Privately funded research and development has driven scientific advances in many fields. But some of the most costly areas of science, such as high-energy physics and space exploration, lack obvious commercial potential and have traditionally relied on the public purse. For space, that looks set to change. Billionaires can buy their way on to the International Space Station (ISS), which now looks like an expensive advertising hoarding, disowned by scientists and prey to publicity stunts like the $1m delivery of a Pizza Hut pizza in 2001.
Yet bigger things are afoot. In 2004 SpaceShipOne skimmed the ionosphere to win the $10m Ansari X prize offered for the first privately funded manned spaceflight. The ship was built by Scaled Composites, an American company headed by entrepreneur Burt Rutan. Scaled Composites was not the only contender for the prize, but it has beaten the competition to win the backing of Richard Branson, who wants Rutan to supply the spacecraft that will launch his Virgin Galactic space tourism business in 2009. Branson has announced the design of SpaceShipTwo and its launch vehicle WhiteKnightTwo, the next stage in development of a spacecraft that will take passengers to the stars. Both are more than half built already. Advocates for space tourism claim that the tickets could one day cost as little as $25,000. And Branson says the flights will be up for hire for launching satellites too.
The commercial prospects have stimulated an engineering inventiveness that exposes the antiquated design and shabby management of Nasa's space shuttles, arguably a classic example of the inefficiencies that free marketeers decry in state-funded enterprises. Nasa seems to tacitly accept this. Aware that its planned replacement for the shuttle, the Orion spacecraft, won't be ready until at least 2015—leaving the ISS wholly dependent on Russian rockets—it is contracting out a stopgap solution to private companies. This is part of a Nasa programme to, in its own words, "encourage, support and stimulate the development of a commercial market for space transportation."
But in late January the US Government Accountability Office authorised a contract severance with one of Nasa's commercial partners, Rocketplane Kistler, after targets were not met. The replacement will be announced very soon. There's no sign that Nasa has been talking to Branson, but it could do worse.
Let a thousand genomes bloom
Less than a decade after the decoding of an entire human genome, scientists plan to decipher 1,000 of them. Much of what makes us "who we are" lies not in the information held in the (composite) DNA studied by the human genome project, but in the typically 1 per cent difference between that genome and that of any individual. Such variations can reveal a lot about how the human race evolved and how genes confer predisposition to disease. Understanding this variation requires looking across ethnic groups, and the "1000 Genomes Project," based at centres in the US, Britain and China, will study the DNA of people ranging from Japanese in Tokyo to Maasai Kenyans and Tuscan Italians.
The study will utilise much faster and cheaper gene-sequencing technologies than those used by the human genome project: it is scheduled to last only three years, and has a modest price tag of $30-50m. When fully up and running, in 2009, it will decode the equivalent of more than two human genomes a day.
The main aim is to find out more about the regions of the genome that seem most closely linked to common diseases. Much is already known about the specific genetic mutations that cause rare conditions such as cystic fibrosis, and also about the weaker effects of variants associated with widespread conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. The 1000 Genomes Project aims to explore the middle ground between the very common and very rare: for example, to show how differences such as duplicated or deleted segments of the genome are linked to susceptibility to conditions like autism.
But given that human genetic variability is immense, are 1,000 genomes enough? And nothing about the participants will be identified beyond their ethnicity, making it impossible to link the genetics to specific manifestations of disease. It will surely be a useful resource, but perhaps, because of the anonymity, not as useful as it might have been.
The disappearance of dark matter
Dark matter is so inexplicable that more than one astrophysicist must have wished it would just go away. Yet the discovery of a galaxy where it apparently has vanished is even more disconcerting. Dark matter can't be seen directly, but its presence in galaxies can be inferred from its gravitational influence on visible matter. In galaxy NGC 4736, however, no such influence is evident, according to a team of Polish astronomers. It's a bit like finding a tiny patch free of sand in the middle of the Sahara. Worse, in fact, because dark matter is generally considered to be the gravitational seed from which galaxies grow: they can't form without it. There is scepticism about the claim, but if it holds, the idea of dark matter as ubiquitous galactic glue seems threatened.
