Plus: The Year in CEO Screw-Ups, a Little Squid’s Klingon Device and the Game-Changer in Private Spaceflight.

Private Spaceflight Changes the Game
With help from NASA, SpaceX this week became the first commercial company in history to re-enter a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit, a feat performed by only six nations or government agencies: the United States, Russia, China, Japan, India and the European Space Agency.

On Wednesday, the Hawthorne, Calif.-based rocket venture successfully launched its Dragon spacecraft into low-Earth orbit atop the company’s second Falcon 9 rocket. The Dragon spacecraft orbited Earth at speeds greater than 17,000 miles per hour, re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and landed in the Pacific Ocean a few hours after launching.

This not only marked the first time a private spaceflight company launched a vehicle into orbit with the intention of bringing it safely back to Earth, but also the first launch in NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation System wherein the space agency partnered with a private company to transport crew and supplies to space.

“This flight will go down in history as a turning point for the opening of space to regular people,” Rick Tumlinson, co-founder of the Space Frontier Foundation, said in a congratulatory statement. “It may not be Yuri Gagarin, but it is certainly the equivalent of Sputnik for commercial spaceflight!”

“It’s historic in that it’s the beginning of a paradigm shift from a government human spaceflight architecture to one that opens up human spaceflight to the private sector,” Bretton Alexander, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, said.

Career Paths and Pet Owners
Does the type of pet you own determine your career?* A recent CareerBuilder.com survey looked at pet ownership in relation to people’s chosen professions, compensation and job satisfaction.

In terms of career paths, CareerBuilder’s nationwide survey of more than 2,300 employed pet owners found that owners of certain animals are more likely to be drawn to specific professions:

• Dog owners are more likely to be IT pros, professors, nurses, entertainers and military pros;
• Cat owners are more likely to be physicians, real-estate agents, science/medical lab technicians, machine operators and personal caretakers;
• Fish owners are more likely to be professionals in HR, finance, hotel and leisure, farming/fishing/forestry and transportation;
• Bird owners are more likely to be advertising pros, sales reps, construction workers and administrative pros; and
• Snake/Reptile owners are more likely to be engineers, social workers, marketing/PR pros, editors/writers and police officers.

Moreover, the job-search website found that workers with dogs are more likely to hold senior management positions (CEO, CFO, senior VP, etc.), workers with snakes/reptiles are the most likely to earn six figures and workers with birds are the most likely to be satisfied with their jobs.

_{*Probably not.}

The Year in CEO Screw-Ups
Forbes’ new Biggest CEO Screw-Ups of 2010 list highlights chief executives whose major public relations blunders and dirty dealings “remind us forcefully of their fallibility.”

Of the 10 listed, here are three who, while not accused of dirty dealings, have done things that definitely fall under the category of PR disasters:

• Linda McMahon, World Wrestling Entertainment — “Connecticut Republican nominee for U.S. Senate Linda McMahon, who once ran World Wrestling Entertainment, admitted that she didn’t know whether WWE paid any of its employees minimum wage, or even what Connecticut’s minimum wage was. She lost her election too.”
• Gary Holden, Enmax — “Earlier this month Gary Holden, the chief executive of Enmax, a Canadian energy supplier, sent a five-page e-mail to his entire staff defending his salary and criticizing the media for how it characterized extravagant parties at his home. In the letter, a paranoid-sounding Holden warned his employees not to leak material to the press. Which, of course, is exactly what they did.”
• Tony Hayward, BP — “BP chief executive Tony Hayward displayed a shocking lack of empathy — and a propensity for public gaffes — while the Deepwater Horizon rig was spilling millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Hayward told The Guardian newspaper that the Gulf is a ‘very big ocean’ and later described the spill’s environmental impact as ‘very, very modest.’ He famously told the Today show that he’d ‘like my life back,’ and he attended a regatta on the Isle of Wight two days after a U.S. congressional committee questioned him.”

Little Squid’s Natural Cloaking Skills
Materials scientists are still trying to figure out how to turn cloaking devices into a reality, but a little Hawaiian bobtail squid’s counter-illumination, anti-predatory strategy could lead to several applications for human anti-cloaking devices, according to recent research.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Margaret McFall-Ngai, a professor of medical microbiology and immunology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her team are studying the bobtail squid’s camouflage scheme.

“This small nocturnal animal [about 30 millimeters long] has a mutually beneficial relationship with bacteria called Vibrio fischeri that live on the squid’s underside,” according to a special report from the NSF. “The bacteria allow the squid to produce light, which then allows the squid to escape from things that might want to eat it. The squid emit ventral luminescence that is often very, very close to the quality of light coming from the moon and stars at night,” McFall-Ngai explains.

The result: For fish looking up from below for something to eat, the squid are camouflaged against the moon or the starlight because they don’t cast a shadow.

“It’s like a ‘Klingon’ cloaking device,” according to McFall-Ngai.

Cheers.