Consider the International Space Station, that marvel of incremental engineering. It has close to 15,000 cubic feet of livable space; 10 modules, or living and working areas; a Canadian robot arm that can repair the station from outside; and the capacity to keep five astronauts (including the occasional wealthy rubbernecking space tourist) in good health for long periods. It has gleaming, underused laboratories; its bathroom is fully repaired; and its exercycle is ready for vigorous mandatory workouts.
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Send the ISS somewhere.

The ISS, you see, is already an interplanetary spacecraft -- at least potentially. It's missing a drive system and a steerage module, but those are technicalities. Although it's ungainly in appearance, it's designed to be boosted periodically to a higher altitude by a shuttle, a Russian Soyuz or one of the upcoming new Constellation program Orion spacecraft. It could fairly easily be retrofitted for operations beyond low-Earth orbit. In principle, we could fly it almost anywhere within the inner solar system -- to any place where it could still receive enough solar power to keep all its systems running.
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Let's begin the process of turning the ISS from an Earth-orbiting caterpillar into an interplanetary butterfly.

It's All Decked Out. Give It Somewhere to Go. - washingtonpost.com

Rockets still pierce the heavens in a halo of smoke during launches, and engineers and military men still crack open bottles of vodka to celebrate a successful launch. What has changed are the passengers. Nowadays Baikonur embraces the world, from wealthy space tourists to the world's first Malaysian cosmonaut, Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, who blasted off for the international space station on Oct. 10.

Russia's Space City Frozen in Time

Aboard the International Space Station, the three Russian computers that control the station's orientation have been happily humming away now for several weeks. And that's proof that the crisis in June that crippled the ISS and bloodied the U.S.-Russian partnership that supports it, has been solved.
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They also decided to rig a thermal barrier out of a surplus reference book and all-purpose gray tape.

high tech and low tech

IEEE Spectrum: Space Station: Internal NASA Reports Explain Origins of June Computer Crisis

Australian-led scientists have designed a new space habitat that might one day allow astronauts on the Moon or Mars to be 90 to 95 per cent self-sufficient

Self-sufficient space habitat designed | COSMOS magazine

When Sputnik took off 50 years ago, the world gazed at the heavens in awe and apprehension, watching what seemed like the unveiling of a sustained Soviet effort to conquer space and score a stunning Cold War triumph.

the Space Age is 50 on Thursday

Sputnik at 50: An improvised triumph - Yahoo! News

Shooting stars are set to grace the night sky with a spectacular light display this weekend.

The annual Perseid meteor shower will reach its peak during the early hours of Monday, but it will be visible from Saturday night until Tuesday morning.

well it's gone 2am Sat morning and i've just come in from the garden having spent some time drinking tea (decaff), listening to Joanna Newsom and then some Bach, and watching out for the first few meteors and i did see a couple and i'm hoping for more meteors and beautiful clear skies during the next few nights

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Stargazers set sights on meteors

Gaia is a mission that will conduct a census of one thousand million stars in our Galaxy. It will monitor each of its target stars about 70 times over a five-year period, precisely charting their positions, distances, movements, and changes in brightness. It is expected to discover hundreds of thousands of new celestial objects, such as extra-solar planets and failed stars called brown dwarfs. Within our own Solar System, Gaia should also identify tens of thousands of asteroids.

to boldly go and create a map of the neighbourhood in proper 3d
the next step after Hipparcos towards Star Trek's Astrometrics lab

parallax that

ESA - Space Science - Gaia overview

Carl Sagan, Arthur C. Clarke, H.G. Wells, Kim Stanley Robinson and other greats in science fiction hitched a ride to Mars today-in a digital form, at least.

SPACE.com -- Space Library Heads Towards Mars

Someone's gotta do it. No one's gonna do it. So I'll do it. Your honor, I rise in defense of drunken astronauts.

how scary i agree with Charles Krauthammer

Charles Krauthammer - Lit Up For Liftoff? - washingtonpost.com

The internet is revolutionising space exploration, bringing new sights and discoveries to anyone who cares to look just as quickly as to the scientists involved.

To boldly surf: the new destinations for armchair astronauts - Independent Online Edition -- Sci_Tech