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So NASA’s Constellation program is dead. No more Ares rockets, no government-funded Orion capsule.

With all due respect to the engineers who worked on the program, we’re better off without it.

After six years and $9 billion spent, Constellation only managed a single suborbital test launch—of mostly mockup hardware. By comparison, Elon Musk—the leader of a pack of entrepreneurs who hope to take Constellation’s launch business—started his company (SpaceX) in 2002, designed and built two new rockets from scratch, and sent one into orbit—also within six years. With his own money.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule: Private companies have hardware, too.

Emotions are running high in the wake of Constellation’s demise, with lots of angry backlash. If Return-to-the-Moon boosters need someone beside NASA to blame, they could point a finger at the Bush White House, which never delivered the promised funding, or Congress, whose oversight of NASA often amounts only to protecting jobs in key districts, however inefficient.

That dysfunctional behavior is certain to continue, which means Constellation was likely to keep overspending and underperforming. As Jim Kohlenberger of the White House science office said this week to a reporter who questioned walking away from the $9 billion investment in Constellation, “That isn’t an excuse to pour another $50 billion into an unsustainable program.”

Can SpaceX, or SpaceDev, or Blue Origin, or any of the other commercial launch contenders really bring down costs and change the game of human space exploration? Musk clams he can send people into orbit for $20 million a seat and do it by 2014, faster than Constellation would have. We’ll see. But even if his pricing is off by a factor of five, he’ll still beat Ares/Orion.

What about safety? Defenders of the status quo argue, passionately, that putting astronauts on private launchers is far too risky. (Never mind that NASA inspectors will look over the vehicles first, or that some of the commercial rockets are older and more reliable than the space shuttle, or that the Russians beat NASA’s prices every day, and have the safest launchers in the world.)

After the Challenger and Columbia accidents, NASA reminded the public that sending people into space is inherently dangerous, and always will be. Will Musk et al. get the same allowance if (when?) they have accidents?

Other critics predict that layers of NASA oversight will drive up the private launchers’ costs enough that they, too, will eventually want half a billion dollars for each ferry flight to the space station. Just wait, the skeptics say. The new contractors will start acting—and charging—like the old ones.

Maybe so. But if that’s really the answer, if it turns out that safe human spaceflight will always be fantastically expensive, it’s fair to question whether it can continue.

Pleading for more money won’t work. NASA currently spends about $10 billion a year on human spaceflight, a huge amount by any standard. That’s more than the entire National Science Foundation gets, and twice the budget of the National Cancer Institute. Defenders of the old program can’t just keep crying poorhouse. Not in this economy. Not ever.

We need to either find a dramatically cheaper approach to human spaceflight (a worthy challenge for a 21^st-Century NASA), or see it priced out of business. Viewed in those stark terms, the “gamble” on commercial launch is no gamble at all.

Last week, Air New Zealand announced in breathless language that they had finally solved the problem of sleeping in economy class. “Air New Zealand will transform international air travel later this year when it introduces revolutionary, Kiwi-designed lie-flat economy” seats, read a company press release. “For those who choose, the days of sitting in economy and yearning to lie down and sleep are gone,” said CEO Rob Fyfe. “The dream is now a reality, one that you can even share with a travelling companion…”

It’s called the Skycouch.

I pictured myself blissfully sleeping in a six-foot-long, lie-flat surface, either in a sleeper compartment or out in the open with other horizontal passengers. I scrolled, desperately hunting for a photo, or a link, or…

Finally, I thought, an airline has taken the plunge with lie-flat in economy! This will be truly revolutionary!

I scanned the email as confusion set in. Ah, two attachments! I opened the first one, but it was an annoying little thumbnail .jpg of the company’s logo. The second one was a design element, sort of like the thingy they paint on the tail.

I blinked at the screen a few more seconds. The wording in the press release didn’t make it clear what this lie-flat seat looked like.

I emailed the company, and a very cordial media relations woman responded the next day with a password to the web page where I could view pictures.

Oh…

Uh…

Let’s see…they should have added that the travelling companion should be “someone you’re happy to spoon with in something the size of a compact car’s trunk.”

The Air New Zealand Skycouch. Photo: Air New Zealand

Here’s how it works: You know how you pull the side lever on a Barcalounger, and the leg rest swings up and rotates you to a reclining posture? Well this ain’t that. It does have smaller, similar panels that rotate up from below the three economy seats between the aisle and window, filling the space to seatbacks in front of you. The arm rests rotate up between the seats—nothing new there. Your seatbacks recline a little. (The people in front of you can decide to do the same.) Then you lie down with your companion, your heads toward the window, in a space almost as wide as a twin bed.

And a lot shorter. According to Air New Zealand, the three seats measure 1.56 meters from the aisle to the window, or five-feet-one-inch. I’m almost six feet tall. So “lie-flat” (the wording used in the press release) is good for pre-adolescents, hobbits, and the average woman from Bahrain.

His head's propped so his feet don't stick out in the aisle—not what we call "lie-flat." Yes, it's better than sitting up—for the cost of two and a half fares and a $140 premium. Photo: Air New Zealand

You and your companion each pay about $70 more than for an ordinary economy seat, and half a fare for the third seat.

For a parent traveling with a toddler, it’s probably worth the money; with two toddlers, the parent stays upright on the aisle while the toddlers lie and sleep. Still worth the money.

But I’m left wondering when an airline will step forward—helped by regulatory agencies, Boeing, and Airbus—and fit an airplane with couchettes, as on European trains? Not the whole airplane. Just a few seats on some transoceanic flights, with beds about six feet or so. Just try it. Charge a premium and see who’s willing to pay. I will. I would sleep on the blessed floor just to lie flat. Lufthansa has yet to move forward with a concept they were considering a couple years ago.

Auckland to Los Angeles: Is he gonna fly 13 hours like that? He'll need to pull his foot in from the aisle each time the cart comes by. Screen grab: Air New Zealand promotional video

Air New Zealand will offer the Skycouch in the first 11 rows of the economy cabin on a Boeing 777 starting this November.

Snore.

Photo: NASA, ESA, and D. Jewitt (UCLA)

Is that what’s going on in this Hubble Space Telescope image?

Smile boys, you're on Candid Camera. NASA astronauts Jeff Williams (left) and T. J. Creamer on board the space station today.

As reality TV, let’s just say it lacks drama. So far I haven’t seen a single shouting match. But beginning today, you can watch live as NASA astronauts go about their daily business inside the International Space Station.

The “Live From the ISS” link on NASA’s space station web page shows you the view from inside the U.S. Destiny laboratory module, looking toward the Harmony node. The astronauts will float in and out of view as they conduct experiments, exercise, or tend to housekeeping chores. We won’t hear what they’re saying to each other, but will hear any open-air communications between the station and ground controllers.

The astronauts have okayed this intrusion on their privacy in the interest of sharing their experience with the general public. Mostly it will be NASA astronauts inside Destiny, but Russian and other international crew members are aware that when they enter the U.S. lab, they’ll be on display.

For the astronauts, it may not feel very different. Onboard video is routinely available on NASA TV during times when the shuttle is docked to the station, and Mission Control is able to watch what the astronauts are doing most of the time. Besides, says NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries, the astronauts can always decide to turn off the cameras temporarilyat their discretion.

To follow the action (such as it is), you may want to consult the space station daily timelines, or read reports of recent activities on board.

Russia’s first “fifth-generation” fighter made its debut today on a snowy airfield in the country’s far east.

Sukhoi test pilot Sergey Bogdan took the company’s PAK FA prototype aircraft on a 47-minute flight before returning to the factory runway at Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Bogdan reported that the new fighter was “easy and comfortable to pilot,” according to a company press release.

Exactly what constitutes a fifth-generation fighter is open to some interpretation, but the PAK FA now appears to join the U.S. F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter at the forefront of modern military aviation.

Russia Today has video of the first flight, which, despite the title, could hardly have been “Top Secret” if it’s on YouTube.