Oh good, the test version of NASA’s Ares 1-X worked well, and I’m really not being snide here. But it is with some envy that one reads the account in the Washington Post, by Emily Wax and datelined Pannithittu, of the excitement and enthusiasm in India for their nation’s plans to put people in spacesuits in orbit in another six years or so. After an opening vignette on a pigtailed high schooler studying science hard so she might qualify for astronaut training, one finds a well-informed roundup of India’s deep history in space, its rivalry with even more ambitions by China to it north, and a cheeky suggestion that some day NASA astronauts may have to book seats in Indian shuttles to get to the Moon.

Other Washington Post Science News Dept:

• What’s missing here? Nina Shen Rastogi : How far should you go to kill germs?: A lot of people are just a tad bit on the Howard Hughes side of microbophobia. The hed suggests the story might help inject some sanity into the immense appetite for household goods that say they kill germs and otherwise create a sanitary living place. But a good chance is missed here to deeply answer the reader’s question, which is whether an organic product is “strong enough to kill all of the nasty bugs in my kitchen.” That seems an invitation to find out 1) Whether it is even possible to kill them all short of a nuclear bomb and 2) Whether that really matters very much. The story drifts in that direction, but generally leaves intact the reader’s belief that she or he needs to extensively de-germ the kitchen. The kitchen and most everything else in a hospital, sure. But the Tracker suspects there is scant evidence that, in the home, heavy scrubbing of nearly everything with disinfectants has any epidemiological impact on disease rates compared to simply wiping counters, sweeping and mopping floors, plus a little elbow grease on the occasional cutting board where you just disaggregated some meat or eggs. That surmise would be worth investigating.

- Charlie Petit

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