In the 1990s the Pentagon was spending a lot of missile defense money on technology that could link its missile-launch warning sensors to “cue” the missile-intercept weapons it was developing. At the same time, astronomers worldwide were using the Internet and an instrument on NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory to cue their ground-based telescopes to gamma ray bursts virtually anywhere in the universe.

NASA will try to use its advanced technology programs to mollify planetary scientists outraged over the shutdown of the agency's ambitious plans to explore Mars in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA). That may help restore some calm, as long as the capabilities developed as part of NASA's new open-ended technology push advance scientists' stated need to examine Mars samples in laboratories on Earth. So far, it is not clear that the work that is just getting started will be able to do that.

While the 500 customers Virgin Galactic has signed up—at $200,000 each—for a few minutes of microgravity on SpaceShipTwo (SS2) attract the headlines, the company is also seeking a different kind of passenger for its suborbital flights: scientists who are just as eager to buy research space in a box, or even a test tube.

What will it take to get commercial human spaceflight off the ground? When will it be available and attractive to “the 99%” the Wall Street Occupiers say they represent as well as for the superrich “1%”? A group of academics and “New Space” entrepreneurs say the answers are complicated, but that it won't hurt to have a space traveler with the common touch and a way with words.

Must clear problems with launch pad and not run into conflicts with delayed Russian vehicles to reach ISS this year.

William Greenwalt has joined the Aerospace Industries Association, Arlington, Va., as VP-acquisition policy. He was deputy director for surveys and investigations of the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee.