FYI,

"Virtual-Space Gurus Build Final Frontier
- NASA collaborates with rocket enthusiasts on real-world
applications"
MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17841125

: Yes, the synthetic world known as Second Life has things that are
: not of this world, including floating launch pads, mini-planets,
: space shuttles and an international space station. More is on the
: way: environments that look and feel like the moon, for instance,
: or simulated lava tubes that could help researchers build real-life
: bases on the moon or Mars.

: The colonization of virtual outer space hints at the shape of
: things to come, for NASA as well as less traditional players on the
: final frontier. And along the way, the virtual-world pioneers are
: encountering some of the same technical and bureaucratic challenges
: they deal with in the real world.

: Science fiction is a huge draw in Second Life — an online
: environment where more than 5 million user-controlled characters,
: or "avatars," can interact with each other. There are virtual
: enclaves for fans of "Star Trek," "Battlestar Galactica,"
: "Serenity" and other outer-space realms from films and TV shows.
: But what we're talking about here is a different level of virtual
: space, drawing upon real spacecraft and real-life organizations.

: You can stroll (or fly) through the International Spaceflight
: Museum, where 52 virtual rockets from 12 countries are on display
: — including a mammoth Saturn 5, a fully loaded space shuttle and
: the SpaceShipOne rocket plane.

: "I call it an art project that got out of hand," said the museum's
: founder, Katherine Prawl (who is known in Second Life as Kat
: Lemieux). She said the museum will soon unveil a virtual space
: shuttle with moving parts and a cockpit that avatars can sit in,
: crafted by rocket builder Jimbo Perhaps.

: "It's too big to fly in Second Life, but it's just beautiful," she
: told MSNBC.com.

: From the museum's grounds, you can fly (or teleport) straight up to
: what passes for low Earth orbit, where a shuttle can be seen
: closing in to dock with the space station. From there, you can
: teleport to floating displays of the planets — a solar system
: lineup that still includes Pluto. In virtual miles, the Pluto
: display isn't nearly as far from Earth's surface as the real thing
: (3 billion miles), but it's still quite a fall if you jump off the
: edge.

: If you know the right people, you can launch your own model
: rockets, or ride skyward on the tip of a ballistic missile. "What's
: really fun is when you can go out and build your own rocket," said
: Robin Snelson (a.k.a. Rocket Sellers), who gave a presentation on
: Second Life rocketry at last week's Space Access '07 conference.

: Serious benefit

: Snelson and other space activists have set up virtual shop on (and
: above) Space CoLab Island, adjacent to the International
: Spaceflight Museum. The island, which serves as Second Life's nexus
: for NASA and allied space groups, boasts a high-tech headquarters
: building, a mountaintop meeting room and amphitheater, and three
: levels of "skypods" floating directly above the mountain.

: "Space CoLab Island is the community hub, if you will, for these
: efforts. It's where professional networkng and knowledge sharing
: happens," said MoonFront's Andrew Hoppin (a.k.a. Drew Frobozz), who
: is working with NASA's Ames Research Center to develop partnerships
: in the online and offline entrepreneurial worlds. A real-life CoLab
: center, corresponding to the Second Life presence, is under
: development in San Francisco.

: NASA is serious about using Second Life as a frontier for
: collaboration and technology, said Jessy Cowan-Sharp (a.k.a.
: DragonFire Kelly) of Ames Research Center. "If you look at the
: functionality of Second Life, it's really just a set of tools that
: you can do whatever you want with," she told MSNBC.com. "There's so
: much more going on with Second Life than games."

: Test bed for exploration

: Cowan-Sharp sees Second Life as a natural test bed for building
: scientifically accurate representations of other worlds, based on
: data flowing in from interplanetary probes. "Imagine your online
: 'avatar' standing beside a rover as it makes its way across the
: Martian surface — in real time," she wrote in a briefing document.

: Collaboration between Second Lifers could add another dimension to
: the test bed.

: "Our avatars could be sitting next to each other in Second Life,
: and real-time data could be flowing in from a rover on Mars, and I
: could say, 'What if we combine that data with the data we brought
: in yesterday?'" she said.

: Another scenario might call for a crew of avatars could test the
: virtual representation of a communications system on a virtual
: moon, to figure out which combination of radio or laser relays
: would be most efficient.

: Alien and earthly experiments

: Some experiments are already under way on CoLab's island complex:
: The Oregon L5 Society is spearheading the construction of a lava
: tube habitat, suitable for the moon or Mars, while another project
: is focusing on Martian habitat-building and terraforming.

: Even as they replicate alien worlds, NASA and space-savvy Second
: Lifers are replicating earthly interactions as well. "Our first few
: months in Second Life have really been about building community,
: almost above content," Cowan-Sharp explained.

: That sometimes means dealing with thorny issues from real life,
: NASA-style. For example, at a CoLab meeting this week, Drew (that
: is, Hoppin) and DragonFire (Cowan-Sharp) agonized along with other
: avatars over whether space entrepreneurs could have their corporate
: logos displayed on CoLab virtual property. The verdict? Not until
: NASA figures out "how to jump through the legal hoops," Drew typed.

: Some wondered whether the situation called for a "CoLab Research
: Park," analogous to the commercial NASA Research Park that's
: adjacent to Ames in Mountain View, Calif. "Interesting," Dragonfire
: typed.

: When worlds collide

: There'll be more collisions between the real and virtual worlds in
: the weeks and months ahead: On April 12, Second Lifers have planned
: 24 hours' worth of activities for Yuri's Night, a worldwide
: celebration of human spaceflight. And during May's annual
: International Space Development Conference, Pete Worden, director
: of NASA's Ames Research Center, is due to deliver an address in
: Second Life.

: In addition to CoLab, other real-world organizations are building
: outer-space views into their own virtual-world facilities. The
: Second Life analog to San Francisco's Exploratorium, known as
: the 'Splo, has displays relating to eclipses and other scientific
: topics. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is
: focusing on climate and sea simulations. And the Second Life
: Observatory, modeled after the University of Denver's Mount Evans
: Meyers-Womble Observatory, offers views of real astronomical
: targets through a virtual telescope.

: One "next step" under consideration is using virtual-world
: observatories as an interface for controlling real-world
: telescopes, and passing the resulting imagery back to the virtual
: stargazer in real time.

: Future space in Second Life

: Further down the line, virtual worlds could help motivate kids to
: stick with math and science for the long haul, said Daniel Laughlin
: (a.k.a. Greyark Hightower), an education researcher at NASA's
: Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland,
: Baltimore County.

: For example, seventh-graders might play a hybrid video game that
: involves creating a virtual moon base. "By the time they're in
: college, they're using the moon base they built as their launch
: point for building a very large telescope array on Europa to look
: for extrasolar planets," he told MSNBC.com.

: Laughlin himself has been working on a NASA-based educational game
: focusing on the agency's vision for going back to the moon and on
: to Mars.

: Could Second Life give residents the sense of riding a spaceship
: into orbit? Not yet: For now, virtual rockets that are blasted with
: enough force to go into orbit simply disappear once they reach a
: certain height, then end up being returned to the "lost and found"
: in Second Life. But Laughlin said there's no ironclad reason why
: space couldn't be simulated.

: "You could certainly create an area that forces the lighting to
: nighttime and populate it with stars," he mused. "The tools for the
: physics of Second Life are fairly sophisticated, if you could do
: the programming that can make it do everything that you wanted to
: simulate. ... You would have to do the coding to adjust the
: gravity."

: Cowan-Sharp, meanwhile, would like to find ways to standardize the
: tools used to transform real-life data sets into virtual
: environments — so that a virtual Mars created for Second Life could
: be easily morphed into custom-made simulations for NASA, or perhaps
: upgraded for a Third, Fourth or Fifth Life.

: "It's clear that there's nothing out there that's even close to
: what Second Life is capable of ... yet," Cowan-Sharp said. "But you
: can only imagine what the capabilities will be in 10 years."

Mark Reiff