With NASA’s budget problems and recent technical problems with Russia’s space program, it may seem like humanity’s race into space has run into a snag.  But there is actually tremendous progress being made.  China is moving forward with its own ambitious space program, and private companies in the U.S. are spending a lot of money to build spaceships of their own.

You may not be aware of this, but China has been sending people into space since 2003 and conducted its first space walk in 2008.  They’re a little late getting into this game, but they’re catching up fast.  By the end of September, 2011, the Chinese Space Agency says it will put the first segment of a new space station in orbit.

The Chinese space station, named Tiangong or “Heavenly Palace,” will be used to perform microgravity experiments similar to what is done on the International Space Station.  It will be smaller and lighter than the ISS when complete, which is an advantage because it will cost less to launch all the segments.

Meanwhile, a new spaceship factory has opened in the United States.  Located in California, this factory will build ships based on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipOne, which won $10 million dollars for being the first privately funded ship to carry a person into space.  Virgin Galactic is part owner of the new factory.

Virgin Galactic primarily aims to make money on space tourism, but the business of space travel has other purposes as well.  NASA still has to get astronauts to the ISS somehow, and for the moment the plan is to use private companies like a taxi service.  Corporations and universities could also use privately owned spaceships to perform microgravity experiments, and in the slightly more distant future, nations and companies might want to harvest passing asteroids for valuable metals.

Books like Ben Bova’s Asteroid Wars and Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey paint a vivid picture of our near future (although Clarke picked the wrong year).  By the end of the century, humanity might not only be exploring and exploiting the solar system, but fighting over it too.

For more on China’s “Heavenly Palace,” click here.

For more on the new spaceship factory in the US, click here.

This week, NASA launched a new mission to the Moon and announced a new rocket design to take humans as far as Mars.  Also, scientists discovered another planet that just might be able to support life.  I covered those stories in posts earlier this week.  Here’s some of the exciting science news I didn’t talk about.

• Planet Like “Star Wars” Tatooine Discovered Orbiting 2 Suns from Space.com.
• NASA Finds “Death Star” Blasting Planet With X-Rays from National Geographic.
• Astronomer: 3 Reasons We Can’t Blow Up a Planet Sci-Fi Style from Blastr.
• Behind the Scenes of NASA’s Upcoming MMORPG from Universe Today.
• Robot Journalist Will Snag Pulitzer By 2016, Predicts Robot-Journalist Programmer from Popular Science.
• Astronomy Photographer of the Year from the National Maritine Museum.

Scientists say they’ve found yet another planet capable of supporting life.  This brings the grand total to three: Earth, Gliese 581 d, and this newly discovered HD 85512 b.  I’m still not sure why we don’t give planets simpler names.  Maybe we’re waiting to ask their inhabitants what they call them.

Source: SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

Anyway, these planets are special because they reside in their parent stars’ Goldilocks Zones, the region that’s not too hot and not too cold.  For a planet to sustain life-as-we-know-it, it must have a temperature just right for liquid water to flow on the surface.

HD 85512 b is bigger than Earth and probably a bit warmer, but I’m sure the HD 85512 b-ians don’t mind… just as the Gliese 581 d-ians don’t mind the cold.

The quest for life-bearing planets continues, but we also have to consider the possibility of alternative forms of life.  Recent studies suggest arsenic-based and chlorine-based life are possible, and researchers in Scotland are trying to create inorganic life (life with no carbon whatsoever).

Silicon-based life, like the Horta from Star Trek or the creatures from the Aliens movies, still seems unlikely for lots of reasons, but scientists should remain open to that possibility too.

To the best of my knowledge, life based on arsenic, chlorine, and silicon still require liquid water, just like we do (our biochemistry is based on carbon in combination with hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur).  So these two planets are still special.  But today we know of thousands of planets.  By focusing on only two, we could overlook life-as-we-don’t-know-it.

NASA has unveiled its new rocket design.  Below is an animation of what it will look like.  This monster will have more power than the space shuttle’s booster rockets, more even than the Saturn V used for the Apollo Missions (Saturn V is the most powerful rocket ever put into operation).  It will be ridiculously expensive with a cost estimate of $35 billion (keep in mind NASA’s cost estimates are always wrong) and won’t be ready for at least ten years.

But the Space Launch System, or SLS, isn’t just another space shuttle.  The boring task of putting astronauts in Earth orbit will be left to private companies.  NASA’s new rocket will take humans beyond the Moon.  In other words, we’re going to Mars!

I have to admit I was skeptical when Congress and the Obama Administration shut down the space shuttle program and canceled the next mission to the Moon.  Companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are picking up where they left off, but somehow that just doesn’t feel the same.  For the last year or two, space enthusiasts like myself have only had the International Space Station to be excited about.

According to NASA officials, the first SLS crew is supposed to fly in 2021.  The SLS will send astronauts to an asteroid in 2025, and the first human on Mars will arrive sometime in the 2030’s.  Private companies can worry about traveling to and from Earth orbit while NASA gets to be pioneers.

This past weekend (Saturday, September 10^th to be exact), NASA launched a new mission to the Moon, and officials say this is the most important Moon mission since the original.  After all, the original only got us information about the Moon’s surface; this time, we’re going to learn about what’s inside.

Two probes, named GRAIL A and GRAIL B, will orbit the Moon, carefully measuring its gravitational field.  From this data, scientists can determine what’s inside.  Does the Moon have magma under its crust, like Earth, or is it solid all the way through?  What elements are in its core, and are they different than what’s found on Earth?  And most importantly, where is all that green cheese we were promised?

But the really cool part of this mission is that middle schoolers from all over the US get to participate.  NASA has set up a program for schools that allows students to select sites on the lunar surface to photograph.

The United States is not doing a great job with science education.  I believe science fiction writers can help by writing stories children enjoy with a sprinkling of real science added in.  But this program, which is called MoonKAM, is even better because it allows children to get involved in the scientific process and experience the thrill of discovery first hand.

For more on MoonKAM, click here.

Here are this week’s links.

• How 9/11 Changed Science Fiction from Io9.
• NASA Photographed Apollo Landing Sites from Breaking Science News e-Magazine.
• The Large Hadron Collider Backlash Is Going To Be Disgusting from Motherboard.
• Third Experiment Sees Hints of Dark Matter from New Scientist.
• The U.S. Army Is Ordering Weaponized, Soldier-Launched Kamikaze Suicide Drones from Popular Science.
• “Game-Changer” in Evolution from S. African Bones from the Associated Press.