pilot will have access to communications so that he (or she) can talk to those in the compartments below. For that, the team is utilizing 1930s and 1940s-era hand-cranked telephones.

How the idea began

I asked Orlando and Shulman how the idea for the Raygun Gothic Rocket ship began, and Orlando said that, from the beginning, they wanted to work on a retro rocket based on a romantic 1940s aesthetic.

A big part of that, said Orlando, whose father was a NASA contractor, was building up a sense of the excitement and innocence around space travel that still existed in the 1930s and 1940s, when science fiction was "still very positive and wide-eyed" and people saw nearly unlimited potential for space.

Added Shulman, the idea was to bring out that sense of wonder that perhaps went away a bit when the Cold War kicked in and politicians took the space program into another direction.

And for participants who visit the rocket, Shulman said, the hope is that they will walk away with the feeling that they got to take part in a "real rocket from the 1940s."

"We want it to be disorienting," Shulman said, "and create doubt: is it real, or is it not."

SUPERIOR, Colo.--If you remember the scene from Pixar's "Wall-E," in which a rocket ship on its way to humankind's space station blasts through a debris field of abandoned satellites, you may have wondered if anyone on Earth is working to prevent that from becoming reality.

The answer is yes.

Here in this small town not far from Boulder, Colo., the Secure World Foundation (SWF), a nonprofit unassociated with any government, is thinking about that kind of issue, as well as several others related to the fair use of space, and succeeding at getting its analysis and recommendations heard by decision makers around the world.

The Secure World Foundation is a nonprofit that is advocating for the fair use of outer space.

(Credit: Secure World Foundation)

"We promote the need for space governance," said Phil Smith, the Secure World Foundation's communications director, and help "establish effective systems of governance in outer space."

I visited the organization's headquarters--discreetly tucked away in a small house in a residential neighborhood here--as part of Road Trip 2009. I wanted to see what, if anything, people are doing to ensure that space isn't fully dominated--and contaminated--by any one or two countries.

Smith explained that the SWF breaks its definition of space governance into several different categories: international civil space situational awareness; mitigation of orbital debris; establishing systems for the efficient sharing of data from space-based remote sensing platforms; and working to prevent a space arms race.

While it may be easy to discount the efforts of a small organization based far from Washington, Brussels, Moscow, or Beijing, Smith said that the SWF's $1.5 million annual budget comes entirely from the philanthropy of a very-well connected family interested in promoting such issues.

Further he said, while its headquarters is in Superior, the SWF does maintain an office in Washington, as well as in Vienna, Austria, and makes its research and analysis known by working directly, with permanent observer status, with the United Nation's 69-member Committee for the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

The SWF doesn't have voting rights on the committee, Smith clarified, but does sit in on its meetings and provide advice when needed.

That means, Smith continued, the SWF has three main goals: facilitating meetings between various interested groups to hash out issues; advocating for space governance; and spreading the word of its analysis by, among other things, giving briefings on Capitol Hill, and to local and state governments because the issues it works on do impact the space industry, and officials may not always be aware of the various things going on at the international and domestic level.

But ultimately, while the SWF does share its opinions with Congress, its primary constituency is not the U.S. government, but rather the international community, Smith said.

Space traffic management
To the SWF, space situational awareness (SSA) is a significant component of space traffic management. Essentially, Smith said, it's a bit like air traffic control.

The U.S. Air Force, he said, does most of the tracking and watches about 19,000 objects four inches or larger orbiting Earth, most of which are satellites that are either still functional or dead. But the SWF considers tracking space weather an equally important part of the equation, Smith said.

For example, those with assets in space have a constant need to be aware of things such as whether the sun is sending off rare coronal mass ejections, a major event of solar flare activity, which can cause considerable amounts of damage to satellites.

Further, detecting such events would be crucial if there were astronauts in space, as they could be killed if they weren't quickly returned from orbit.

And to that end, the SWF is able to access and monitor data that comes from a satellite called Soho, which monitors the sun 24 hours a day, looking for just this kind of solar activity.

Ultimately, Smith said, space traffic management is kind of an umbrella discipline that comprises things like SSA and monitoring space weather and orbital debris. And because there is general agreement that space traffic management is broadly necessary, Smith added, it's not as controversial as, say, discussing management of space weapons.

Space weapons
The management of space weapons, however, is "typically a starting point for controversy," Smith said. This, mainly, is about the development of anti-satellite weapons.

There is some concern about whether a country's satellite launch vehicle might instead be geared to launching a missile, which is where Iran and North Korea are causing controversy, Smith argued. But the SWF's main focus is on anti-satellite weapons, which are typically space- or ground-based systems designed for the disabling of satellites.

And, Smith said, there are just three countries thought to already be capable of such weapons: the United States, China, and Russia. However, he added, anyone with a launch vehicle technically has the ability to target satellites, meaning that countries like Japan, Israel, India, and now Iran could be added to that list.

The idea is to stave off the development of space weapons. The United Nations' Conference on Disarmament is the main international organization looking at this, though Smith pointed out that there are today no known space weapons in orbit. But it's a definitional problem, he explained. At one time, the Soviet Union thought that the Space Shuttle was meant to be a space weapon that could, for example, orbit and grab satellites.

But today, the goal is to prevent the development of such weapons, and that is handled mainly by the Conference on Disarmament, Smith said. While the SWF is an observer at the U.N., it doesn't have such status with the Conference on Disarmament. Instead, the organization relies on its extensive roster of contacts and relationships to influence the space weapons discussion, Smith explained.

Orbital debris
Beyond the political problems anti-satellite weapons can create, the SWF is concerned about them because of their potential to create space debris. That's because a destroyed or dead satellite can wreak havoc on functional satellites.

"A small piece (of debris) can create an enormous amount of damage due to kinetic energy," he said.

Today, Smith said, there are voluntary guidelines that member nations adhere to when it comes to creating space debris. But the SWF is hoping to make those guidelines "more robust," he said. Of course, while it's impossible to do away entirely with space debris, everyone involved is hoping to stop it as much as possible.

The question is, how do you prevent the creation of debris? Do you forge a treaty, Smith said, or a strong, fundamental set of rules everyone agrees to abide by. But enforcement is a big problem, he added. It may, in the end, be about peer pressure. For example, he said that in 2007, China launched an anti-satellite weapon at one of its defunct satellites, destroying it and creating a great deal of debris in the process.

From China's perspective, the test proved that it had the technology--and once proved, it's not necessary to have to do it again--but the country also took a lot of flak from the international community for creating the massive amount of debris.

The big idea is to figure out how to best track space debris to provide data to satellite owners so that they can maneuver their assets around junk that might cause significant damage, and therefore additional debris. Still, with the amount of space activity growing, it is expected that space debris will increase over time, as well.

Planetary defense
Another main area of SWF's focus is on planetary defense, or the protection of Earth against asteroids, or comets, or other space junk that could appear out of nowhere, impact the planet and cause serious problems, up to and including massive species extinction.

The Association of Space Explorers, a group of former astronauts, is one group that is focusing on this issue, and has produced a report on how to deal with this issue at a policy level.

But again, the SWF gets involved at the international policy level, weighing in when asked by the U.N. about what to do with the astronauts' report. The idea is to prepare a plan so that if a hazardous space object is detected, we know what to do about it, rather than having to create a plan on the fly.

And that leads to a final area of the SWF's main focus: data sharing.

The SWF wants to ensure, Smith said, that everyone has access to data that can be collected by satellites about global vegetation growth, about the effects of global warming, as well as many of the issues discussed above.

While a small organization without major funding or direct involvement in any of the issues it studies, the SWF would seem to have limited power. But because it is consulted regularly by the United Nations and has contacts throughout the world, we can all hope that having a non-governmental nonprofit looking out for the fair use of space will help further that goal. After all, who else is going to argue for space?

Click here for the entire Road Trip 2009 package.

The rear section of the first-ever completed Ares I solid rocket booster, which will be test-fired on Aug. 25. This signifies a major milestone for NASA's Constellation program, which will replace the Space Shuttle program, and which is intended to send humans back to the moon.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

PROMONTORY, Utah--"This is the world's biggest solid rocket motor."

Those eight words, with which Kevin Rees described the Ares 1 rocket to me on Monday, are at once entirely understated, and hugely consequential. Rees is the director of test services for ATK, the primary rocket contractor on NASA's Constellation program.

Since 1981, the Space Shuttle has been NASA's main program. But now, with just a few more Shuttle launches left, the space agency--and the huge ecosystem of contractors who support it--are seriously turning their attention to Constellation, the next program. Constellation is expected to take Americans back to the moon, and may someday take them to Mars. And like the Apollo and Mercury programs in the 1960s and '70s, Constellation is designed with a crew capsule that will be placed on top of a giant rocket--in this case, the Ares I.

And here before me, in what can be described as essentially a huge shed at ATK's massive complex about two hours north of Salt Lake City, the first of those rockets is resting on its side, awaiting its first moment of glory, a planned August 25 test-firing.

Though the Ares I has been on the drawing board for some time, and many people have seen imagery of it, no reporter has ever seen one fully assembled. As part of my Road Trip 2009 project, I had the honor of being the first, and of sharing the first pictures with you.

Photos: Ares I five-stage solid rocket booster

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The Ares I rocket is a five-segment behemoth, fully 154 feet long. By comparison, the Space Shuttle used two four-segment rockets, each of which was 126 feet long. But lest you think that an entirely new program means entirely new equipment, think again.

I was told throughout my visit to ATK that every effort is being made to reuse components from the Space Shuttle program. And that's why every single 12.2-foot-wide cylinder used to make this first Ares rocket--known as DM 1, or developmental motor 1--has been recycled from previous Shuttle missions. Indeed, the various components that make up DM 1 have been used in 48 different Shuttle launches.

Still, it's not as if the pieces are just picked up out of the ocean and thrown back into the rotation. Rather, they are painstakingly reconditioned and made ready for reuse, as they have been throughout the Shuttle program. That's one way NASA has kept costs down during the program, and how it intends to do so going forward into Constellation.

The reason it's possible for ATK to reuse segments from Shuttle launches in the Ares program is that Ares rockets have a lot in common with those used in the Shuttle program. To be sure, the Shuttle used two boosters, and didn't have a capsule installed on top, while Constellation will comprise a single booster with an Orion crew capsule on top. But the boosters will be very similar, beginning with their exact same width and segment dimensions.

There will be some differences, however.

For example, the insulation on the interior of the cylinders is different on the Ares segments than it was with the Shuttle, and one big reason is an effort to be better stewards of the environment than in the past. For instance, the insulation of the Shuttle segments used asbestos, while the Ares segments have done away with that poisonous material.

'A little bit of melancholy'
But as demonstrated by the fact that the segments in DM 1 have been into space so many times as part of the Shuttle program, there is a heavy emphasis on reuse. Even the ATK professionals couldn't always tell right away whether a segment that was being worked on was for the Shuttle or for Ares.

At one point in my visit, we passed by a spot where sections were being put together to make segments for what, apparently, will be the very last Shuttle mission. While nothing around the work there signaled this momentous detail, it's clear that the folks at ATK are well aware of it.

Artist's rendering of the Ares I crew launch vehicle during ascent.

(Credit: NASA/MSFC)

"There's a little bit of melancholy" about it, said one of my hosts, Gregg Kotter, program director for the Ares I First Stage Five-step motor program. Still, whatever sadness the people here feel seems more than offset by the excitement at being part of what NASA clearly hopes will be its standard-bearing program for another 30 years or so.

Yet the Shuttle work is still very much in evidence. One stop on my ATK tour was to the propellant mixing facilities where it was explained to me how the crews here make the solid fuel that is used to light the Shuttle--and soon, the Ares--rockets.

We weren't able to go inside the facility to see the systems because it was a Monday, and on Mondays they are mixing propellant. From a safety standpoint, I can see why they don't want visitors in a facility where someone is actively mixing a fuel that can launch a Space Shuttle.

But again, given that ATK here is working simultaneously on both Shuttle and Ares, my hosts had no way to know which program was getting the propellant being worked on while we were there.

And when asked which program the fuel was for, a technician gave about as simple an answer as he could: "Shuttle."

We did get to talk a fair bit about how the propellant mixing is done, and one thing was clear: It takes a whole lot of fuel to get a giant rocket off the ground. Each segment of the rocket requires 40 giant (600-gallon) mixing bowls full of propellant, which is made up of a binding agent polymer; iron oxide, a burn catalyst; aluminum powder, the fuel source; an epoxy bonding and curing agent; and ammonium perchlorate.

When mixed, it becomes a true solid. I'd heard the term "solid fuel" before, but had never really understood what it meant. In fact, it's just what it sounds like: A fuel that, as I saw inside a small device called an igniter--which is placed at the top of the rocket--looks like plastic, and which is very much a solid. In fact, it's brown, flexible and cool to the touch.

Once mixed, the propellant is cured for 44 hours, and then applied to the interior surface of the rocket segments, where it is then cured for another 52 hours.

After the rocket segments are fully assembled and filled with propellant, they are then put through an X-ray and ultrasonic inspection to make sure they don't have any bubbles in them. If they do, Kotter told me, they can either be rejected altogether--which is an extremely unpopular option--or technicians can try to assess the problem and see if it can be fixed. It wasn't clear how often this happens.

Gentlemen, start your engine
For the teams getting ready for the August 25 Ares I test-fire, it has been a long time coming. Some members, Rees said, have been working on this for more than two years.

Once everything is in place, the ignition of the rocket--which will be laid flat on its side and will shoot its massive blasts of fire back into a giant pit of sand and rock--is an extremely fast process. First, a pellet is dropped into the igniter--a small device that is larger than the tactical motor on a lot of rockets, and which has 300 pounds of propellant inside--which will then set off the main rocket bore. From zero to full thrust takes 600 milliseconds.

Assuming the test goes well, it will only be a matter of time before ATK starts shipping rocket segments, one at a time, to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where they will eventually be assembled into a rocket that the space agency will launch into space. Those segments will be put on trains that will take ten days or so to cross the country before they reach Kennedy.

And if you were to see one of them on the road, you wouldn't be able to tell if they were for the Shuttle or for Ares. But if you happened to have a chance to ask someone in the know which they were for, there's a good possibility they'd give you a one-word answer: "Shuttle" or "Ares."

For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

On Thursday, NASA announced it has released a set of 3D photo collections of the International Space Station and its Mars rover. The photos were created using Microsoft's Photosynth technology, which automatically stitches together hundreds of images from standard digital cameras.

(Credit: NASA)

NASA said on Thursday that it has released a collection of 3D photographs of the International Space Station and its Mars rover.

The photos, which were created using Microsoft's Photosynth tool, show both internal and external views of the space station, as well as a model of the rover.

Because the images were prepared using Photosynth, users can zoom in or out of any of the images, allowing them to see "details of the space station's modules and solar arrays or...a more global view of the complex."

At the same time, the Mars rover images depict the latest iteration of the hardware being crafted at NASA's Mars Science Laboratory. The rover, NASA said, is expected to be launched to Mars in 2011.

Both collections are made up of hundreds of photos taken with standard digital cameras that have been stitched together automatically using Photosynth.

And this isn't the first time NASA has used Photosynth to present images of its various projects. In 2007, it employed the Microsoft Live Labs technology to showcase a 3D view of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

On June 22, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and South and North Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

At GDC Thursday, Kristian Segerstrale, CEO of PlayFish, one of the most successful publishers of games for Facebook and MySpace, talked about five lessons he thinks the mainstream games industry can learn from social games.

(Credit: PlayFish)

SAN FRANCISCO--While Nintendo's Wii continues to outpace expectations and certain games are making fortunes for their publishers, a strong argument can be made that the hottest segment of the video games industry is one that is still in its infancy: social games.

These titles, which are popping up by the bushelful on platforms like Facebook and MySpace, as well as on Apple's iPhone, are garnering user numbers that would previously have been thought impossible. And in a deep recession, when even the strongest console manufacturers and biggest game publishers are being forced to shut down projects and lay off workers, people have no choice but to sit up and take notice.

At the Game Developers Conference on Thursday, Kristian Segerstrale, the CEO and co-founder of PlayFish, one of the most successful publishers of social games, upped the ante, stating his case for how the mainstream video games industry can learn from his side of the business.

In his talk, "Five lessons from social games that matter to the rest of the games industry," Segerstrale argued that while the nature of the social games business differs significantly from that followed for many years by the more traditional, retail-oriented publishers, times are changing, customers' behaviors and expectations are shifting rapidly, and the winning model may well be the new one.

PlayFish's roster of games, including the mega-hit Who Has the Biggest Brain is illustrative of the popularity games can achieve on services like Facebook. Segerstrale said PlayFish has had 60 million players, averages about 25 million monthly users and 5 million daily players, and currently has 5 of the 10 most popular applications on Facebook. And by itself, Who Has the Biggest Brain has been played a total of 500 million times by 15 million people, he said.

With numbers like that, it's clear why Segerstrale feels he has some lessons to teach the rest of the games industry. And while the traditional retail games model has been relatively unchanged for decades and remains strong today, he said he sees signs that the Electronic Arts, Activisions, and Take-Twos of the world, not to mention the countless other game developers and publishers out there, may need to rethink their methodology.

One harbinger of that need for change is evident even within the traditional games business itself, he pointed out. He said that Nintendo established the Wii as a sleeper hit by exploiting a wide range of people's desire to be social with friends and family. And he explained that Nintendo itself is well aware of this, as evinced by ads for the Wii that show groups of friends playing gleefully. Yet the real estate in the ads devoted to showing the games themselves is minimal; it's the image of the social activity that sells the Wii.

"This is about you and your real-world relationships," Segerstrale said, "which is ultimately much more important than anything that happens between you and your screen...That's why you're playing. You're playing together, not because you're trying to beat the boss in level 10."

'Battle' is a 2D, real-time, combat-oriented, multi-player, Flash game that will be the showpiece for a series of innovations for Multiverse Network, among which will be to give people the ability to interact between 2D and 3D versions of the same game.

(Credit: Multiverse Network)

Developers of 3D virtual worlds and multiplayer games may soon have access to tools that would allow them to build connected, promotional 2D, Flash versions of the same games.

These new tools are at the heart of Battle, a simple Flash game being released Thursday by the Multiverse Network, a virtual worlds middleware company.

A simple Flash game that runs on Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, and Kongregate, Battle is really the showpiece behind new Multiverse technology that could, for the first time, make it possible for developers using its platform to build full-scale downloadable, virtual worlds or online games to create scaled-down, 2D, browser-based versions of the same titles and let players compete between them.

At the same time, Battle is also an example of what Multiverse co-founder Corey Bridges said was one of the first-ever multiplayer, real-time, action- or combat-based Flash games. To date, nearly all Flash multiplayer games have been turn-based, meaning only one person plays at a time, or have very basic game mechanics.

And while, as a platform company, Multiverse isn't in business to create games itself, Bridges said Battle shows that a wide selection of games that previously had to be played using a downloadable client could now be played in the browser.

"Now, you can have proven genres of video games, really popular games, like shooters, real-time strategy, sports and things that exist on consoles or specially installed games," Bridges said, and "those types of games can live in your Web browser without a download."

The immediate appeal to game developers of this innovation is being able to use the Multiverse tools to bring a wide variety of existing types of games to Flash, games that in the past required downloadable clients. And that could mean opening up such titles to far larger audiences, since many people don't want to have to install special software in order to play casual games.

As a tools company, Multiverse is not in the business of building games. But Bridges said the point of its building Battle itself was both to show off the latest set of features the platform offers, and to go through the process of using its own tools, so those inside the company know what its clients' experiences are like.

Multiverse offers its development platform free of charge to anyone who wants it, and hopes to make money by levying a commission on any game made with its tools that charges a fee to play. To date, there are no publicly-launched games built with the Mutiverse tools, though Bridges said several are in beta and are close to being launched.

To some observers, the best thing about the technology underpinning Battle is the marketing opportunities game like it can offer larger, more complete 3D, downloadable multiplayer games and virtual worlds.

"The real benefit of this is that nobody's ever created one tool that lets you have two views," both 2D, in Flash, and 3D, into the same game, said David Fox, vice president of technology at casual games developer, iWin. "This lets (game designers) have a free trial version on the Web and a download for the 3D experience without having to create everything again."

Fox did add that he was "dubious" that Multiverse could deliver on that promise but, not knowing very much about the initiative, said, "the proof is in the pudding."

But Bridges indicated that proof is just around the corner.

"We've got a very small handful of our existing developers taking their (in-development) 3D worlds," Bridges said, "and these developers are making a window into those worlds that can be done in Flash, and that's a pretty interesting new way of thinking about a virtual world experience."

Indeed, he added that he sees the 2D to 3D cross-over element of the tools being a good way to get players hooked on a game concept before convincing them to upgrade to a full 3D version. Yet, they would be able to play against people running the full 3D game in order to get a sense of what the entire experience might be like.

"This demonstrates that Flash is well on its way to becoming the default real-time interaction platform for the Web," said Raph Koster, founder of Areae, which is making Metaplace, a platform that lets anyone design their own Flash-based virtual world, "and it enables more kinds of games than people generally think possible."

As of today, Metaplace is in closed beta, but hopes to be opening up to the general public before too long.

Koster said that it's clear that Multiverse is making important strides in developing new kinds of real-time, multiplayer Flash games, but said that others, including Metaplace itself, have created games enabling such types of play.

Still, Bridges said he differentiated Multiverse's tools by their ability to create real combat action in a game like Battle.

Peter Haik, a co-founder of the virtual worlds development company, Metaversatility, which is using Multiverse's tools in some of its projects, agreed with Bridges' assessment of the Flash games market.

Haik said there are other multi-player Flash games, but they tend to be casual titles aimed at kids.

Multiverse's tools, he suggested, are geared mainly toward producing full-scale virtual worlds or massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), and therefore have much more scope for being used to create crossover between rich 3D games and 2D Flash versions.

"The true innovation" of the Multiverse tools, Haik said, "is that it's sort of an agnostic client, where if someone is in the Flash application, and someone else is in the 3D client, they can interact, and it doesn't matter what the other one is running."

And he said, Multiverse brings serious server technology to the table that runs separate from the various social networking sites, like Facebook and MySpace, and that is what enables the rich crossover experience.

One other important element of the toolset Multiverse provides, Bridges said, is a rendering engine that allows developers to generate Flash assets using the items from their 3D virtual worlds.

"It's really cool," said Bridges. "We have a Web-based automated system where a development team just uses a Web page, uploads a 3D model, and back comes the generated Flash files. It's a really quick way to convert a 3D game into a Flash game and make it look really, really good."

The space shuttle Discovery touching down at Kennedy Space Center on June 14, 2008. NASA now says it is going to solicit proposals for how to display the shuttles once the program ends in 2010.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

Want your very own authentic space shuttle?

Well, if you're part of the community of "educational institutions, science museums and other appropriate organizations," NASA just might have something for you after the shuttle program ends in 2010.

On Wednesday, the space agency issued a request for information (RFI) soliciting ideas for what to do with the shuttle orbiters and main engines once the program ends.

Sponsored by NASA's Office of Infrastructure, the RFI seeks input from appropriate officials and decision makers from museums, science centers, institutions, and other organizations dedicated to education or educational outreach with experience in public display of space hardware and nationally-recognized historical artifacts," NASA said in a release. NASA will use information gained from this RFI to develop strategies for eventual placement of two space shuttle orbiters and a minimum of six unassembled space shuttle main engine display "kits."

The agency said the purpose of the initiative is to decide whether institutions or other members of the community have the appropriate wherewithal to display a shuttle or engines, including the ability to fund such efforts.

Interested applicants have until March 17, 2009 to respond.

It's probably safe to say, however, that NASA doesn't intend for the recipients of the shuttles to fly them, and as such, probably won't be providing astronauts with the delivery of the spacecraft.