About this particular advertisement for Los Alamos Labs (which worked on weapons systems), Prelinger writes:

The blue spot disrupts the conventionally romantic stylization of planetary or solar bodies by contracting the sphere to its minimal form. [Artist Oli] Sihvonen here seems to reference the early 20th century Russian constructivists, with the prolonged vertical angular shape aimed at the planetary circle. It brings to mind El Lissitzsky's constructivist graphic composition Beat Back the Whites with the Red Wedge which pioneered the use of juxtaposed triangle and circle as a graphic strategy to represent political conflict. I find it ironic that the graphic legacy of Communist action should be re-articulated and put into service - whether with or without the artists' sanction - in the service of American Cold War-era weapons and civil space technological programming.

You can see more of these advertisements, along with design-geek analysis, at Berg London. Or you can pre-order a copy of Prelinger's forthcoming (gorgeous) book, Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-62.

Finazzi and his colleagues propose creating this bubble of space-time by using a massive amount of "exotic matter," or dark energy. (Exactly how this bubble would be created is still a mystery.) According to their calculations and simplified, it would take a huge amount of energy to create the bubble, and then increasing amounts of energy to contain the highly repulsive dark energy.

Eventually the energy would run out. The bubble would rupture, with catastrophic effects. Inside the bubble the temperature would rise to about 10^32 degrees Kelvin, destroying almost anything on the bubble.

Anyone watching the ship nearby wouldn't be much better off.

"We know that the warp drive will be destabilized," said Finazzi. "But we do not know if it will in the end explode or collapse to a black hole."

Oh well. But it would probably look really cool while it lasted. [Discovery News, thanks Evan!]

Apparently it will also have a spiffy new toilet.

Help make our favorite Firefly ship part of real-life space exploration history. Though right now Serenity has a healthy lead, Stephen Colbert is trying to make "Colbert" a write-in winner, and the Scientologists are pushing "Xenu" as a name. I think we can all agree that Serenity is the right choice for a space station designed to look out into the black and help us learn how to live out there one day.

Vote for Serenity at NASA.

Chang'e-I was the first part of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, an orbital mission, which was designed to map the lunar surface in unprecedented detail with three-dimensional maps, providing valuable reference material for future lunar landings on the part of China's space program. The probe also gathered information about the Lunar surface, mapping elements and the composition of the lunar regolith as well as information on solar wind, all important information for upcoming missions to our nearest neighbor in space. The next part of their mission, Chang'e-2, is scheduled for launch in 2011, which has a similar mission to its sister Chang'e-I.

The ability to reach the moon is an important step for China, which recently conducted its first space walk with Shenzhou 7. Taikonauts Zhai Zhigang and Liu Boming left the spacecraft in September of 2008, before returning successfully to earth. Taken together, these two events show that China is well on its way towards the moon. Not only has China proved that they can put the proper hardware into orbit, they have the ability to put someone into space. NASA's own Gemini and early Apollo missions were designed to test each step that would be required to conduct lunar EVAs by showing that astronauts could reach orbit, but also walk outside.

In addition to lunar ambitions, China also recently announced plans to place a space station, Tiangong-1, in orbit, where orbital rendezvous and zero-gravity experiments can be undertaken. The ability to dock with another object in space is another important step towards lunar ambitions.

Getting to the moon is not an easy task - an aspiring lunar explorer must undertake a whole series of steps, each one requiring a lot of training and support. It took NASA almost a decade to go from orbit to landing on the moon, designing much of the hardware and testing it during that time, with the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions. China has the advantage in this regard, because many of the unknowns, such as basic medical questions have been answered already - we know that the lunar landing can be accomplished, and that humans can survive in zero-gravity for extended periods of time.

Upcoming missions for China include the Chang'e-2, which will be similar to Chang'e-1, Chang'e-3, which will attempt a 'soft' landing on the moon's surface, and will have rovers to explore the surface, with Chang'e-4 planned to land on the moon and return samples back to earth, expected in 2017.

This mission comes at a time when India and Iran have both launched satellites of their own, signaling future potential rivals in space, with North Korea also announcing that it plans to put a communications satellite into space in the near future. It would appear that there will be another space race within the next two decades, with the United States also intending to return to the moon within that time frame.

Read more from the BBC and Business Week. Photos from Xinhuanet and Cyber Space Orbit

ISRO reports that at 8:31 pm Indian Standard Time, the Moon Impact Probe performed its “suicide nosedive” onto the moon’s surface. The probe carries a radar altimeter, video imaging system, and a mass spectrometer, which transmits images and data from its landing and stay on the moon to the remote sensing satellite, which will remain in lunar orbit for two years.

But beyond data collection, this represents India’s first toehold in space exploration, and the probe’s decorations reflect that:

The probe had miniature Indian national flags painted on four sides, meant to commemorate the birth of the country's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru (known as Children's Day).

It was to "signify the entry of India on Moon," an ISRO official told the Press Trust of India.

The ISRO has reportedly received images from the probe’s crash, but has not yet released them.

[Space.com]

Between Chandrayaan-1 and NASA's forthcoming Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we'll finally get decent maps of the Moon's surface. "We don't really have really good modern maps of the moon with modern instrument," said Georgetown space policy researcher Scott Pace. "The quality of the Martian maps, I would make a general argument, is superior to what we have of the Moon."

Images by AP. [AP and New York Times]

Crappiest way to encourage people to use their imaginations and experiment with evolutionary possibilities in a game devoted to both: Last week saw the release of EA/Maxis' Creature Creator — a component of the upcoming evolution game Spore — and the entire internet greeted it with a cry of happiness. Creature Creator lets you build any organism you like, quickly fleshing out an animated being as cute or hideous as you can imagine. An algorithm animates the little beast, giving it realistic motions for its body shape. You can share your creations with other users, too.

Of course, one of the first things that people did was create the most obscene-looking creatures they could. It turns out the Creature Creator is very versatile when it comes to adding body parts that look like penises, vaginas, and anuses. Thus, within a day after Creature Creator's launch, Sporn was born. Instead of laughing the whole trend off and coming up with ways to prevent people from uploading their dirty bits to kid-friendly areas in the Spore community, EA reacted with censorious poopheadedness. They banned users from the Creator Creator community who uploaded naughty creatures, and requested that YouTube yank any Sporn videos. What the hell, people? Is this any way to encourage people to think about evolution, which is after all very much about genitals and where you put them? I can understand wanting to wall off this grown-up stuff once kids start playing the game, but squashing it entirely? Crap! Luckily, io9 has managed to procure some of the best Sporn available and we've edited it into a smashing NSFW music video for you.

Infographic above via UK Telegraph.

You can view more Soviet graphics pertaining to lunar conquest here, including a swell bunch of xmas cards.

China's ramped-up space plans (and its airbrushed moon porn) are definitely making the U.S. twitchy. The U.S. government refused to help with the launch of China's Chang'e lunar orbiter.) But the U.S. has mostly been laid-back, and a little condescending. Like this L.A. Times article that says "There's Room For China In Space." Really? No way. (Here's another one.) Even the fact that Russia, Western Europe and Japan have all launched their own robot probes isn't freaking Americans out yet. So let's hope China steps up its game, without doing anything too evil, like when China blew up a satellite and doubled the size of the debris field orbiting Earth. But a Chinese astronaut on Mars would be just the thing we need to jolt us out of our complacency.

Who knows when the U.S. would have put a dude on the moon if Russia hadn't put a dog in space back in 1957? The U.S. government is pretty stingy when it comes to science funding, but there's always money for war and coping with outside threats. Space funding dropped sharply in the 1990s, and now we're retiring our space shuttle fleet. The only recent increase in space funding was $300 million for defending U.S. satellites after China destroyed that weather satellite. It sucks that we need an outside competitor to make us take space exploration seriously again.But on the other hand, a little more competition could be healthy for everyone. Images by AP.

Image of the Venus Express from the European Space Agency. [MSNBC]

Says Nader Elhefnawy:

[James] started with thinly-sketched claims about Soviet capabilities and programs for which the evidence was slim, and then extrapolated from them in a frictionless universe where unproven technologies never disappoint and bureaucratic irrationality never gets in the way.

In other words, by focusing on the absolute worst case, James helped make the Cold War that much more frenzied. It's an important lesson for the next time futurists make teeth-grinding predictions about Chinese space mastery or super-terrorists. But is anyone willing to learn it?

Space War and Future Hype [Plausible Futures]

In May, China launched a satellite for Nigeria, the first time another country paid the Chinese to put a commercial satellite in orbit. And in late October, China launched the Chang'e lunar orbiter, named after a Chinese goddess who flew to the moon. The Chang'e will orbit the moon for a year, sending back images and data on the Moon's surface. China's seeking more private investment in its space program. And India isn't far behind.

Maybe the competition will force the U.S. to improve its science education, hopes Washington state business leader Don Brunell:

Americans may need a national emergency, like the launch of Sputnik, to wake us up. Perhaps the Asian space programs will be the catalyst.