The posturing for money pits friends and colleagues against one another. "It's very competitive," says one JPL scientist. "It's really tough sometimes competing against your friends."

So tough that reality sometimes gets just a little warped. In fact, some engineers focus entirely on reality wrangling.

Wireless Augmented Reality Prototype (WARP) is a wearable audio-visual computer access system that would relay what an astronaut says, her vital signs, and a video of what she's working on to a central computer that could then send the information to ground controllers or family back home. In turn, the astronaut would have access to her vital signs, as well as those of the spacecraft, along with the entire spacecraft owner's manual, all in plain view on a tiny computer screen affixed to her headset.

It would be the best of HAL, the computer in 2001: Space Odyssey that ultimately got a little carried away with its role and took over the spaceship.

While WARP is not yet a complete reality -- a working model has been tested in an International Space Station (ISS) simulator at the Johnson Space Center -- it is expected to one day be used on the ISS and in shuttles, then later on Mars.

But WARP, while cool in both concept and name, is in the midst of an identity crisis.

"The people who came up with it wanted to say augmented reality, but thought it would be cool if we called it WARP," says Ann Devereaux, a communications technologist who took over the project and is now stuck with an ill-fitting name. She says WARP is not actually about augmented reality. "It's technically mixed reality."

So the A is out. And now that Devereaux has an early version of the system is working, it's no longer a prototype, and so the P is also in peril.

"But now we're sort of stuck with the acronym," she said from her bland, cluttered laboratory with a generous view of the hills around nearby Pasadena.

Ann Devereaux is an unlikely technologist, a woman who loathes numbers -- "I hate math," she says flatly -- and has shunned technology much of her life. It makes you wonder why she's working on what could be the coolest computer setup ever to leave our planet.

"I just got a cell phone a year ago," she admits. But don't try to call her on it, because odds are either she left it at home or the battery is dead. And until two years ago, her only television was a 13-inch black-and-white set. Why did she go color? "My friends wouldn't come over any more."

There's a pattern here, one of reluctant acceptance. "My sister just got me a DVD player. I would have never gotten that, but I love it now that I have it."

Why has a communication specialist at one of the world's top robotics institutes, one who has worked on the Deep Space Network as well as onboard communications systems for Mars missions, heir of WARP, only in the past two years acquired many of the toys that the rest of the world has been playing with for years or decades?

"I have all this stuff at work," she says. "I don't need to take it home."

All this stuff is, at a glance, a bit more advanced than your average Nokia. A video camera the size of your index finger. Biosensors that can unobtrusively and constantly monitor an astronaut's health. Software that takes voice commands. With these gadgets, Devereaux is building a lightweight, totally portable two-way audio, video and medical monitoring system that would keep astronauts and mission controllers informed, in touch, and in control.

WARP is the remote unit and the overall architecture for a benevolent HAL. Just plug it into the flight deck and go. Here's how it will work:

An astronaut dons a headset with an earpiece and a tiny video camera, along with a miniature computer display projected just in front of the eyes. A Walkman-sized Remote Access Unit, clipped on the belt, communicates wirelessly with a central computer onboard a spacecraft. With voice commands, an astronaut controls the whole system, from operating spacecraft systems to pulling up a specific page in a technical manual to live, two-way audio and video.

Mission control could watch what an astronaut is doing and suggest alternative methods. Two astronauts could do a live videoconference anywhere in or around a spacecraft.

"WARP would allow someone else to work with you, see what you see," Devereaux says.

In the future, a scientist on Mars would be free to roam the planet but still access reams of data, past scientific papers, maps or satellite photographs of a region being studied. And the technology may one day return to Earth. Industrial workers might use it when going into hazardous sites, where few are sent but those who go need as much information as possible. Surgeons might use it while performing an operation so complicated that they need to review the procedure as they work.

And WARP will be flexible. Any peripherals that can be dreamed up could be plugged in via a general-purpose interface, something like a USB port on a common PC.

And despite her professed disinterest in technology at home, Devereaux sees potential for everyday use of WARP -- perhaps even a way to control the new toys she's been getting lately.

"I like the idea of being out in my backyard gardening and watching a DVD. And then if my phone rings, my computer picks it up and I can talk on the phone."

While gardening?

"I need a lot of stimulus. When I'm out in the garden, it's not enough."