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Commission Says Mars Mission Would Require Sweeping Changes In Space Prgram; Toyota Dealerships Nationwide Face Shortages Of Prius Hybrid Cars; Experts Fear Shortage Of Air Traffic Controllers

Aired June 19, 2004 - 15:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN ANCHOR, NEXT@CNN: Hi everybody. I'm Daniel Sieberg. Today on NEXT@CNN, will humans ever walk on Mars? Well a presidential commission says it will take sweeping changes in the nation's space program to make this dream come true.

Also, when alligators walked through the suburbs, they're not always the best neighbors.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That alligator has eaten something recently. Look at that belly. That's probably a dog in there.

SIEBERG: And ocean scientists cruise for news. What can cruise ships offer that research vessels don't other than shuffleboard?`

All that and more on NEXT.

On Monday, if all goes according to plan, a rocket plane called Spaceship One will carry its pilot more than 60 miles above the Earth's surface into what is officially considered space. Miles O'Brien reports on a project that could open a new chapter in space exploration.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Aviation legend Burt Rutan has always aimed high and most often reached his lofty goals so people in the know don't snicker when he says something like this.

BURT RUTAN: Our goal is to show that you can develop a robust, safe manned space program and to do it at extremely low costs.

O'BRIEN: A safe manned space program from a company with 135 employees based in a few hangars in California's high desert. So far there Rutan's team has given no reason to doubt they can't pull it off even though the Mohave Airport could not be farther, literally and figuratively from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

RUTAN: I think it's time that the commercial guys get aggressive on manned space flight rather than waiting for NASA. I'm frustrated by the lack of progress in manned space flight and we -- I want to do as much as I can do. O'BRIEN: So for the past three years he has been designing, building, test flying and tweaking a craft he called "Spaceship One." Carried off the ground by an odd seagull like jet called White Knight, Spaceship One is released about 11 miles up, that is about four miles higher than an airliner's highest altitudes and that's when Spaceship One starts burning rubber, literally, tire rubber when mixed with nitro oxide laughing gas, it is a stable state of the art rocket fuel. Who knew?

MIKE MELVILL, TEST PILOT: It's quicker than most fighters and nervous little airplanes.

O'BRIEN: Pilot Mike Melvill has now logged eight Spaceship One flights straight up for a wild, blistering fast ride getting closer and closer to the official gateway of space, 100 kilometers or 62.5 miles.

MELVILL: Two and half times the speed of sound MACH 2.5 and then it comes to a stop up there and you're weightless.

O'BRIEN: After three minutes or so in weightlessness, what comes up will succumb to the grip of gravity, plummeting to earth almost as fast, entering the atmosphere at twice the speed of sound.

MELVILL: I mean it's a risky thing, no question about it. I know my wife is terrified.

O'BRIEN: Spaceship One is designed to drop like a shuttle cock. And when then, when speed permits, transform into a glider for a 100 mile an hour touchdown on the Mohave runway.

MELVILL: It has avionics, which are developed just for it. Which is inertia NAV flight director.

O'BRIEN: Rutan designed "Spaceship One" for simplicity and economy. Unlike the shuttle which is guided by computers every step of the way, Spaceship One is flown by the pilot using cables and push rods not unlike the controls Lindbergh used to cross the Atlantic 75 years ago.

RUTAN: Things are dangerous, then you take the NASA approach and go in and make so many redundancies and do so much training and you do so much preparing for a flight that you can't afford to fly.

O'BRIEN: Even though he won't confirm it, Rutan reportedly spent about $25 million developing Spaceship One, about 1/20th the cost of one shuttle flight. Much of the money comes from Microsoft cofounder and space enthusiast Paul Allen.

Rutan's group is the clear leader in the quest for the X-prize a $10 million privately funded purse that will go to the first civilian team to fly to space in a vehicle capable of carrying three people, then repeat the feat within two weeks. Rutan says he was not motivated by the X-prize and the first flight is not the start of an attempt to win it, but, eventually...

RUTAN: We are interested in winning that because it's money and we want to win it.

O'BRIEN: Burt Rutan has been a winner before, against long odds, designing the airplane his brother Dick flew around the world on one tank of gas in 1986. These days Burt says he is getting bored designing mere airplanes and it's high time entrepreneurs like him made it to space. He means it. He's already grabbed the first passenger seat on Spaceship One for himself.

SIEBERG: Well, NASA's Cassina's spacecraft is doing to go into orbit around Saturn in less than two weeks. As it makes its way toward the ring planet, it's sending back some pretty cool images of the sights along the way. This is Saturn's moon Phoebe, which is obviously kind of beat up as moons go. Researchers say its potholed surfaces with signs of ice suggest that it formed in the outer solar system and then was sucked into orbit by Saturn's strong gravity. Cassina will spend four years studying Saturn, its rings and its 31 moons.

(voice-over): Meanwhile NASA's Starta spacecraft is dazzling scientists with its close-up pictures of a comet. The probe flew close to the comet built to in January and collected samples, which will bring back to Earth. Researchers were surprised by the number of jets of gas shooting from the comet's surface and by the variety of features on its surface. Including craters with flat floors, some with pinnacles growing out of them.

NASA's Mars rovers are still hard at work on the red planet. Spirit is exploring the Columbia hills and examining some odd-looking rocks that scientists find fascinating. On the other side of Mars, "Opportunity" is roving around the Endurance Crater looking at the layers of rock. There has been some concern, though, that the Rover won't be able to climb out of the crater, but scientists say they're confident that Opportunity can do it. A little Opportunity that could.

(on camera): You might recall in January President Bush announced plans for a new push in space exploration that would eventually send humans to Mars. Well a blue ribbon panel has been looking at the proposal. And this week it issued a report that says it can be done, but it will require some big changes. Miles O'Brien reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN, (voice-over): Charged with boot strapping, NASA's audacious space itinerary to the Moon and Mars, a presidential commission offered some advice on how to get there from here.

PETE ALDRIDGE, FORMER AIR FORCE SECRETARY: Nasa's focus ought to be on that exploration initiative and allow some of the more operational, less-risky functions that are being performed by the government be transferred exclusively to the private sector.

O'BRIEN: Led by Former Air Force Secretary Pete Aldridge, the commission wants NASA to be more business friendly, partnering with space entrepreneurs. It endorsed NASA's plans to offer cash rewards for innovative ideas and accomplishments. It calls on NASA to outsource some of the operations of its field centers to universities and nonprofit organizations. And the panel wants the White House to create a space steering council to develop policy and coordinate the efforts of all space-faring federal agencies.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of people asked us, you know well, how much will this cost? The answer is, I don't know. I asked the same question. How much is the cure for cancer going to cost?

O'BRIEN: The ideas are hard to criticize, but the details are scant. And on Capitol Hill, they know all too well that is how NASA could get lost on its way to Mars.

SEN. BILL NELSON, (D) FLORIDA: I think the vision is a true one. But it's not being implemented and sooner or later if you're going to go to the Moon and Mars you have to make the commitment in dollars. That's got to be supported by the White House.

SEN. KAT BAILEY HUTCHINSON, (R) TEXAS: We can't afford not to invest in research. If we are going to maintain our strong economy.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: The White House and NASA are embracing the report. It does, after all, endorse their pay-as-you-go approach. But this is an election year and the presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry told Space.com the Bush space initiative throws out lofty goals, but fails to support those goals with realistic funding.

ANNOUNCER: When we come back, some enterprising birds go to Home Depot and learn how to do it themselves.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: The shoreline along the Gulf Coast is slip-sliding away. That's according to a new report released by the U.S. Geological Survey. Worst hit is Louisiana. Each year that state loses about 25 square miles of land and scientists predict it will only get worse. Barrier islands and tidal inlets and other parts of the Gulf Coast are also eroding, but the news isn't all-bad. Some areas of the Texas and Florida coastline are actually gaining sand. The report is the first in a series of nationwide studies to assess the health of the coasts from sea to shining sea.

Well if you think you have wildlife problems because of squirrels in the bird feeder, just be glad you don't live in South Florida. The gators are getting frisky. As John Zarrella reports, that brings them into conflict with people.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Try explaining this one to your insurance agent. It was no lie, an alligator that ate Caroline Christine's bumper. A last desperate act of defiant before it's capture. Another took a bite out of Jennifer Cook's dog.

JENNIFER'S COOK, FLORIDA RESIDENT: I got my dog and took him right to the hospital. ZARRELLA: This time of year in Florida, alligators are on the move. Dry weather sends them in search of water. It's mating season, too. Gators end up looking for love in all the wrong places, which bring out the local trapper to remove the critter.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That alligator has eaten something recently look at that belly. That's probably a dog in there.

ZARRELLA (on camera): This is where gators are supposed to be, out here in the Everglades, but it's not surprising to find them just about anywhere. The alligator is one of nature's greatest comeback stories.

(voice-over): Twenty-five years ago the alligator was an endangered species. Hunting and poaching had nearly wiped them out. Now, there are more than 1 million alligators in Florida. No longer endangered, they are protected.

And it is Fish and Wildlife Officer Bill Stiffler's job to make sure they stay that way.

But he says people who feed the animals in their backyard lakes or canals turn the creatures into nuisance gators and sign their death warrants.

OFFICER BILL STIFFLER, FISH AND WILDLIFE OFFICER: If you call in and you have an aggressive alligator, and we have to come and respond to remove it. The animal is not just taken back out into the Everglades, it is killed. That is our policy.

ZARRELLA: It would be nice, wildlife officials say, if humans and alligators didn't have to co-exist, but in Florida where land is a premium, people and gators are increasingly calling the same territory home.

SIEBERG: In Minneapolis some barn swallows are calling the Home Depot store home and they learned to open the doors for themselves. Their nest is inside the lumber department. And a store employee realized that the parent birds were flying in front of the motion detectors to get in and out of the store.

Now wildlife specialists say the circling behavior is common for barn swallows, but these birds have figured where to circle to get the doors to open. I wonder if they use the self-checkout. It has been going on for four years and obviously these birds are not birdbrains.

Well keeping the birds out of the Home Depot is, obviously not a priority, but for the Dallas Zoo, keeping the gorillas in their enclosure is a huge concern.

The zoo reopened its gorilla exhibit this week three months after a gorilla escaped and injured several people. I know it sounds like King Kong. Zoo officials say he leaped across a 12 foot wide ditch and over a wall.

The new gorilla enclosure has higher walls, electric wires that can give harmless shocks and gorilla speed bumps to prevent the apes from getting up enough speed for a mind boggling jump.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up have gas prices got you thinking about buying a hybrid? That may not be as easy as it sounds.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Japan is developing a high-speed magnetically levitated train that can go 300 miles an hour. But at the moment it is all dressed up with no place to go. Dan Sloan reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN SLOAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Ambitious Japan. That catch phrase is pasted on Japan's fastest trains with none speedier or possibly more costly than the Maglev. The magnetically propelled linear motor car runs on a test track near Mt. Fuji. The product of four decades of research and more than $2 billion in investment.

Using super conducting magnets to float the train, the Maglev moves without friction caused by wheels running on a track.

(on camera): We've reached a top speed of 500 kilometers per hour or over 310 miles per hour in little more than an a minute. We're actually levating about ten centimeters off the track right now.

(voice-over): That speed of travel contrasts with the likelihood that the Maglev in a commercial sense is not going anywhere soon.

Rallied construction from Tokyo to Osaka is estimated at $77 billion; while a backlog of projects and huge government debt likely will keep the Maglev at the station platform indefinitely.

J.R. says it recognizes that lifting the Maglev project off the ground will take some time.

NORIYUKI SHIRAKUNI, GENERAL MGR. MAGLEV TRAIN PROJECT (through translator): If you think about a Maglev Rail Line running from Tokyo to Osaka, the construction and other factors involved would probably mean at least ten years.

SLOAN: Germany and the U.S. have tested Maglev technology on the world's first commercial service runs from Shanghai's airport to the city. Engineering professor Satoru Sone says when looking at commercial viability, the Maglev is not Japan's own Concorde.

PROF. SATORU SONE, KOGAKUMIN UNIVERSITY (through translator): If the project hits $80 billion, it's too expensive, but if it comes down to $50 billion or so on a commercial bases, there is a case for Maglev and bullet train.

SLOAN: Maglev center visitors, unaware of the potential lag or cost involved, say cutting the travel time in half between Japan's major cities would be attractive.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE, (through translator): Absolutely. An hour ride from Tokyo to Osaka would be more convenient.

SLOAN: But when told the potential cost to build the Maglev, most say existing bullet train lines are ambition enough for Japan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Speaking of speed, there is new record for crossing the English Channel in an amphibious vessel. British entrepreneur Richard Branson made the crossing in his aquada in about an hour and 40 minutes, demolishing the old record of six hours. The Aquada looks like a sports car on land but turns into a speedboat when you press a button. Very James Bond. It can get up to 100 miles per hour on land and about 30 on the water.

Well if you decided to buy a hybrid car, you may be in for a surprise. A lot of other people have made the same decision and the competition is getting cut throat. Ross Palombo from our affiliate KRON has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's where it gets a lot of its power from.

ROSS PALOMBO, KRON CORRESPONDENT (voice over): This Tampa resident Thea Moore parked in a San Francisco dealership because her home town 3,000 miles away couldn't keep a Prias parked long enough for her to see one.

THEA MOORE, TAMPA RESIDENT: They didn't have any that I could look at or any in the showroom floor.

PALOMBO: Even in this show room not a single Prius is ready to drive off the lot.

MOORE: But you have a waitlist, right?

PALOMBO: 22,000 customers across the country are on that list, waiting more than six months to get one.

MOORE: I think that's a long time to wait for a car.

PALOMBO: But on the Internet fast lane delivery is available for fast-pace pricing. At least one dealer is offering this car for more than $36,000, roughly $10,000 local dealers say, above average.

LINDA SHERRY, CONSUMER ACTION: That seems an unfair manipulation of the marketplace.

PALOMBO: Unfair, but consumer action says perfectly legal. But even though the Prius is highly rated and in high demand, it recommends putting purchases on idle.

SHERRY: I would wait an extra year perhaps and see the market will probably be flooded with these.

PALOMBO: Dealers say Toyota is shifting production into high gear and trying to stop jacked up pricing.

RUSS MOBLEY, SAN FRANCISCO TOYOTA: They can put some form of pressure on the dealer, is what I've heard. But I think that, in general, the dealers know when they're doing the right thing and the wrong thing.

PALOMBO: Even if they don't, customers certainly do. Thea Moore says she'll wait for her car later rather than be taken for a ride now.

MOORE: I think I'm going to get one. I think I'm going wait.

PALOMBO (on camera): Well, your best bet is to get on one of those waiting lists, but, be careful, some dealers will charge you as much as $5,000 to $8,000 in additional service charges.

SIEBERG: Things you see on a cruise ship, sunbathers, swimmers and shopping, and a marine and atmospheric interferometer. Yes, scientists are conducting high-level marine research onboard this cruise ship, we'll explain why.

(voice-over): Some experts are worried that we'll soon have a shortage of air traffic controllers. Those stories and a lot more are coming up right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. All right, when you think of scientists working in the field, you might imagine them camped out in the jungle or braving desert elements or bouncing around in a tiny research vessel on the high seas -- roughing it, basically. Time to think again. We spent a few days with scientists aboard a ship that's anything but roughing it.

(voice-over): A typical oceanographic research vessel. Not a day at the beach.

ANNOUNCER: With the monsoon winds gusting to 45 knots, just getting into the boat was difficult.

SIEBERG: A far cry from this. What started out a simple conversation about the high cost of ocean research between University of Miami and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines turned into symbiotic partnership putting scientists and labs on a cruise ship. Federal agencies, like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration soon jumped on board.

PETER ORTNER, ATLANTIC OCEANOGRAPHIC AND METEOROLOGICAL LABORATORY: From my perspective, as a government laboratory, this is an incredibly financially efficient way to do it. It's saving the tax payer a lot of money in getting data we really couldn't get any other way.

SIEBERG (on camera): It's another relatively common, sunny day here in the Caribbean. In fact, we're in the port of San Juan in Puerto Rico, but all that calm weather can change in a big hurry. Other changes though, occur gradually over time and they could affect everything from hurricanes, to marine life, to the upper atmosphere.

(voice-over): There are censors and instruments in every part of the Explorer of the Seas, carefully integrated, of course, so the passengers don't trip over any wires on their way to the bar. Water analysis begins with an intake system that brings in as much as 150 liters of ocean water a minute.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The water come up, it gets pumped by a pump through these various instruments.

SIEBERG: But the fact of this lab is on a cruise ship provides an opportunity for a little PR, as well. With daily tours for the public, the lab area was made to look more "Nemo" than nerdy.

(on camera): Now, what was your reaction when you saw the design here? Because I mentioned that not every research lab has colored lights and crystal balls.

OTIS BROWN, Prof. of Meteorology and Physical Oceanography: It's not the traditional ocean science lab on a research ship, this is not the traditional research ship, either.

SIEBERG: During our cruise, we saw scientists who focused on measuring levels of carbon dioxide in the ocean.

RIK WANNINKHOF, NOAA OCEANOGRAPHER: So, what we are trying to do on this ship and on a lot of other ships is try to monitor this seasonal patterns and patterns from year it year.

SIEBERG: Taking critical measurements of sea surface temperatures and almost daily weather balloon launches.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Another wild launch and wooly launch.

SIEBERG: All the weather-related data is shared with other agencies. Last year the ship provided some critical wind speed data to the National Hurricane Center during hurricane Claudette. Still, many of the passengers have no idea that work like this is being done as they lounge by the pool.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was very interesting. I had no idea they did this kind of research.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the second trip on the Explorer and this is why we picked it the first time and why we came back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, I'm one of those people who love technology.

SIEBERG: So, what did you think when you went through on the tour?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I loved it. I thought it was really cool.

SIEBERG: And an added bonus, along with the lab tours, there are some funky hands-on exhibits. SIEBERG (on camera): What do find people ask about when they come down here for a tour?

BROWN: They ask about -- you know, why do you do this? That's one question. What are you learning? That's another question, and what's going to hapen with the hurricane season.

CLODAGH O'CONNOR, CRUISE DIRECTOR EXPLORER OF THE SEA: We make as a company a lot of announcements at the start of the voyage about saving the waves and how important that is to us as a company. So, I think it ties in wonderfully with just what we're doing onboard.

SIEBERG: Scientists from all over the world can apply to spend a week onboard setting up long-term experiments. Since the ship sails 365 days a year, the volume of data is priceless. And it sure beats bouncing around in freezing or dangerous environments. And don't think their academic colleagues don't give them a hard time about it.

PETER MINNETT, PROF. OF METEOROLOGY AND PHYSICAL OCEANOGRAPHY: To begin with, people thing, oh, you cannot possibly be serious. How can you do good science on a ship like this? As soon as we show them the data, show them what we're doing, then, of course, they are often convinced.

SIEBERG: Even with all the hard core science going on, obviously, the researchers still find time for a few distractions. Hey, it is a cruise ship after all. And perhaps not surprisingly, the waitlist for new scientists to conduct their work onboard is five months long.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: I know we made hard work look easy. Well, we'll have more stories from the Explorer of the Seas next week, including a closer look at the cool experiments done onboard. Plus, you can find out what happens to all the garbage from the thousands of passengers on this floating city.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Up next, why you won't be able to put your name on a "do not spam list" any time soon and why that may be a good thing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: It's been 22 years since President Reagan fired thousands of striking air traffic controllers. As Kathleen Koch reports, the latest impact of that move may be just about to hit the Nation's airports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 100 clear to land. 100 and 7. KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In hundreds of towers and radar centers around the country, the clock is ticking toward retirement. Nearly half of the nation's air traffic controllers, some 7,000, are expected to leave over the next nine years, most hired in 1982 to replace the striking controllers fired by President Ronald Reagan.

LEWIS STEPHENSON, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: We picked up the ball and ran with it, and I think we did pretty well. And we're starting to turn to hand it off to anybody, and we don't see anybody there.

KOCH: A new study by the Transportation Department inspector general finds the FAA hasn't yet determined precisely how many new controllers it will need, where or when. The FAA insists it has the situation under control.

MARION BLAKEY, FAA ADMINISTRATOR: The FAA has been very accurate in predicting the numbers over time. So we believe we've got a pretty good feel for it, and it's hardly a crisis at this point.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rocket 1-1, check wheels down. Flight low pressure. Runway 1-9 at estimated 230 at 8.

KOCH: The FAA says not all controllers who become eligible will want to retire. It suggests a crisis could also be delayed by giving waivers to work past the mandatory retirement age of 56.

Two controllers who help guide Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base have such wavers.

GARY GUBBINGS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: I think I'm the best controller here.

DICK MUMFORD, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: I've seen everything that can happen, happened at least once before, and I know how to react to it.

KOCH: But the controllers' union warns of dire consequences if the government doesn't start training and hiring new controllers now.

RUTH MARLIN, NATL AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL ASSOCIATION: We won't have certified controllers. We won't be able to operate the air space. And when there is a severe shortage, you only have two choices, and that is to curtail services or to reduce the margin of safety.

KOCH: If the FAA underestimates the retirement bubble, there's no quick fix. Training a controller takes at least three years.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Wouldn't it be great if you could tell all those spammers to just leave you alone? I am sure you can think of a few choice words. Well, maybe it's not such a good idea. The Federal Trade Commission says that might cause more problems than it can solve. Julie Vallese reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JULIE VALLESE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): More than 62 million phone numbers are on the do not call registry, but if the recommendation by the Federal Trade Commission is adopted by Congress, there won't be a registry for spam.

TIMOTHY MURIS, CHAIRMAN, FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION: A national registry was a great solution to unwanted telemarketing calls. At this time, it's not the solution to unwanted e-mail.

VALLESE: The report says a do not spam registry would create a list of valid e-mail addresses. Spammers would probably not respect the list as off limits, and possibly even use the addresses to send more spam.

(on camera): The report by the FTC was required by Congress as part of the Can Spam Act. And while the commission has recommended against a do not e-mail registry, the ultimate decision will be up to Congress.

(voice-over): At least four bills on Capitol Hill include language to create a national registry, but one of the co-sponsors of the Can Spam Act says it's unlikely any will move forward.

REP. BOB GOODLATTE (R), VIRGINIA: We're probably not going to take up legislation that creates a do not spam list as long as we believe that is not in the interests of consumers.

VALLESE: Instead, the commission says it wants to explore technology and ways to authenticate where an e-mail originates.

MURIS: Without an effective system for authenticating the source of e-mail, any registry of individual e-mail addresses will fail.

VALLESE: With or without a registry, the FTC says consumers will get spam. For now, the best way to guard against it is to do nothing -- don't open it, don't respond to it, and don't opt out of it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Yahoo! is making it free e-mail service more attractive to fight off a challenge from its rival, Google. Starting Tuesday, all Yahoo! accounts got up to 100 megabytes of storage space, up until now, they only got four or six megabytes. Yahoo! also announced that it's freeing up e-mail addresses that have been inactive for years giving current customers a crack at some desirable ones. The move comes after Google announced that its new GMail service will give users 1,000 megabytes of storage.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: When we come back, I-Tunes launches in Europe. Will it play as well there as it has in the U.S.?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Apple launched its I-Tunes music store in the U.K., France, and Germany this week. Now, the online music store has been a resounding success here in the United States, but as Paula Hancocks reports, things may be different in Europe.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's always nice to have a friend's support for a launch. If the friend's a five- Grammy award winner, all the better. Alicia Keys lent her vocal support to the launch of Apple's I-Tunes online music store on Tuesday, adding a touch of show biz.

ALICIA KEYS, MUSICIAN: I just love the fact that you can really retrieve so many styles of music in one place and you have an abundance of them to choose from.

HANCOCKS: Customers in the United States have been able to download tracks from I-tunes since April 2003. Eighty-five million tracks have been bought since then. With 70 percent of the U.S. market, Apple Chief Steve Jobs is hoping for a similar performance in Europe, but it's not competition from other online music providers he's worried about.

STEVE JOBS, APPLE I-TUNES: The German music market shrank 24 percent in 2003 from piracy. So, it's a very big force and what we have to do is compete with it. We believe that the only way to really get people off of piracy is to offer a better product at a really good price.

HANCOCKS: The I-Tunes music store could quicken the demise of the CD single, according to some experts, even jeopardizing the need for CD albums. A concept thoroughly rejected by many London record shoppers I spoke to.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The charm of actually having packaging, sleeve notes, you know, the whole works. That's part of the record- buying experience.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's something about having it in your hand in the real world that's been more -- it's a bit sexier.

HANCOCKS: There's also a fear of cherry picking with I-Tunes. Buying just the songs you know and ignoring the rest of the album. One top, Radiohead, has said it doesn't want its music to be sold on the online music stores, insisting its albums are to be appreciated as a whole. Alicia Keys disagrees, she's happy for fans to buy just one of her songs, claiming if they like that song, they're likely to download the whole album.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Coming up, some victims of a devastating earthquake in Turkey get a second chance in a town built from scratch.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Turkey sits on a major geological fault. The earthquakes that have run along it have destroyed communities and taken lives for centuries. But a project now underway offers people new kinds of homes and it's hoped a new kind of protection. Jonathan Mann reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONATHAN MANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Melliha Alendash (PH) has planted her herb garden in tins this year, to make it easier to move. Nothing much grows where she lives now, a displaced person's camp in western Turkey. She is looking forward to leaving.

"Here life is not a normal life," she told us. "We live in a single room that gets very cold in the winter; it gets very hot in the summer."

Alendash didn't choose her current home, it was forced on her by calamity. Back in August of 1999, a powerful earthquake struck Turkey, it killed more than 17,000 people, many of them in buildings that collapsed while they were sleeping.

"Our house was totally destroyed," she says.

Adapazari, a city of 300,000 were Alendash family lived is once again back to normal. But instead of going back, she's making her new home in an entirely new town called Berikoy. Its first residents celebrating even before they move in. Berikoy is an experiment in architecture, urban planning, and economics in the middle of the Turkish countryside, restoring a more traditional lifestyle with the help of 21st century technology.

PROF. JAN WAMPLER, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: It's not only about housing, it's about people making an economy for themselves. People working here and through the internet can sell the things that they make.

And you can see over here where the next ones are being mapped out, already.

MANN: Jan Wampler is a professor of architect at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies communities in the developing world. He and his students have traveled to the Indian subcontinent, Asia, and Latin America to design buildings and other projects to help small communities survive, in ways that are economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable.

WAMPLER: This is somewhere in between using the best of technology and also incorporating the ideas of local culture.

MANN: Adapazari, like much of Turkey it sits atop the north Anatolian fault, an active, destructive, seismic area 1,000 kilometers long. It was also built on the unstable soil of an ancient lake bed. But, the casualties in the '99 quake couldn't just be blamed on nature or bad luck. Turkey has been struck by tremors for centuries, but only a minority of buildings there are made to withstand them. Turkish experts say building codes are often ignored, materials are often substandard.

It's also a moving hazard. With each major earthquake, stresses travel further along the fault. Seismologists believe that Istanbul and its population of 12 million may be next. Istanbul may be luckier, though, because experts say it's built on firmer ground.

And firmer ground is where they started the Berikoy. Wampler and his students chose a stable site, a hill essentially of rock and they settled on a much smaller community, a town of 50 families and two- story buildings, instead of a sprawling city with high rise apartments. From the very start they designed, apparently, ordinary stucco buildings around materials chosen for strength and flexibility, concrete foundations and steel framing to keep the buildings solid in a quake. Berikoy is a modest name, in Turkish it means just "the village over there." Only two buildings with apartments for eight families have been put up so far. But on paper, the Berikoy plan is much more ambitious.

First of all, this area, which we call the solar farm, which will be solar panels which will generate electricity, in addition, each of the areas have gardens, and so we expect that people will growing a lot of their own food -- the lower part of (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

MANN: The big cities of Turkey, like ones all over the developing world, draw people from the countryside, who come looking for jobs. The villages they leave behind wither away without them. Berikoy will try to create jobs, for at least some of its residents to give them a reason to stay. One way, using village land to grow flowers that will be turned into distinctive paper products. When it's complete, Berikoy is to be a small Turkish community built with foreign expertise, a budget one point five million U.S. dollars and manpower, not only from residents, but also volunteers. Is that really a solution for problems of developing countries?

WAMPLER: I believe that if you build something and demonstrate how it can work, that that will spread and that people will find ways of finding the money or the resources. It doesn't have to be a professor from MIT, it can be someone from here, in fact.

MANN: Melliha Alendash is optimistic. Her friends and relatives are excited to see her new home. "Look at the kitchen," one of them calls out, "it's great!" At the same time, Alendash knows it won't immediately be easy. At least already, she can see, she'll have a garden.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: All right. Well, that's all the time we've got for this week's show, but here's what's coming in next week. Plug in air fresheners may make your home smell a pine forest, or a spring meadow, or taxicab, but a new study says that under some conditions they can actually produce chemicals linked to medical problems.

That's coming up on NEXT. Until then, let's hear from you. You can send us an e-mail at next@cnn.com and we might even read your e- mail on the air. Plus, don't forget to check out our website at cnn.com/next.

Thanks so much for joining us this week. For all of us, I'm Daniel Sieberg; we'll see you next time.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

Aired June 19, 2004 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN ANCHOR, NEXT@CNN: Hi everybody. I'm Daniel Sieberg. Today on NEXT@CNN, will humans ever walk on Mars? Well a presidential commission says it will take sweeping changes in the nation's space program to make this dream come true.

Also, when alligators walked through the suburbs, they're not always the best neighbors.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That alligator has eaten something recently. Look at that belly. That's probably a dog in there.

SIEBERG: And ocean scientists cruise for news. What can cruise ships offer that research vessels don't other than shuffleboard?`

All that and more on NEXT.

On Monday, if all goes according to plan, a rocket plane called Spaceship One will carry its pilot more than 60 miles above the Earth's surface into what is officially considered space. Miles O'Brien reports on a project that could open a new chapter in space exploration.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Aviation legend Burt Rutan has always aimed high and most often reached his lofty goals so people in the know don't snicker when he says something like this.

BURT RUTAN: Our goal is to show that you can develop a robust, safe manned space program and to do it at extremely low costs.

O'BRIEN: A safe manned space program from a company with 135 employees based in a few hangars in California's high desert. So far there Rutan's team has given no reason to doubt they can't pull it off even though the Mohave Airport could not be farther, literally and figuratively from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

RUTAN: I think it's time that the commercial guys get aggressive on manned space flight rather than waiting for NASA. I'm frustrated by the lack of progress in manned space flight and we -- I want to do as much as I can do. O'BRIEN: So for the past three years he has been designing, building, test flying and tweaking a craft he called "Spaceship One." Carried off the ground by an odd seagull like jet called White Knight, Spaceship One is released about 11 miles up, that is about four miles higher than an airliner's highest altitudes and that's when Spaceship One starts burning rubber, literally, tire rubber when mixed with nitro oxide laughing gas, it is a stable state of the art rocket fuel. Who knew?

MIKE MELVILL, TEST PILOT: It's quicker than most fighters and nervous little airplanes.

O'BRIEN: Pilot Mike Melvill has now logged eight Spaceship One flights straight up for a wild, blistering fast ride getting closer and closer to the official gateway of space, 100 kilometers or 62.5 miles.

MELVILL: Two and half times the speed of sound MACH 2.5 and then it comes to a stop up there and you're weightless.

O'BRIEN: After three minutes or so in weightlessness, what comes up will succumb to the grip of gravity, plummeting to earth almost as fast, entering the atmosphere at twice the speed of sound.

MELVILL: I mean it's a risky thing, no question about it. I know my wife is terrified.

O'BRIEN: Spaceship One is designed to drop like a shuttle cock. And when then, when speed permits, transform into a glider for a 100 mile an hour touchdown on the Mohave runway.

MELVILL: It has avionics, which are developed just for it. Which is inertia NAV flight director.

O'BRIEN: Rutan designed "Spaceship One" for simplicity and economy. Unlike the shuttle which is guided by computers every step of the way, Spaceship One is flown by the pilot using cables and push rods not unlike the controls Lindbergh used to cross the Atlantic 75 years ago.

RUTAN: Things are dangerous, then you take the NASA approach and go in and make so many redundancies and do so much training and you do so much preparing for a flight that you can't afford to fly.

O'BRIEN: Even though he won't confirm it, Rutan reportedly spent about $25 million developing Spaceship One, about 1/20th the cost of one shuttle flight. Much of the money comes from Microsoft cofounder and space enthusiast Paul Allen.

Rutan's group is the clear leader in the quest for the X-prize a $10 million privately funded purse that will go to the first civilian team to fly to space in a vehicle capable of carrying three people, then repeat the feat within two weeks. Rutan says he was not motivated by the X-prize and the first flight is not the start of an attempt to win it, but, eventually...

RUTAN: We are interested in winning that because it's money and we want to win it.

O'BRIEN: Burt Rutan has been a winner before, against long odds, designing the airplane his brother Dick flew around the world on one tank of gas in 1986. These days Burt says he is getting bored designing mere airplanes and it's high time entrepreneurs like him made it to space. He means it. He's already grabbed the first passenger seat on Spaceship One for himself.

SIEBERG: Well, NASA's Cassina's spacecraft is doing to go into orbit around Saturn in less than two weeks. As it makes its way toward the ring planet, it's sending back some pretty cool images of the sights along the way. This is Saturn's moon Phoebe, which is obviously kind of beat up as moons go. Researchers say its potholed surfaces with signs of ice suggest that it formed in the outer solar system and then was sucked into orbit by Saturn's strong gravity. Cassina will spend four years studying Saturn, its rings and its 31 moons.

(voice-over): Meanwhile NASA's Starta spacecraft is dazzling scientists with its close-up pictures of a comet. The probe flew close to the comet built to in January and collected samples, which will bring back to Earth. Researchers were surprised by the number of jets of gas shooting from the comet's surface and by the variety of features on its surface. Including craters with flat floors, some with pinnacles growing out of them.

NASA's Mars rovers are still hard at work on the red planet. Spirit is exploring the Columbia hills and examining some odd-looking rocks that scientists find fascinating. On the other side of Mars, "Opportunity" is roving around the Endurance Crater looking at the layers of rock. There has been some concern, though, that the Rover won't be able to climb out of the crater, but scientists say they're confident that Opportunity can do it. A little Opportunity that could.

(on camera): You might recall in January President Bush announced plans for a new push in space exploration that would eventually send humans to Mars. Well a blue ribbon panel has been looking at the proposal. And this week it issued a report that says it can be done, but it will require some big changes. Miles O'Brien reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN, (voice-over): Charged with boot strapping, NASA's audacious space itinerary to the Moon and Mars, a presidential commission offered some advice on how to get there from here.

PETE ALDRIDGE, FORMER AIR FORCE SECRETARY: Nasa's focus ought to be on that exploration initiative and allow some of the more operational, less-risky functions that are being performed by the government be transferred exclusively to the private sector.

O'BRIEN: Led by Former Air Force Secretary Pete Aldridge, the commission wants NASA to be more business friendly, partnering with space entrepreneurs. It endorsed NASA's plans to offer cash rewards for innovative ideas and accomplishments. It calls on NASA to outsource some of the operations of its field centers to universities and nonprofit organizations. And the panel wants the White House to create a space steering council to develop policy and coordinate the efforts of all space-faring federal agencies.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of people asked us, you know well, how much will this cost? The answer is, I don't know. I asked the same question. How much is the cure for cancer going to cost?

O'BRIEN: The ideas are hard to criticize, but the details are scant. And on Capitol Hill, they know all too well that is how NASA could get lost on its way to Mars.

SEN. BILL NELSON, (D) FLORIDA: I think the vision is a true one. But it's not being implemented and sooner or later if you're going to go to the Moon and Mars you have to make the commitment in dollars. That's got to be supported by the White House.

SEN. KAT BAILEY HUTCHINSON, (R) TEXAS: We can't afford not to invest in research. If we are going to maintain our strong economy.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: The White House and NASA are embracing the report. It does, after all, endorse their pay-as-you-go approach. But this is an election year and the presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry told Space.com the Bush space initiative throws out lofty goals, but fails to support those goals with realistic funding.

ANNOUNCER: When we come back, some enterprising birds go to Home Depot and learn how to do it themselves.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: The shoreline along the Gulf Coast is slip-sliding away. That's according to a new report released by the U.S. Geological Survey. Worst hit is Louisiana. Each year that state loses about 25 square miles of land and scientists predict it will only get worse. Barrier islands and tidal inlets and other parts of the Gulf Coast are also eroding, but the news isn't all-bad. Some areas of the Texas and Florida coastline are actually gaining sand. The report is the first in a series of nationwide studies to assess the health of the coasts from sea to shining sea.

Well if you think you have wildlife problems because of squirrels in the bird feeder, just be glad you don't live in South Florida. The gators are getting frisky. As John Zarrella reports, that brings them into conflict with people.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Try explaining this one to your insurance agent. It was no lie, an alligator that ate Caroline Christine's bumper. A last desperate act of defiant before it's capture. Another took a bite out of Jennifer Cook's dog.

JENNIFER'S COOK, FLORIDA RESIDENT: I got my dog and took him right to the hospital. ZARRELLA: This time of year in Florida, alligators are on the move. Dry weather sends them in search of water. It's mating season, too. Gators end up looking for love in all the wrong places, which bring out the local trapper to remove the critter.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That alligator has eaten something recently look at that belly. That's probably a dog in there.

ZARRELLA (on camera): This is where gators are supposed to be, out here in the Everglades, but it's not surprising to find them just about anywhere. The alligator is one of nature's greatest comeback stories.

(voice-over): Twenty-five years ago the alligator was an endangered species. Hunting and poaching had nearly wiped them out. Now, there are more than 1 million alligators in Florida. No longer endangered, they are protected.

And it is Fish and Wildlife Officer Bill Stiffler's job to make sure they stay that way.

But he says people who feed the animals in their backyard lakes or canals turn the creatures into nuisance gators and sign their death warrants.

OFFICER BILL STIFFLER, FISH AND WILDLIFE OFFICER: If you call in and you have an aggressive alligator, and we have to come and respond to remove it. The animal is not just taken back out into the Everglades, it is killed. That is our policy.

ZARRELLA: It would be nice, wildlife officials say, if humans and alligators didn't have to co-exist, but in Florida where land is a premium, people and gators are increasingly calling the same territory home.

SIEBERG: In Minneapolis some barn swallows are calling the Home Depot store home and they learned to open the doors for themselves. Their nest is inside the lumber department. And a store employee realized that the parent birds were flying in front of the motion detectors to get in and out of the store.

Now wildlife specialists say the circling behavior is common for barn swallows, but these birds have figured where to circle to get the doors to open. I wonder if they use the self-checkout. It has been going on for four years and obviously these birds are not birdbrains.

Well keeping the birds out of the Home Depot is, obviously not a priority, but for the Dallas Zoo, keeping the gorillas in their enclosure is a huge concern.

The zoo reopened its gorilla exhibit this week three months after a gorilla escaped and injured several people. I know it sounds like King Kong. Zoo officials say he leaped across a 12 foot wide ditch and over a wall.

The new gorilla enclosure has higher walls, electric wires that can give harmless shocks and gorilla speed bumps to prevent the apes from getting up enough speed for a mind boggling jump.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up have gas prices got you thinking about buying a hybrid? That may not be as easy as it sounds.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Japan is developing a high-speed magnetically levitated train that can go 300 miles an hour. But at the moment it is all dressed up with no place to go. Dan Sloan reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN SLOAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Ambitious Japan. That catch phrase is pasted on Japan's fastest trains with none speedier or possibly more costly than the Maglev. The magnetically propelled linear motor car runs on a test track near Mt. Fuji. The product of four decades of research and more than $2 billion in investment.

Using super conducting magnets to float the train, the Maglev moves without friction caused by wheels running on a track.

(on camera): We've reached a top speed of 500 kilometers per hour or over 310 miles per hour in little more than an a minute. We're actually levating about ten centimeters off the track right now.

(voice-over): That speed of travel contrasts with the likelihood that the Maglev in a commercial sense is not going anywhere soon.

Rallied construction from Tokyo to Osaka is estimated at $77 billion; while a backlog of projects and huge government debt likely will keep the Maglev at the station platform indefinitely.

J.R. says it recognizes that lifting the Maglev project off the ground will take some time.

NORIYUKI SHIRAKUNI, GENERAL MGR. MAGLEV TRAIN PROJECT (through translator): If you think about a Maglev Rail Line running from Tokyo to Osaka, the construction and other factors involved would probably mean at least ten years.

SLOAN: Germany and the U.S. have tested Maglev technology on the world's first commercial service runs from Shanghai's airport to the city. Engineering professor Satoru Sone says when looking at commercial viability, the Maglev is not Japan's own Concorde.

PROF. SATORU SONE, KOGAKUMIN UNIVERSITY (through translator): If the project hits $80 billion, it's too expensive, but if it comes down to $50 billion or so on a commercial bases, there is a case for Maglev and bullet train.

SLOAN: Maglev center visitors, unaware of the potential lag or cost involved, say cutting the travel time in half between Japan's major cities would be attractive.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE, (through translator): Absolutely. An hour ride from Tokyo to Osaka would be more convenient.

SLOAN: But when told the potential cost to build the Maglev, most say existing bullet train lines are ambition enough for Japan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Speaking of speed, there is new record for crossing the English Channel in an amphibious vessel. British entrepreneur Richard Branson made the crossing in his aquada in about an hour and 40 minutes, demolishing the old record of six hours. The Aquada looks like a sports car on land but turns into a speedboat when you press a button. Very James Bond. It can get up to 100 miles per hour on land and about 30 on the water.

Well if you decided to buy a hybrid car, you may be in for a surprise. A lot of other people have made the same decision and the competition is getting cut throat. Ross Palombo from our affiliate KRON has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's where it gets a lot of its power from.

ROSS PALOMBO, KRON CORRESPONDENT (voice over): This Tampa resident Thea Moore parked in a San Francisco dealership because her home town 3,000 miles away couldn't keep a Prias parked long enough for her to see one.

THEA MOORE, TAMPA RESIDENT: They didn't have any that I could look at or any in the showroom floor.

PALOMBO: Even in this show room not a single Prius is ready to drive off the lot.

MOORE: But you have a waitlist, right?

PALOMBO: 22,000 customers across the country are on that list, waiting more than six months to get one.

MOORE: I think that's a long time to wait for a car.

PALOMBO: But on the Internet fast lane delivery is available for fast-pace pricing. At least one dealer is offering this car for more than $36,000, roughly $10,000 local dealers say, above average.

LINDA SHERRY, CONSUMER ACTION: That seems an unfair manipulation of the marketplace.

PALOMBO: Unfair, but consumer action says perfectly legal. But even though the Prius is highly rated and in high demand, it recommends putting purchases on idle.

SHERRY: I would wait an extra year perhaps and see the market will probably be flooded with these.

PALOMBO: Dealers say Toyota is shifting production into high gear and trying to stop jacked up pricing.

RUSS MOBLEY, SAN FRANCISCO TOYOTA: They can put some form of pressure on the dealer, is what I've heard. But I think that, in general, the dealers know when they're doing the right thing and the wrong thing.

PALOMBO: Even if they don't, customers certainly do. Thea Moore says she'll wait for her car later rather than be taken for a ride now.

MOORE: I think I'm going to get one. I think I'm going wait.

PALOMBO (on camera): Well, your best bet is to get on one of those waiting lists, but, be careful, some dealers will charge you as much as $5,000 to $8,000 in additional service charges.

SIEBERG: Things you see on a cruise ship, sunbathers, swimmers and shopping, and a marine and atmospheric interferometer. Yes, scientists are conducting high-level marine research onboard this cruise ship, we'll explain why.

(voice-over): Some experts are worried that we'll soon have a shortage of air traffic controllers. Those stories and a lot more are coming up right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. All right, when you think of scientists working in the field, you might imagine them camped out in the jungle or braving desert elements or bouncing around in a tiny research vessel on the high seas -- roughing it, basically. Time to think again. We spent a few days with scientists aboard a ship that's anything but roughing it.

(voice-over): A typical oceanographic research vessel. Not a day at the beach.

ANNOUNCER: With the monsoon winds gusting to 45 knots, just getting into the boat was difficult.

SIEBERG: A far cry from this. What started out a simple conversation about the high cost of ocean research between University of Miami and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines turned into symbiotic partnership putting scientists and labs on a cruise ship. Federal agencies, like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration soon jumped on board.

PETER ORTNER, ATLANTIC OCEANOGRAPHIC AND METEOROLOGICAL LABORATORY: From my perspective, as a government laboratory, this is an incredibly financially efficient way to do it. It's saving the tax payer a lot of money in getting data we really couldn't get any other way.

SIEBERG (on camera): It's another relatively common, sunny day here in the Caribbean. In fact, we're in the port of San Juan in Puerto Rico, but all that calm weather can change in a big hurry. Other changes though, occur gradually over time and they could affect everything from hurricanes, to marine life, to the upper atmosphere.

(voice-over): There are censors and instruments in every part of the Explorer of the Seas, carefully integrated, of course, so the passengers don't trip over any wires on their way to the bar. Water analysis begins with an intake system that brings in as much as 150 liters of ocean water a minute.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The water come up, it gets pumped by a pump through these various instruments.

SIEBERG: But the fact of this lab is on a cruise ship provides an opportunity for a little PR, as well. With daily tours for the public, the lab area was made to look more "Nemo" than nerdy.

(on camera): Now, what was your reaction when you saw the design here? Because I mentioned that not every research lab has colored lights and crystal balls.

OTIS BROWN, Prof. of Meteorology and Physical Oceanography: It's not the traditional ocean science lab on a research ship, this is not the traditional research ship, either.

SIEBERG: During our cruise, we saw scientists who focused on measuring levels of carbon dioxide in the ocean.

RIK WANNINKHOF, NOAA OCEANOGRAPHER: So, what we are trying to do on this ship and on a lot of other ships is try to monitor this seasonal patterns and patterns from year it year.

SIEBERG: Taking critical measurements of sea surface temperatures and almost daily weather balloon launches.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Another wild launch and wooly launch.

SIEBERG: All the weather-related data is shared with other agencies. Last year the ship provided some critical wind speed data to the National Hurricane Center during hurricane Claudette. Still, many of the passengers have no idea that work like this is being done as they lounge by the pool.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was very interesting. I had no idea they did this kind of research.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the second trip on the Explorer and this is why we picked it the first time and why we came back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, I'm one of those people who love technology.

SIEBERG: So, what did you think when you went through on the tour?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I loved it. I thought it was really cool.

SIEBERG: And an added bonus, along with the lab tours, there are some funky hands-on exhibits. SIEBERG (on camera): What do find people ask about when they come down here for a tour?

BROWN: They ask about -- you know, why do you do this? That's one question. What are you learning? That's another question, and what's going to hapen with the hurricane season.

CLODAGH O'CONNOR, CRUISE DIRECTOR EXPLORER OF THE SEA: We make as a company a lot of announcements at the start of the voyage about saving the waves and how important that is to us as a company. So, I think it ties in wonderfully with just what we're doing onboard.

SIEBERG: Scientists from all over the world can apply to spend a week onboard setting up long-term experiments. Since the ship sails 365 days a year, the volume of data is priceless. And it sure beats bouncing around in freezing or dangerous environments. And don't think their academic colleagues don't give them a hard time about it.

PETER MINNETT, PROF. OF METEOROLOGY AND PHYSICAL OCEANOGRAPHY: To begin with, people thing, oh, you cannot possibly be serious. How can you do good science on a ship like this? As soon as we show them the data, show them what we're doing, then, of course, they are often convinced.

SIEBERG: Even with all the hard core science going on, obviously, the researchers still find time for a few distractions. Hey, it is a cruise ship after all. And perhaps not surprisingly, the waitlist for new scientists to conduct their work onboard is five months long.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: I know we made hard work look easy. Well, we'll have more stories from the Explorer of the Seas next week, including a closer look at the cool experiments done onboard. Plus, you can find out what happens to all the garbage from the thousands of passengers on this floating city.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Up next, why you won't be able to put your name on a "do not spam list" any time soon and why that may be a good thing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: It's been 22 years since President Reagan fired thousands of striking air traffic controllers. As Kathleen Koch reports, the latest impact of that move may be just about to hit the Nation's airports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 100 clear to land. 100 and 7. KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In hundreds of towers and radar centers around the country, the clock is ticking toward retirement. Nearly half of the nation's air traffic controllers, some 7,000, are expected to leave over the next nine years, most hired in 1982 to replace the striking controllers fired by President Ronald Reagan.

LEWIS STEPHENSON, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: We picked up the ball and ran with it, and I think we did pretty well. And we're starting to turn to hand it off to anybody, and we don't see anybody there.

KOCH: A new study by the Transportation Department inspector general finds the FAA hasn't yet determined precisely how many new controllers it will need, where or when. The FAA insists it has the situation under control.

MARION BLAKEY, FAA ADMINISTRATOR: The FAA has been very accurate in predicting the numbers over time. So we believe we've got a pretty good feel for it, and it's hardly a crisis at this point.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rocket 1-1, check wheels down. Flight low pressure. Runway 1-9 at estimated 230 at 8.

KOCH: The FAA says not all controllers who become eligible will want to retire. It suggests a crisis could also be delayed by giving waivers to work past the mandatory retirement age of 56.

Two controllers who help guide Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base have such wavers.

GARY GUBBINGS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: I think I'm the best controller here.

DICK MUMFORD, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: I've seen everything that can happen, happened at least once before, and I know how to react to it.

KOCH: But the controllers' union warns of dire consequences if the government doesn't start training and hiring new controllers now.

RUTH MARLIN, NATL AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL ASSOCIATION: We won't have certified controllers. We won't be able to operate the air space. And when there is a severe shortage, you only have two choices, and that is to curtail services or to reduce the margin of safety.

KOCH: If the FAA underestimates the retirement bubble, there's no quick fix. Training a controller takes at least three years.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Wouldn't it be great if you could tell all those spammers to just leave you alone? I am sure you can think of a few choice words. Well, maybe it's not such a good idea. The Federal Trade Commission says that might cause more problems than it can solve. Julie Vallese reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JULIE VALLESE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): More than 62 million phone numbers are on the do not call registry, but if the recommendation by the Federal Trade Commission is adopted by Congress, there won't be a registry for spam.

TIMOTHY MURIS, CHAIRMAN, FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION: A national registry was a great solution to unwanted telemarketing calls. At this time, it's not the solution to unwanted e-mail.

VALLESE: The report says a do not spam registry would create a list of valid e-mail addresses. Spammers would probably not respect the list as off limits, and possibly even use the addresses to send more spam.

(on camera): The report by the FTC was required by Congress as part of the Can Spam Act. And while the commission has recommended against a do not e-mail registry, the ultimate decision will be up to Congress.

(voice-over): At least four bills on Capitol Hill include language to create a national registry, but one of the co-sponsors of the Can Spam Act says it's unlikely any will move forward.

REP. BOB GOODLATTE (R), VIRGINIA: We're probably not going to take up legislation that creates a do not spam list as long as we believe that is not in the interests of consumers.

VALLESE: Instead, the commission says it wants to explore technology and ways to authenticate where an e-mail originates.

MURIS: Without an effective system for authenticating the source of e-mail, any registry of individual e-mail addresses will fail.

VALLESE: With or without a registry, the FTC says consumers will get spam. For now, the best way to guard against it is to do nothing -- don't open it, don't respond to it, and don't opt out of it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Yahoo! is making it free e-mail service more attractive to fight off a challenge from its rival, Google. Starting Tuesday, all Yahoo! accounts got up to 100 megabytes of storage space, up until now, they only got four or six megabytes. Yahoo! also announced that it's freeing up e-mail addresses that have been inactive for years giving current customers a crack at some desirable ones. The move comes after Google announced that its new GMail service will give users 1,000 megabytes of storage.

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ANNOUNCER: When we come back, I-Tunes launches in Europe. Will it play as well there as it has in the U.S.?

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SIEBERG: Apple launched its I-Tunes music store in the U.K., France, and Germany this week. Now, the online music store has been a resounding success here in the United States, but as Paula Hancocks reports, things may be different in Europe.

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PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's always nice to have a friend's support for a launch. If the friend's a five- Grammy award winner, all the better. Alicia Keys lent her vocal support to the launch of Apple's I-Tunes online music store on Tuesday, adding a touch of show biz.

ALICIA KEYS, MUSICIAN: I just love the fact that you can really retrieve so many styles of music in one place and you have an abundance of them to choose from.

HANCOCKS: Customers in the United States have been able to download tracks from I-tunes since April 2003. Eighty-five million tracks have been bought since then. With 70 percent of the U.S. market, Apple Chief Steve Jobs is hoping for a similar performance in Europe, but it's not competition from other online music providers he's worried about.

STEVE JOBS, APPLE I-TUNES: The German music market shrank 24 percent in 2003 from piracy. So, it's a very big force and what we have to do is compete with it. We believe that the only way to really get people off of piracy is to offer a better product at a really good price.

HANCOCKS: The I-Tunes music store could quicken the demise of the CD single, according to some experts, even jeopardizing the need for CD albums. A concept thoroughly rejected by many London record shoppers I spoke to.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The charm of actually having packaging, sleeve notes, you know, the whole works. That's part of the record- buying experience.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's something about having it in your hand in the real world that's been more -- it's a bit sexier.

HANCOCKS: There's also a fear of cherry picking with I-Tunes. Buying just the songs you know and ignoring the rest of the album. One top, Radiohead, has said it doesn't want its music to be sold on the online music stores, insisting its albums are to be appreciated as a whole. Alicia Keys disagrees, she's happy for fans to buy just one of her songs, claiming if they like that song, they're likely to download the whole album.

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ANNOUNCER: Coming up, some victims of a devastating earthquake in Turkey get a second chance in a town built from scratch.

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SIEBERG: Turkey sits on a major geological fault. The earthquakes that have run along it have destroyed communities and taken lives for centuries. But a project now underway offers people new kinds of homes and it's hoped a new kind of protection. Jonathan Mann reports.

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JONATHAN MANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Melliha Alendash (PH) has planted her herb garden in tins this year, to make it easier to move. Nothing much grows where she lives now, a displaced person's camp in western Turkey. She is looking forward to leaving.

"Here life is not a normal life," she told us. "We live in a single room that gets very cold in the winter; it gets very hot in the summer."

Alendash didn't choose her current home, it was forced on her by calamity. Back in August of 1999, a powerful earthquake struck Turkey, it killed more than 17,000 people, many of them in buildings that collapsed while they were sleeping.

"Our house was totally destroyed," she says.

Adapazari, a city of 300,000 were Alendash family lived is once again back to normal. But instead of going back, she's making her new home in an entirely new town called Berikoy. Its first residents celebrating even before they move in. Berikoy is an experiment in architecture, urban planning, and economics in the middle of the Turkish countryside, restoring a more traditional lifestyle with the help of 21st century technology.

PROF. JAN WAMPLER, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: It's not only about housing, it's about people making an economy for themselves. People working here and through the internet can sell the things that they make.

And you can see over here where the next ones are being mapped out, already.

MANN: Jan Wampler is a professor of architect at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies communities in the developing world. He and his students have traveled to the Indian subcontinent, Asia, and Latin America to design buildings and other projects to help small communities survive, in ways that are economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable.

WAMPLER: This is somewhere in between using the best of technology and also incorporating the ideas of local culture.

MANN: Adapazari, like much of Turkey it sits atop the north Anatolian fault, an active, destructive, seismic area 1,000 kilometers long. It was also built on the unstable soil of an ancient lake bed. But, the casualties in the '99 quake couldn't just be blamed on nature or bad luck. Turkey has been struck by tremors for centuries, but only a minority of buildings there are made to withstand them. Turkish experts say building codes are often ignored, materials are often substandard.

It's also a moving hazard. With each major earthquake, stresses travel further along the fault. Seismologists believe that Istanbul and its population of 12 million may be next. Istanbul may be luckier, though, because experts say it's built on firmer ground.

And firmer ground is where they started the Berikoy. Wampler and his students chose a stable site, a hill essentially of rock and they settled on a much smaller community, a town of 50 families and two- story buildings, instead of a sprawling city with high rise apartments. From the very start they designed, apparently, ordinary stucco buildings around materials chosen for strength and flexibility, concrete foundations and steel framing to keep the buildings solid in a quake. Berikoy is a modest name, in Turkish it means just "the village over there." Only two buildings with apartments for eight families have been put up so far. But on paper, the Berikoy plan is much more ambitious.

First of all, this area, which we call the solar farm, which will be solar panels which will generate electricity, in addition, each of the areas have gardens, and so we expect that people will growing a lot of their own food -- the lower part of (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

MANN: The big cities of Turkey, like ones all over the developing world, draw people from the countryside, who come looking for jobs. The villages they leave behind wither away without them. Berikoy will try to create jobs, for at least some of its residents to give them a reason to stay. One way, using village land to grow flowers that will be turned into distinctive paper products. When it's complete, Berikoy is to be a small Turkish community built with foreign expertise, a budget one point five million U.S. dollars and manpower, not only from residents, but also volunteers. Is that really a solution for problems of developing countries?

WAMPLER: I believe that if you build something and demonstrate how it can work, that that will spread and that people will find ways of finding the money or the resources. It doesn't have to be a professor from MIT, it can be someone from here, in fact.

MANN: Melliha Alendash is optimistic. Her friends and relatives are excited to see her new home. "Look at the kitchen," one of them calls out, "it's great!" At the same time, Alendash knows it won't immediately be easy. At least already, she can see, she'll have a garden.

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SIEBERG: All right. Well, that's all the time we've got for this week's show, but here's what's coming in next week. Plug in air fresheners may make your home smell a pine forest, or a spring meadow, or taxicab, but a new study says that under some conditions they can actually produce chemicals linked to medical problems.

That's coming up on NEXT. Until then, let's hear from you. You can send us an e-mail at next@cnn.com and we might even read your e- mail on the air. Plus, don't forget to check out our website at cnn.com/next.

Thanks so much for joining us this week. For all of us, I'm Daniel Sieberg; we'll see you next time.

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