KaiYves says:

I don’t know how significant or important or anything this really is, but I wanted to share it. 

I was talking with a friend of mine yesterday about doing a sort of role-playing thing involving the Apollo program, and at one point, after we’d worked out some rough outlines of a plot, she went “What year should it be in?”

Obviously, where the Apollo program is concerned, this is an important question, as each year brought great changes and we want to be historically accurate and not show any developments before they occurred in real life. A story about the Apollo program was necessarily a period piece, unless the situation being role-played was our characters looking at hardware in a museum or interviewing veterans. (There are some story possibilities there, to be sure, but not as many or as exciting as in a story actually set in the Apollo era.)

What struck me was that if I had suggested a story involving a space shuttle, I doubt anyone would have asked “What year should it be?” The assumption would be that such a story would be set “now”. Growing up in the 90s, several television shows I watched had episodes featuring space shuttles in some way, and they were set “now”. If I were to re-watch some of those episodes, whatever else has happened to date the stories, they could still (at least until next year) be seen as taking place “now”. 

For four years, not very long at all, a writer would write a story where an Apollo mission to the moon was occurring and have it be set “now” without any fear of it dating. After Apollo ended, however, any such story necessarily became an alternate history or a period piece. 

But for THIRTY years, people were able to get away with a story featuring the space shuttle that was set “now”. (Even before that, durring the testing phase, such a story could be set “now or in the near future!”) Fashions and other story elements may have changed, but in terms of storylines, all of them were set in a timeless “now” three decades long. 

Will this change when the shuttle is retired? Will we still have TV and movie plots featuring the space shuttle that are set “now”, or will any plot-line with the shuttle have to be an alternate history or period piece? What do you think? 
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A Geek Mom (Shannon) says:

From Spacevidcast show 3.29 post-show comes this little gem that begs for a caption contest, so here goes:

<img style=”width: 96px; height: 45px; cursor: pointer;” src=”//js-kit.com/blob/5fbESMAbBMp4ZC6mqrM_2K.jpg”/>

From whoaJeffrey in the chatroom: “Darth Vaders, apparently pantsless Tims, and cake.“

Jeffrey Alles says:

No edit option on JSKit.. will have to muddle through

Lokase says:

Put it in full screen for best viewing results.  You can literally visualize when new asteroid hunting sats or techniques come online.  Imagining the gravity well around the sun becomes much easier with a presentation like this.

A Geek Mom (Shannon) says:

Good comm. Message received.