It always starts the same for me. The alarm goes off, I grumble something totally insane like, “It’s only a shuttle launch!” and then realizing said insanity get out bed and get on the road. After the caffeine kicks in I get stoked – I’m going to Kennedy Space Center to work a shuttle launch. The drive over is a breeze and then as I near KSC I realize that I am not the only one that realizes that this will be space shuttle Atlantis’ final flight – the roads are packed, backed up due to a security check point near the Astronaut Hall of Fame.

This delay makes me about 5 minutes late meeting our first spectacular guest of the day – Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex’s Public Relations Manager, Andrea Farmer. This lady is the best, after knowing her for four years now – I still have no idea where she gets her energy from. She is a whirlwind of excited activity and she and her team have turned the Visitor Complex into one of the ‘must-see’ spots in Central Florida. The interview goes well, but being frazzled by the traffic jam and almost being late I forget to let our viewers know that whoever has asked the most questions in our chatroom – wins a four person general admission ticket to the Visitor Complex, (generously provided by Andrea and Delaware North the operator’s of the Visitor Complex). But Ben catches me before I let Andrea go and all ends well.

I had thought that I would maybe do one or two other interviews during the day – however tech issues cropped up that forced Ben behind the camera and except for Cariann’s interview of NASA PAO Allard Beutel I did the rest. Now here comes the little reveal that may surprise most folks – this was more than fine by me. You see, while a shuttle launch is incredible it is not the main draw for me. I go to participate, to contribute and to be a part of the moment. So the more I have to do, the better. The launch? That is just icing on the cake.

If you watched Spacevidcast’s launch day broadcast almost all of the people that I interviewed are either friends or acquaintances of mine. This makes it so much easier on both of us as we can just sit down and have a chat like we would any other day. Both Ben and Cariann seemed pleased with how this turned out and I will try to keep this formula going for the next two launches.

Within an hour of launch a ball bearing was discovered that could have potentially scrubbed the launch for the day. However, the mission team determined that it was not an issue and the countdown went ahead according to plan. There have been few times when I have not gone down past the countdown clock and watched the launch near the turn basin – with a nice cool tent over my head – this was one of those times. The launch was a spectacular affair that took place under blue skies. Those in attendance were treated to a spectacle that they will be tending their grandchildren about. As the SRBs slipped away and the people at watching the launch meandered back toward the press site it was evident on the faces and in the tears of those present that they had just witnessed history.

Hey guys! I know that I’ve seen them before, but now I’ve decided to make a gallery of your Spacevidcast action shots! This gallery is far from filled, so feel free to continue to email me or tweet me your pictures and links!!

@Quarkspin:

SVC logo displayed on my eyepiece case. Kind of like travel stickers.

@jonverve:

Lightsaber from @spacevidcast and @thinkgeek Thanks! Time to go jedi on our dining room dishes!

Michael:

Mike holding his telescope lenses case.

@MrHuggy:

At last it is here. It's a nice t shirt but a bit smaller than I expected for a medium.

@priesett:

I, of course, have one on my telescope.

My daughter stole one of my SVC stickers and put it on her kitty poster.

Here's @VAXHeadroom and me watching the 131 launch on Spacevidcast. How's that for an action shot?

@ageekmom:

My MacBook Pro. She was pristine back in November '09, but two #nasatweetups & scores of Spacevidcasts later, she's now properly branded. The gap will be filled by either a STS-132 sticker or an ISS or Hubble sticker...

Jason Rhian:

Here I am working the launch of STS-131 for Spacevidcast. Yes, that is my high-tech setup, complete with lunch box/webcam stand!

The night was off to a good start, I had interviewed Trina Patterson, Ron Regan, Trey Brouwer and astronaut Michael Bloomfield. When the time came for me to interview Bernhard Harris however, I couldn’t communicate with my producer that it was time for him to throw back to me. I told Dr. Harris’ assistants to go ahead and move on to their next interview while I cleared the tech issues. Normally? You would have just lost your interview because scheduling is tight – however Griffin Communications, (the folks Dr. Harris was working with) are some stellar folks and they made sure to clear a few minutes for me to interview Dr. Harris. For that I owe them a special debt of thanks.

The second astronaut interview of the evening was with Michael Bloomfield; he was fun and made for a great interview. However, there was one person in particular that I wanted to get a sit-down with, (and in so doing became the hero of my producers). George Diller, hardly a name that ignites the flames of recognition. However, I had a way to leave no doubt in the minds of Spacevidcast’s guests who he was, (if he would consent to it). So, I asked if he would open with something first and he agreed. We sat down and I introduced him and asked him if there was something he could like to say to our guests. He smiled and said;

“3-2-1 and liftoff of Spacevidcast!!”

George was an amazing interview, having worked with him when I was an intern I wasn’t surprised. Although I didn’t realize that he had been with NASA for 29 years!

The Twinkle and then the Glare

Shortly before launch, the International Space Station made a pass overhead – a shining, slowly-moving star that hinted at what was to come in just twenty minutes. Then the launch ticked closer, I hung out with the ladies of ATK, Jessica Rye and Trina Patterson as well as Mark Kirkman of Interspace News. NASA had asked one of its writers to keep people from loitering in front of the countdown clock and they could not have picked a better man for the job. He was – an imposing figure. The ladies said that he was an excellent NASA-bouncer, I told them, that when I worked in corrections and we had a problem in our pod – that he was the type of guy you wanted as backup.

The countdown drifted to zero and then the intense silent glow of the shuttle lit up the early morning hours followed by the deafening road of a vehicle punching gravity in the face caused shock waves to blast across the water of the turn basin, set off car alarms and rattled everything not tied down – good morning Central Florida – this is your wake up call! It was Trina’s birthday and a friend texted her – “Happy Birthday, amazing candles!”

The Dragon at Dawn

The plume left by the roaring road of fire in the sky was hit way up in the stratosphere by sunlight as it peeked over the horizon. This gave it an amazing light-blue glow. However this was nothing. I returned inside to provide Spacevidcast with a wrap-up and while doing so I noted the light of dawn was coming in through the windows of the press site, but that wasn’t all. The plume had been wrapped around into an amazing pattern high in the sky, which resembled a dragon.

The post-launch press conference was a nerve-wracking experience for me. I had been the person carrying the microphone to the reporters when I was an intern. This time however, it would be me that was asking the question – on NASA TV. I asked why it seemed that Discovery flew so often. The question was chosen from one of our guests and while the answer in hindsight was obvious, the NASA mission managers liked it and turned it into the cap of the Q & A session. Mike Moses hinted that NASA Flow Director Stephanie Stilson had arranged for it to be that way.

The Best Traffic Jam Ever

Sleep would be a long time coming as I spent nearly four hours, (on a trip that takes two) on the road. However, from my perspective that was a good thing. Hundreds of thousands of people had come from around the world to watch Discovery take off. In short, the jammed Florida roadways were a display of support for NASA and America’s manned space program. To me it was a symbol that we as a nation understand and stand behind the people that are building our future in space.

On the way home, just outside of Orlando, a sign even more overt was overhead that it had indeed been a good night – a skywriter had drawn a smiley face in the crystal clear skies above. Exhausted and ready for bed I passed by Fantasy of Flight where a bi-plane buzzed I-4 and ‘waggled’ its wings. Happy at the successful conclusion of the night’s events I headed home – Go NASA.

Apparently the White House wants to hear from me. So, I thought I would give my personal opinion on the state of things.

We’re in a recession. We have a huge amount of debt. There really no end in sight, at least not one that I can see. America has gone from innovating and creating industry to consuming and, well, just consuming. It is time for us to stand up and lead the world once again. Lets create a new economy, a new industry and a new beginning for ourselves.

It is time for a grand vision that will spur the workforce, invigorate the economy and build a new industry that we will lead. We’ve done this before with the computer revolution and again with the Internet revolution. We can do it once more, but this time it should be a revolution of galactic proportions.

Let us once again explore the galaxy. Not just robots, but lets put humans on Mars. Lets put humans on Near Earth Objects. Heck lets go to Enceladas and other interesting moons too! We can develop the new infrastructure, the new propulsion and the new way of thinking that goes along with it.

The Earth only has so many resources. Eventually, maybe not today, but eventually we will run out. Water, precious metals and the building blocks of just about everything are all resources that will eventually expire. Today the resource we need the most is energy. We need good, clean and affordable energy. By using Space Based Solar Power, or even technology simply developed for long-duration space flight we can become a producer of energy that the world would buy from. We would switch from a consumer of foreign oil to a producer of clean, affordable energy. When fresh drinking water becomes more scarce, we would be ready with our space inspired water refinement. Not only would we convert back to a production society, but we could also mine near Earth objects to help greatly reduce the national debt.

Some of the near Earth objects we have floating nearby (relatively speaking of course) are worth an estimated $20,000,000,000,000.00 dollars. That’s $20 trillion if you lost track of the 0′s there. The current estimated US debt is around $12 trillion dollars or just over 1/2 of the value of just one near Earth object. Lets assume that it takes $10 trillion to develop all of the technology and infrastructure required to mine one of these asteroids. That reduces our national debt to around $2 trillion which means that by mining two asteroids we would have a national credit of $8 trillion. I think National Credit sounds a lot nicer than National Debt, don’t you?  That healthcare no one is sure how to pay for? Paid in full. Social Security? Secure.

Flexible path is not the path. I know we have a lot of people that support it, but we should go all out when it comes to space. We should be setting aggressive timelines. We should be producing new vehicles and trying out cutting edge ideas. We should be laying the groundwork for private industry to bring mere mortals to Mars, the Moon, and other places across our solar system where we can find new jobs, new resources and a new way of living. We should be leading the planet on the greatest journey humans have ever undertaken.

It will take a charismatic leader, a lot of optimism, patience, money and vision to make a plan like this come together. We had this in the 60′s for a brief moment and have yet to see it again. Do we have what it takes 50 years later to pick up the dropped baton and unite the planet in our greatest adventure ever? Make no mistake, this is a very difficult series of events to line up perfectly. It is completely possible that the 60′s were our one shot, and it is now gone, forever. I certainly hope that is not the case.

I’m clearly bias towards space. Heck, I host a space web site! But I do so out of my own pocket because it truly is something I believe in. I don’t make a living working in the space industry. I’m not employed on the space coast. Heck, I work in IT for a real estate company in the middle of Minnesota, nowhere near any cool space companies like Boeing of Lockheed.  I believe in this because I believe space is our way out. It can solve our recession, our economic problems, our environment problems, our energy problems and any resource problems that may crop up along the way. We just need to look at space in new and innovative ways to see that while it may look empty, in all actuality space is full of everything required to solve almost all of the problems we have today.

I would like to see us extend our reach to the stars in a big, bold move. The White House asked me to be succinct, include metrics of progression, suggest who could lead the project and techniques used to accomplish the goals stated. I really did none of those things. Fortunately I do not believe I am the only one who believes in this vision. I invite all those who believe that our destiny is among the stars to chime in here. What metrics of progression would we have? Who would lead it? NASA? How would we accomplish these goals in a timeline that wouldn’t bore the American people (which generally means under a decade)? Make your voice heard along with mine. It’s time to leave this planet and build a whole new beginning for the human race. If the President wants to know what we think, lets make sure we have a very loud and unified voice: the future of America is in space!

Apollo 13 was dubbed NASA’s ‘successful failure’ in that while the crew failed to make it to the lunar surface – the folks at NASA succeeded in bringing home the crew safe and sound. The amazing events that comprised the mission were too tantalizing for Hollywood to pass up on and it was eventually relayed into a major motion picture with Ron Howard directing and starring Tom Hanks.

The trouble started with the request for a cryo-tank stir. Faulty wiring caused an explosion and the crew’s lives were placed in jeopardy as a result. NASA however as we all now know did not consider failure – an ‘option.’ So they pulled themselves up by their boot straps and got the crew back home – safe, tired and sound.

The event held at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex was held outdoors in the perfect Florida weather. With former shuttle astronaut and current Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana introduced the surviving crew members, Apollo 13 Commander Jim Lovell and Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise.

The crew regaled those present with stories and jokes from the Apollo 13 mission. The Apollo 13 event was part of a busy week at KSC with the space shuttle Discovery launching on Monday, the Apollo 13 40th anniversary celebration held on April 9-10 and Yuri’s Night, a celebration of the space age held at the Astronaut Hall of Fame, (just down the road from KSC) the night of April 10.

With the upcoming launch of Discovery and the crew of STS-131 an acquaintance of mine asked a question that I thought most everyone already knew. He asked me, “So what goes into a space shuttle crew?” As I began explaining the training and degree requirements he shook his head and told me that wasn’t what he meant. He seemed to think that a shuttle crew is designed much like the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise with a captain, science officer, commander, doctor and a communications specialist. The answer is – no, it’s not really like that at all.

A normal space shuttle crew these days consists of the following:

Commander. Typically a military fighter pilot with years of experience and at least one mission in space under his belt already.

Pilot. Also a military fighter pilot, but more often than not it will be his or her first mission.

Mission Specialist. These men and women come from a diverse background of occupations and can come from a variety of occupational disciplines such as military, science, engineering, medicine and others.

Payload Specialist. This type of astronaut is usually a one-shot, meaning he/she is going up with some type of experiment or equipment that the shuttle is carrying up and has highly specialized skills dedicated to that experiment/equipment.

That is pretty much it when it comes to shuttle astronaut designations, but the International Space Station (I.S.S) does have mission engineers, science officers and such. Although the crew of the I.S.S. is very diverse with members coming from the U.S, Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Union they still stick to an agreed upon structure that alternates between I.S.S. partner members.

Having made too many trips to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for my own good, it has been my good fortune to meet some 112 Astronauts, Cosmonauts and “Spaceflight Participants.” Usually commentary from these folks is rather dry and then of course you get the questions from the tourists, (inevitably the same questions are asked over and over again). However, every once in a while an astronaut will let lose with a real zinger. Here are a few of the things I’ve heard that gave me quite a laugh at the time.

“…I learned a lot from folks at NASA, from “Hoot” Gibson I learned what a T-38 jet sounds like with its engines cut off at 38,000 feet!”

Astronaut Steven Hawley at the 2007 Astronaut Hall of Fame Induction.

“Three old astronauts were walking to the launch pad.  The first one said, “It’s windy!”  The second said, “No! It’s Thursday!” Then the last one said, “Me too!  Let’s go get a drink!”

Astronaut and American legend John Glenn at World Space Expo in Nov. 2007.

“It was wonderful, for a lot of reasons, for one if something were to happen, it was going to happen on the surface and I still got to come home!”

Apollo astronaut Al Worden regarding on what it was like to be by himself while the other two astronauts of Apollo 15 were on the lunar surface.  He said this at the Apollo 40th Anniversary at Kennedy Space Center, July 16, 2009.

I’m just going to throw this one out to the world wide web.
I got this question from a long time listener, first time emailer.

I was thinking about going back to school and noticed several places have “Space Studies” degrees now. While that sounds super interesting and right up my alley I can’t find any answer one way or the other as to how useful the degree actually is. To me at least, it sounds a bit too generic to be any good but like I said I can’t get an answer one way or another as to weather or not anyone would actually hire someone based on that degree or if they did, what for. At this point, I mostly concerned that its just a money grab and a useless time sink for space geeks looking to get in the industry.

Does anyone out there have any advice? I figure that people like Tim Bailey or Will Pomerantz, even Dave Masten might have some good ideas. Do you?

Even if we can’t answer this SVCer’s question, it would be interesting to see what you have to say.

Lemme hear it!
-C

If fans of space exploration are planning to visit Florida’s Space Coast this April, they simply could not have picked a better time to do so. Take your pick, you’ve got events at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center that are space history related, there is a space shuttle mission currently scheduled to take off, NewSpacers™ can watch the inaugural flight of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and for those with a political bent, President Obama has a conference scheduled to discuss his plans for the future of spaceflight.

Now, if you worried that this is scattered throughout the month of April – fear not – all of these events take place within a span of ten days. Here is what will be going on during this frenetic two-week period:

April 5 – The crew of STS-131 are scheduled to roar into orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery for a resupply mission to the International Space Station.

[Image Credit: Jason Rhian]

April 9-10 – The 40th anniversary of Apollo 13. This is an event no spacer should miss, with astronauts Jim Lovell and Fred Haise joined by “flight” Gene Kranz and ‘Pad Fuehrer’ Guenter Wendt as they provide commentary about this historic mission. The event will be at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex and hosted by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. Attendees will be treated to interactive discussions, a gourmet meal and much, much more.

[Image Credit: Astronaut Scholarship Foundation]

April 12 – SpaceX has the inaugural launch of its Falcon 9 rocket scheduled to blast off from launch complex 40. This much-anticipated first flight is hoped to signal the lowering the cost to reach orbit and usher in a new ‘commercial’ space age.

[Image Credit: SpaceX]

April 15 – President Barack Obama will unveil his plans for the future of manned spaceflight. After the initial poor reception to the lack of direction in the NASA 2011 budget, the president has been pressed to provide a clearer, sustainable long-term goal for the space agency. With the future of America’s manned space program possibly on the line, this will be a conference die-hard space enthusiasts should pay close attention to.

[Image Credit: billnelson.senate.gov]

These ten days in April will be a whirlwind of activity at America’s spaceport and for those spacers looking for a hypergolic injection of space-related excitement, if you can be there – you should be there. If you can’t however, please stay tuned to Spacevidcast as we cover these events and relay the excitement to you first hand – as only Spacevidcast can. However, given the level of intensity, we may be unable to live up to our motto, “making space commonplace” because these ten days will be anything but ‘commonplace.’

As with any first-time experience, my first day as Spacevidcast’s ‘roving KSC reporter’ was filled with little issues that were giving me a very big headache. Gaining access to the internet three hours later than planned and trying to figure out how to juggle all the various programs to make the live webcast happen – were all piling up into a very stressful evening/morning. At 2:30 a.m. (EDT) I had my first interview with astronaut Michael Foale. He was polite, obviously tired and a life-saver.

I made sure to check and recheck that the internet connection was solid and the various programs were running properly and I went into the ‘green-room’ and told the six-time space flyer what types of questions I would be asking – and everything stopped working. I explained to Foale what had happened and he was unfazed and offered to reschedule. I asked for a minute – and mercy. Luckily, Tim Bailey was there and waded through all the tech issues in no time.

Now, as you might imagine, with all that I was a tad dazed – Foale wasn’t. Remember, this is the guy that survived a Progress spacecraft impacting the Mir Space Station. He took off, animatedly filling in viewers about his experiences on-orbit, the importance of the Tranquility Module and adjoining cupola. It was obvious that he had done this before and I was very, very thankful for it. He made me look like I wasn’t as flustered as I was and gave Spacevidcast an excellent interview. After the interview was over I relaxed and talked to Tim about how poorly it seemed things went. He smiled and said;

“Jason, you were sitting next to an astronaut, after he started talking – no one even noticed you.”

Although a little deflating, it was also reassuring, it allowed me to know that my first interview went well, (a fact later confirmed by the show’s hosts). The shuttle did not launch that morning; we would have to wait 24 hours for that to happen. The following night I conducted two interviews, more relaxed and confident than my first, I owed this new confidence to watching a pro at work.

Wow! We’ve been working on this one for a while. Debating if this was the right move or if we should go a different direction with the site. In the end I think this is going to be a great thing. What is it? Why epic of course!

Post shows 2.31 through 3.04 are online and available for epic subscribers. We’re also in the process of adding some outtakes to one of the daily shows, and of course we will be adding even more content as time goes on. Spacevidcast epic won’t be just post shows, but hopefully a ton of really great content over the years and years you’ll keep your membership!

Spacevidcast epic will help us do things like go to conferences, add new gear to our lineup and be able to afford more advertising of the site which will hopefully bring in even more live members for shows! Not a lot of people think about how expensive all this stuff is! For example, we would like to go to SpaceUp, SxSW and ISDC 2010 to bring you live coverage of each. Each conference will cost us a minimum of $1,500 just in travel expenses! Some conferences like SxSW are closer to $3,000 due to a longer duration and more expensive flights/hotel. For now we have to pick and choose only one conference to go to because we simply can’t afford to go to multiples. It is our hope that we will be able to bring on 150 monthly subscribers (I think that is a reasonable number) to help offset those travel costs. At 150 subscribers we’ll bring in enough to pay for travel to each venue, and you’ll get great epic content!

To help achieve this goal we have also set up an affiliate program. Once you’re an epic subscriber yourself you can give out your affiliate link to anyone you like. Should someone sign up under your link then you will get a 10% kickback for their order, as long as they have the order. So if you bring on 10 monthly subscribers, then your monthly membership will in essence cost you nothing! You will continue to get 10% of each member you bring on so long as they continue to pay. The more people you bring on, the more you make, there is no cap! You just need a PayPal account that we can deposit the money in to!

I would like to do a big push to get epic out in the wild right now! We have both SpaceUp and SxSW coming up really close to each other. In order to be able to do both I would love to hit the 150 member mark by February 15th, which is only a couple of weeks away! Not an easy goal to reach, but completely possible with your help!

I hope you all enjoy epic, and as with any aspect of the site I welcome your constructive critisism. E-mail us at epic@spacevidcast.com

We got in to a great discussion about what defines an astronaut in the Spacevidcast Live 3.01 post show. In fact it stirred quite the debate. I thought this to be a very good question, what does define an astronaut?

Of the slightly more than 500 humans we have sent to space, few would argue that all of them would be astronauts. In recent history we have started sending civilians to the International Space Station via Space Adventures. Even these people went though year long training and worked on station. In fact Richard Garriott even talks about how he had to remove part of his liver in order to be allowed to travel to the International Space Station. Check out this video from ISDC 2009 where Richard speaks not only about his liver surgery, but also a bit about being called or not called an astronaut:

If we’re already starting questioning the term ‘Astronaut’ for people who do huge amounts of training and work on the ISS but had to pay their way there, then what of the people who are flying aboard Virgin Galactic?

Right now space travel is expensive, complex and risky business. Anyone willing to fly to space on a private spaceliner is putting their money and life on the line. That’s not to say they are crazy for doing so, in fact I would assume that many of the people who watch Spacevidcast would do it in a heartbeat if they had the opportunity. But just because these people, you and I for example, don’t train for years or even work in space, does that not mean we’re not worthy of the title ‘Astronaut’?

Some would argue that a sub-orbital flight, while technically over the 100 km boundary of space, isn’t really space flight. Does that mean that Alan Shepard wasn’t an astronaut until Apollo 14? What does that mean to all of the Project Mercury flights? Maybe the difference is that in the 1960′s sub-orbital was a big deal and with Project Mercury the astronaut on-board was truly working. When it comes to a Virgin Galactic traveler, the travelers are really just there for the enjoyment of space.

But these first people helping to create a whole new industry are just as important to space travel as Yuri’s first mission. These people are putting their money and lives on the line to not only get to view space, but to also help push humanity forward. Do they not also deserve to be called ‘Astronauts’?

What about 30 years from now when space truly is commonplace. Or 50 or 100, whatever it takes. We don’t have a special term for anyone flying on an airplane. You’re just a traveler. It is just another method to get from point A to point B. Do we really need to call people who go to space ‘Astronauts’ or will it just be a term that falls by the wayside? When I go to space, and I will, what will I be called? A civilian astronaut? A space traveler? A fool? What do you think? What do we call the next generation space traveler who purchased their way in to space? Does it even matter?

2010 is the year everything changes for space travel. This won’t be the year that we land humans on Mars or even back on the Moon. We won’t have Ares V ready to go nor will Virgin Galactic take paying customers on sub-orbital flights. No, 2010 is the year that the foundation work for our species to live, work and play in space is created.

For the first time in over 20 years we have a blue Moon on new years eve. It is a beautiful sight in the sky and if you’re reading this on December 31st, 2009 or January 1st, 2010 I highly suggest you look up and just take in the sight. It’s almost as if the Moon knew that we were trying to become something more. Striving to move to space. The moon is sitting there high in the sky daring us to return.

And return we shall.

Companies like Masten Space Systems, XCOR, Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, Armadillo Aerospace and many others are all striving to push us to space in new and innovative ways. These companies are not just rehashing what has been done for the last 40 years but rather are reinventing the entire industry. Virgin Galactic will take consumers on sub-orbital flights en masse, something never done before. SpaceX will take astronauts to the International Space Station for a fraction of the cost that the Space Shuttle can do it. Masten and Armadillo are creating next generation vehicles that can take payloads to space for a fraction of the cost that any of the traditional companies can do it today. These players are changing the industry and with it how we look at and imagine space.

You can already see the tipping point starting to take shape. Sites like News.com, Engadget.com, Gizmodo.com, Slashdot.org and others are picking up a lot more space related stories than before. Some of these sites even have dedicated space news writers. Whereas a year ago Spacevidcast was the only weekly news show on space, we now have a couple of other contenders in the marketplace helping to spur the imagination of everyone on the planet. Even if you’re not a space nerd who lives, eats and breaths TLAs you can feel the shift happening. You can feel the excitement growing. No longer will the masses support Low Earth Orbit only. People want the moon. People want Mars. People want space.

40 years ago humans got a taste of what it was like to be a space faring civilization. We yearn to have that excitement back. It only takes one voice, one idea, one person to change the world. 2010 will reveal those people who will begin this shift back to the cosmos. It will be an amazing year to be a space nerd, and I’m excited to share it with all of you. The old guard is retiring. It is time for the next generation to take over and bring humans back to their rightful place amongst the stars.

50 years from now when we look back I am certain we will point to this year, 2010, as the year that everything began to change.  This is the start of humans living, working and colonizing space. This is the year that change begins. This is the tipping point.

You may have noticed a bunch of posts that, well, don’t make sense. Our RSS feed is a flurry of activity adding items like billing errors and ‘this post requires a subscription’ problems. That’s me working on getting ready for epic. I usually don’t like to work against a production site, but for some reason I decided that this would be easy and what could possibly go wrong? Uh, well, a lot.

Needless to say I’m migrating this to my beta site to continue the work there. Hopefully you will see less errors on the main Spacevidcast site, but I do know that some stuff will so go wonky as I seed epic with post shows, pictures and audio clips from our 2009 season (yes, new epic subscribers will get access to as much data as I was able to collect right out of the gates!)

For now please accept my apology for the construction. We’ll get this all sorted out and working before we go live. Heck, if I have enough time I may even release an updated design to the site along side epic. How cool, er, epic would that be?

As we were driving David back to his hotel last week he brought up an interesting concept:  it is possible that SpaceX could deliver humans to Mars, but it would be a one way ticket.  You could go to Mars but would have no way of returning home to Earth.  He asked if I would take the ticket.

I had never thought of that concept before. With Dr. Zubrin’s plan, which to date I believe is the most viable plan I have heard of to get humans on the red planet, we could send refueling rockets to Mars before the humans arrive so we have a way home. What if we decided to simply go all out? Explore like the pioneers did when they were settling America. When the pioneers started venturing west they didn’t really have a way home either. They didn’t know where they would live or if they would even survive the journey. After many years and in no small part thanks to those pioneers we have grown in to one of the worlds most powerful nations. Could the same thing, nay, should the same thing happen on Mars?

The space geek in you may be inclined to jump up and say “YES! I would go to Mars no matter the cost!!!” But really think about it. You will have to build everything yourself. If you walk outside without protection you will die. Initially there won’t be any advanced plumbing. You may need to go vegetarian for years or the rest of your life. No Internet. Communications with Earth will be delayed by at least 3 minutes in each direction. You will never see your family again unless you brought them. You could run out of food, water or supplies that will sustain your life at any time.

So, would you take a one way ticket to Mars and why or why not?  I won’t post what I answered just yet, I would like to get your thoughts before I tell you how I replied to David.

You may have noticed that the last two dailies posted on Spacevidcast are using a different player, namely Blip.tv.  We’re currently experimenting with the best method to not only post our videos to Spacevidcast.com but also to as many distribution points as possible.  TubeMogul is one option but they limit what we’re allowed to do.  So we’re giving Blip.tv a shot.

The advantage of Blip.tv is that we have one dashboard where we can check comments no matter where our videos are distributed, well, in theory at least.  We’re able to quickly and easily upload to not just YouTube but also Vimeo, Facebook, Archive.org and others.  The biggest reason I wanted to try them out though is the revenue sharing model they have.  Spacevidcast costs a lot to run and while we have been toying with the idea of ‘Pro’ subscriptions, I am hoping we can keep a good chunk of the site free.  And to do that we’ll need to have advertisers.

Right now there are a few… glitches.  For example, users on slower connections may not have a very good viewing experience.  The Ads (currently a tampon ad, um, w00t?) seem to play atop the videos so you miss the first chunk and you can no longer view our videos on your iPhone. Blip.tv is aware of these issues and is working on them, some already fixed and apparently others to be fixed later tonight / early tomorrow.

I don’t know if we will stay with Blip.tv, but I can say that we need to play around a bit to see what works from a technology perspective and balance that with an advertising strategy.  Please stick with us as we play with some of this tech, which at times, may be really broken.

Our daily epicsodes are back in no small part thanks to Cariann! Between 4 and 5 days a week we will release a new 1 to 5 minute video about, well, space. These shows are not live, but they can start discussions at any moment in our 24×7 live chat room at spacevidcast.com/live.

With the live shows we didn’t really need to stay on top of space news per say as we were only posting once a week. Now that we post every day we could certainly use your help! If you have a space related topic that you think we should cover, send it to news@spacevidcast.com. Our team of highly trained space monkeys will get your message and will either jump with joy screaming as loud as they can, or fling it like poo into a fan. Either way, it is fun to watch.

In addition to being available on the Spacevidcast.com site, you can also subscribe to these videos in HD or in iPod/iPhone format in iTunes. I would also love to be able to offer these as torrents for any Miro user (or if you just prefer torrents). If you’re able to seed the videos and help us get started there, it would be appreciated. The live channels suck all our bandwidth, so seeding is not an option for me.

You may have noticed that we have three sections on this site: videos, podcasts and articles. The first step was to get our core competency up and running with daily videos. Once we have those in the can we will start working on adding daily podcasts and eventually daily articles which will be blog posts and OpEd articles. There are a lot of very talent Spacevidcasters out there, some of whom are already contributing content to the site. Expect to see more and more of this content over the coming weeks as we ramp up to become the best source of space awesome on the Intarwebs.

Oh, and I’m pretty sure Cariann is going to kill me for that picture. I just couldn’t resist!

Please select up to three people to become the first elected Spacevidcast moderators. This will be a 6 month term ending in February, 2010. Like any election system I am sure it is possible to game the poll provider, but this only hurts you the community as this process is meant to serve, well, you. Good luck to all the candidates and remember, above all, their job is to serve *you*!

This is simply my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. My opinion is that Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (aliens) may in fact be a very distant future generation of us humans (maybe 100,000 years?). There’s documented proof in a popular science technology magazine (that I’ve unfortunately been unable to locate for this article) I read several years ago that said that due to the invention of the typewriter, and computers, video games and hand-held electronic devices, generations are being born currently with thumbs that are longer and stronger than they were prior to the 20th century.

The laws of physics, as far as we know, say that we can’t go the speed of light without some way of cheating, such as the theoretical wormhole. There is the possibility that we do come up with a way to travel at light speed or faster, which would obviously make space travel far less tedious, and much more convenient for our exploratory nature. I believe this may be how the ETI would be able to visit us.

Height is no longer a required trait, because as our societies grow, we want to fit more and more people into a smaller space. Skyscrapers, cubicles and other aspects of our increasingly mechanistic society are sort of forcing us to adapt to our environment, even though our environment is forcing us to evolve in different ways at the same time.

Many of us wear sunglasses, so I’m going to assume that some people are going to eventually evolve into having larger darker “tinted windows” over regular eyeballs to absorb the light provided by a star we associate with. If that’s not the case, then perhaps something cataclysmic has darkened the sun, such as several asteroid or meteor strikes, or perhaps living underground, or maybe even a supervolcano long-term eruption. If this were the case, it would also help us evolve an odd skin tone. We wouldn’t have as much melanin, or at least we wouldn’t develop as much melanogenesis (the reaction to the sun that creates a tan) if there’s not enough light.

Our noses are no longer needed for survival, so it would get smaller, I believe. We are already growing meat in labs, we have dietary supplements in pill or liquid form, so I think it’s just a matter of time before we can get all food in a much smaller form than it currently is, with all necessary nutrients. We won’t need mouths as big as that which we currently have.

Obviously, there is a paradox that says that one cannot travel back in time unless that time has the capability to get one back to their original future time, but as the adage goes; “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” How do we know ETI’s aren’t visiting? I personally think that aliens exist, but I don’t think they have visited us. To think we are alone in the universe is arrogant, and to think the aliens have visited earth with humans walking around is extreme, simply due to the efforts involved and the odds of traversing trillions of miles to find a 10,000 year window, and us making claims of ‘lights in the sky.’

Thanks for all the fish,
Jeph

As many of the regulars in the chat room know we are in desperate need of some full time IRC Operators. To that end the community will be electing three people to act as IRC Operators for the Spacevidcast channel on Ustream.

What the IRC OP is:
- The IRC OP is the servant of the IRC room and the people.
- They are there to ensure that trolls are taken care of swiftly and promptly.
- Add half OPs as required to help control the room or ensure that *someone* is there even after hours to watch over the room
- Help channel newbies

Suggested qualifications:
- Understanding of how to properly de-voice people
- Understanding of how to properly kick users
- Understanding of how to properly ban people
- Advanced IRC commands are a plus

The elections will be opening up on Saturday August 1st and will be closing Friday, August 7th at 23:00 UTC. The community will vote on the people that they want to serve as their IRC operators. An IRC operator will serve a 6 month term and can not serve two terms back to back, but can serve again one term later. At any time any member of the community can ask to have an IRC Operator removed from power at which time Cariann and I will evaluate the Operator and circumstance to make a decision from there. While SVC is opening this up to elections, we are still a benevolent dictatorship and Cariann/Ben have the final say if an IRC OP is booted (which we will not take lightly).

If *YOU* would like to be an IRC Operator send an e-mail to benjamin@spacevidcast.com stating that you would like to be an IRC OP. The list of people throwing their hat in the ring per say will be updated in this post.

Good luck to all!

Current candidates:
“randy_nacol2002″ Randy Nacol
“Optiquest21″ Brandon Rowe
“Beale” Liam Carbin
“Fox814″ Gabe Soltero
“Jeph” Jeff Noe
“QuantumG” Trent Waddington
“BZWingZero” Brian Zollman
“NovemberKat” Sarah Austin
“Tehjai” Jai Muise
“Defiant” Brandon C
“Gooey” Mathew R
“Bookwyrm”
“CarbonX” Steven B
“arma358″ Zachary McCauley

Several astronauts have noted that their colleagues, after going out to do a spacewalk or EVA (Extravehicular Activity) have come back into the airlock with a very distinct metallic, sulfuric odor on the outside of their space suits.

The spacewalkers themselves don’t notice it, they smell plastic inside the suits. The crew that helps the spacewalkers in and out of the suits notice it, and the smell lingers for a few days. According to Thomas Jones, a three-time spacewalker, “When you repressurize the airlock and get out of your suit, there is a distinct odor of ozone, a faint acrid smell.” He also noted it smells like burnt gunpowder.

I’m willing to bet that the smell is the result of all of the freely floating elements (ranging from hydrogen up to iron) in the solar system and universe that have at found a home in a sparse and scattered layer on the spacesuits’ outer layers. Obviously, we can’t actually smell space itself, but it’s the same concept as being in a room filled with cigarette smoke. The fabric absorbs the particles, and they come inside. It’s an unmistakable smell, and the suit handlers can’t help but notice it. It’s also on the helmets, as well as the metal tools and whatnot, but less noticeable on the hard items. I think it’s a matter of time before someone capitalizes on this idea of smelling the unsmellable.

Keeping my nose clean… for now,
Jeph

This entry is about Newtonian physics and making sense of it all.

If you launched a rocket directly east from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, (the white arrow) it would have an inclination of 28.6 degrees. The Hubble Space Telescope was launched nearly due east from KSC, and has an inclination of 28.5 degrees (not shown). If you launch due east from another latitude, the spacecraft will have the inclination of that launch pad. The inclination angle can be changed by changing the vector you launch at. If you decide to build the International Space Station (ISS), for example, and other countries are involved, you’ll want to have an inclination that the other countries can reach. The ISS has an inclination of 51.6 degrees (it goes to the northeast along the white path). Russia launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome (the red Arrow) in Kazakhstan. Baikonur is located at 46 degrees latitude, so They’d would have to launch towards the east-north-east at the right time to get to the ISS. Are you with me so far?

In order for all of these angles to really make sense, the map provided (thanks to www.heavens-above.com!) is similar to the one shown frequently on NASA TV during manned spaceflight missions. The reason the path doesn’t line up with itself is because Earth rotates underneath the orbiting spacecraft. When the launch facility is “in-plane”, or directly underneath the orbit of the craft, you have a short period of time to launch. With regards to the ISS, that launch window is about 10 minutes. The opportunities to launch vary day to day, because the ascending node is when the US prefers to launch and land. NASA never launched toward the ISS when it’s in the descending node because it takes extra energy to make up for that extra 28.6 degrees above the equator. The ascending and descending nodes may seem a bit confusing, but looking at the map, the ascending node is the path going to the northeast, and the descending node is going southeast. If you’re still confused, remember that it is rocket science, but it’s not too hard to figure out with a little patience!

If you’re still with me, I’ll explain a little bit more. If you go to www.heavens-above.com, http://spaceweather.com/flybys/ or http://science.nasa.gov/RealTime/jtrack/you’ll be able to see some of the satellites that are constantly whizzing overhead at 5 miles/second! I’ve personally seen the ISS and space shuttle, hundreds of “Iridium flares” and even the Hubble Space Telescope once in a while from here in Philadelphia, PA, in the US. It’s quite a treat to see the ISS and shuttle following each other before docking or after separation!! To explain why NASA only prefers to land on the ascending node is to minimize risk to those of us here on terra firma. If something like the Columbia tragedy were to happen again, NASA doesn’t want the pieces of debris from the spacecraft falling on populated areas. There is some toxic things aboard that are best left untouched, but that’s a subject for a later date.

Outside looking up with a smile,
-Jeph

My name is Monty Icenogle, and I normally reside in Southern California, not to far from Edwards Air Force Base. I’m totally blind, and have been interested in the space shuttle since I happened to hear my first launch on a local radio station back in 1988, when I was just 8 years old.
On May 4, 1989, I got to see the landing of space shuttle Atlantis I believe it was, in person at Edwards.
From that point on, I knew I’d want to get the chance to experience a space shuttle launch viewing in person, but figured I’d never get that chance, because I don’t get the chance to go very many places. And I certainly don’t get the chance to go anywhere outside of California. In fact, in my entire life, I’ve only been out of state twice. Once last year when I went to AZ, and the second time is now in FL.
During my junior high and early high school years, I met a friend of mine who like me was really in to the space shuttle. His family even had one of those big C band satellite dishes to allow him to pull in NASA TV then called NASA select. Since we for a time went to the same school, I decided one space shuttle launch weekend to spend the weekend at his place so I could watch live mission coverage and record as much as I could.
That was in October, 1994. On August 18, 1994, I was once again at my friend’s place, and this time we were hoping to see the launch of space shuttle Endeavour on mission STS-68. We were both quite excited as the final moments of the countdown approached. We were about to watch a launch together, something we’d tried to due with the initial launch attempt of STS-71 which was scrubbed due to bad weather. All we got from our STS-71 launch attempt was lots of impressive thunder.
But this time with STS-68, we were launching, and the countdown was now at t-31 seconds with Endeavour’s computers now in control.
15 seconds… 10 seconds, nothing could go wrong now, I thought. The excitement couldn’t be thicker.
And then… “We have 3 main engines up and burning, 3, 2, 1, and… have main engine cutoff… GLS safing is in progress.”
An RSLS abort had just occurred, and our second attempt to watch a launch together ended in a scrub. You can imagine how frustrated we both were!
I’ve lost contact with my old space shuttle friend, but if he knew I was now in FL attempting to see STS-127 in person, he’d be cheering me on, I know it.
Anyway, now on to my experience with STS-127.
A friend of mine named Joey who lives in Sanford and I have been talking about meeting one another since sometime in Mid April. I’d saved up some money, and was considering coming down for the STS-128 launch in August. He said that June would work better, so I planned my trip in such a way as to ensure I’d be here for the STS-127 launch on June 13. I made my flight reservation and purchased our 3 launch viewing tickets. As both Joey and I are blind, his wonderful wife Traci would be the third person going with us to KSC, in-fact she’d be taking us there, as it’s not quite safe for us to be driving ourselves, grinn.
On the morning of June 13, I was excited and could hardly sleep. My plan was to wake up at about 2:30, and check the launch status. I woke up at 2:44 AM, and checked my tweets, and the first thing I saw was that the launch postponement briefing was on. My heart sank, as I knew there wouldn’t be a launch this day.
So when 3 AM came around, I called Joey’s cell in the next room to wake him up and inform him of the scrub due to the hydrogen leak. We were both disappointed but were confident we’d see a launch within the current launch window. Since Joey had to have a minor out patient surgery done on his leg on June 18, we were hoping for a launch on either June 17 or 20.
When word came that we’d see an attempt to launch Endeavour on June 17, the excitement began to build again.
Things were looking in our favor. The weather wouldn’t be much of a factor for launch, and the launch would be on a day we could all make it to KSC!
I had totally forgotten however that weather could delay fueling of the orbiter, and as I watched the delay get longer and longer, I began to worry that yet again we’d have a scrub this time because weather would prevent the shuttle from being fueled. I prayed that the weather would clear in time for tanking to begin.
When the announcement came that fueling was a go, and we were now beginning tanking, I couldn’t've been more excited.
This time, we were going to see a launch in person, something I never thought I’d ever get the chance to do.
And then, I heard the announcement that engineers were monitoring a leak in the same general area as before. I honestly didn’t believe what I was hearing at first, and actually thought they were recapping why Saturday’s launch attempt had been scrubbed.
When I heard that they were cycling valves, and that they’d stopped the flow of liquid Hydrogen to the tank in order to troubleshoot, I was again getting concerned, but I couldn’t follow developments anymore, because we had to leave our place in order to be sure we arrived at KSC by our designated arrival time of 3:30 AM.
So, we headed out for Kennedy Space Center, hoping the issue would be able to be resolved, and we’d still see a launch yet.
This is where I’d wished there were a phone number I could call that I could listen live to NASA TV. When we were about 5 minutes out from KSC, Traci got breaking news on her phone from our local TV station, that the launch had been scrubbed.
This is what I feared would happen, I mean the traffic headed down to the Cape was flowing a bit too smoothly.
So we turned around and headed back home, disappointed once again that the launch was again scrubbed, and for the exact same reason as Saturday’s attempt, leaking hydrogen!
I came home, and watched the post scrub press conference in disgust, and then went to bed.
With all the effort I’ve put in to making sure I’m in Florida for a shuttle launch, am I not meant to experience a launch before the shuttle retires?
With the limited funds I have, it’d be some time before I could again make a trip down to FL.
You can imagine that I’m now as interested as NASA engineers are in knowing why we’ve had hydrogen leaks on 3 of the last 5 tanking operations. There have been 126 previous shuttle flights, and only these recent flights STS-119 and STS-127 have had these issues. One friend of mine speculated that perhaps sabotage is involved. He believes that workers fearing they’ll be out of a job following the shuttle program are trying to purposely delay the last few flights.
I don’t think I believe that, but whatever the cause, I hope it can be fixed! I’m not due to leave Florida until Mid July, so I hope NASA won’t let me down, and that the third time can be July 11, and that this time we’ll make it all the way to KSC and get to experience a launch viewing. I plan to post audio and if possible video of the experience, assuming I get to experience a launch in person. With my luck though, who knows what’ll happen.
Monty

Going back to fundamental basics, I felt I would explain a bit about orbital mechanics. We all know that if you toss a ball weakly to someone else it doesn’t go far. If you throw it harder, it goes a little further. The faster you throw it, the further it goes before falling. Rockets are thrown so hard that they reach what’s called orbital velocity. At these speeds, if Earth was flat, the rockets would fall to the ground, but since Earth is round, the rocket keeps missing the earth. This goes for all celestial objects, but orbital velocity is relative to mass. For example, something orbiting earth requires about 17,500 mph or 5 miles/sec to stay up. To orbit the moon, you need about 3,000 mph, or .8 miles/sec. For Mars, it’s 11,000 mph or 3 miles/sec.

The reason rockets go straight up at first is because the atmosphere is thick and doesn’t like it when things go too fast. So the rockets are launched straight up for a little while until the air thins a bit, and progressively lean over to gain speed. Once they get above about 60 or 65 miles in altitude, they are technically in space, but the atmosphere doesn’t know that. You’re above the majority (close to 98-99%) of the air particles up there, and the few that reside there smash into the rocket and over time will bring everything back to earth. The traces of atmosphere can reach out to about 400-500 miles high. This is why some spacecraft (like the International Space Station) under that height have to reboost their orbit every so often.

When you’re in a stable low earth orbit, gravity is still about 88% of what it is on Earth (If you doubt my numbers; http://ksnn.larc.nasa.gov/webtext.cfm?unit=float). You don’t feel it because you’re in freefall. You do however, experience migrogravity, which is caused by the mass of the spacecraft you’re surrounded by, or near to. You don’t necessarily feel this effect, but anything with mass has gravity.

To change orbital altitude, as I mentioned earlier, you have to either speed up or slow down. As you orbit and change speed, if you want to make it circular, you have to fire the thrusters or engines again about 45 minutes later (it will never be a perfect circle due to gravity variations across the surface of any body). If you’re in a given orbit and release or launch something from your spacecraft (like a tool bag, for example) the energy imparted on the object changes its orbit so it doesn’t fly along side the craft. It will stay roughly the same shaped orbit as the craft–if you discount the drag of the atmosphere– but the shape of the orbit of the secondary object is just turned a bit and could come back later in the orbit and run into the spacecraft, unless you release the object directly in front of or behind the craft. If you have a baseball and you want to send it down to earth (discounting the effects of drag in orbit again), you’ll want to throw or launch it directly behind you relative to the direction of travel. To raise the apogee (the high point of orbit) you must throw the ball faster.

This is all there is to it for physics near planets and moons. It gets more complicated when traveling between objects, because while it may be a shorter distance to go in a straight line, it’s also less efficient. Escape velocity is when that ball you threw into orbit actually goes faster than earths gravity can pull it down.

I think I’ll end with this, because I would rather not get to the point of explaining in detail why we can’t do something like launching nuclear waste into the sun, but to touch briefly on it, if we were aiming a rocket full of radioactive material at the sun, we would need to slow down by about 55,000 or 60,000 mph. We orbit the sun at 70,000 mph. It takes a lot of energy to launch anything towards the sun.

-Jeph

This article was updated on 03/04/2010

Imagine sitting in the stands, seeing nearly a dozen shiny, oddly shaped planes on the runway, with people running around, and white vapors visible blowing across the tarmac with the sun backlighting the clouds. Suddenly, a few of the planes explode to life with a bright white flame and a deep hiss emating from beneath them as they zip down the runway and begin flying, racing each other in invisible paths at 300+ miles an hour. 

This is the Rocket Racing League! Powered by liquid oxygen and ethanol or kerosene, with enough propellant for a burn time of about 4 minutes, the racers will need fuel and energy management, gliding through large sections of the course, and restarting the engines to blast and power through turns and passing other racers through the expected hour long race. After about 10 or so minutes of flight, the pilots land, refuel, and take off again to jump back into the race.

The rocket planes cost less than 1 million USD each. The racers are a Velocity airframe, which is derived from a commercially-available kit plane similar to the Rutan Long-EZ, which has been modified to accept rocket power and custom avionics.

It’s expected that the racetrack will be 3 dimensional, 2 miles long, a mile wide and about a quarter mile or 1500 high at the base, and perhaps 2000 ft elevation at the top of the track. The pilots will see superimposed track guides that resemble the technology used in american football to mark scrimmage and down markers in their visors, and spectators will see the same guides superimposed on giant TV screens at the race (imagine the Red Bull Air Races without the toilet paper pylons). Each racer will have a separate track to follow but the courses will be close together to build the excitement. Viewers at home will be able to see the race and the virtual track guides as well, and through several camera angles, like on the wings, helmet mounted, and trackside views. There’s even a computer game is planned (an early version of this game is already available at www.rocketracingleague.com) which will interface with racer position data in real time over the internet, allowing players to virtually compete with the rocket pilots. How cool is that!?

The takeoffs will be staggered to keep constant action in the air. Pilots take off in pairs a few minutes apart, they will be competing against the clock but will maneuver around each other much like NASCAR. 

At time of posting, there are six teams competing in the first race; Rocket Star Racing, Team Extreme Rocket Racing, Canada-based Beyond Gravity Rocket Racing, Bridenstine Rocket Racing, Santa Fe Racing and Thunderhawk Rocket Racing. 

It’s expected that like NASCAR, the RRL will have a nationwide circuit, allowing more viewers to see the race. some esitmates suggest as many as 400,000+ people will be at these races. There’s no set date for the racing league to officially have its first season but I’ve heard that it may be as soon as 2009 or 2010. I’ve also heard that the only thing holding them back from going full tilt racing is the FAA certification on the rocket motors. Big surprise, right? Oh well, what do you expect? Regardless of when they fly, you can guarantee I’ll be cheering the fliers on!!

Wearing my propeller hat – Jeph

Hi everybody!

I can hardly believe that I haven’t written on here in months!  It certainly doesn’t feel that long!  Let’s see if we can catch up.

NASA EDGE’s Mission Madness is over and a balloon won.  STS-119 *and* STS-125 have  gone up and down successfully.  And we went to this little thing called ISDC.

Oh wait… ISDC was *huge*!  Let me tell you all about it:

YOU, our community helped us out a ton by donating just over $600!!  THANK YOU!  Not only was that such a help financially, but it really gave us the motivation to not let you guys down.  And so began the process of selling everything we own that is basically not tied down.  I will not claim to be an expert by any means, but I think I have a pretty good handle on eBay and Craig’s List by now!  The really big surprise came when our parents really came to our aid in the last moments.  See, our anniversary is in late June, and we were married at Disney.  So our family said since we are so close to Disney, why don’t we go?  Well… um… it’s not like we have the money to do that!  We really were just planing on hitting the free part of Disney and Universal… DownTown Disney and Universal’s CityWalk for some browsing and such.  Well they pooled together and found us enough money to go to the Disney Parks for a few *days*!!  WOW!  Considering that we haven’t been on a vacation in just over five years, that was heaven sent!  And by no small feat, I must add.  I know that there was some borrowing of money and selling of jewelry to make it all happen… but it’s so nice to know that we not only had support, but love from home!  Then, you wouldn’t even believe what happened next!  We did our homework and called a few friends and actually got tickets into KSC for free!!  Considering that Ben and I haven’t been to KSC in our adult lives, this was awesome.  We had enough time to look at everything and even take the tour that is included in the price of admission… INCLUDING the Blast Off Experience!  Some other friends of ours had actually given a number of gift certificates to us for Christmas and birthday’s that we had been saving for a special occasion… like an anniversary… and we figured out exactly where we could fit them into our trip.  Between that and reading EVERY Disney tip guide I could find online or in my library (admittedly, my local book store too, until they would kick me out) we got some nice tips and tricks to help us stretch our little budget as far as possible.  (Like, did you know that Disney gives you enough food that you can really just split every meal?  Although I think my favorite is getting the  $5 foot longs from Subway for lunch, and then saving half of them for dinner too!  And parking? No problem.  You can actually park in DownTown Disney for free and then ride a bus to a Disney hotel, then catch another one to the park of your choice. Which came with some good quality *hours* with the hubby, but I like him!)  All in all, it was a great trip and I’m so glad that we got to do everything that we did.  

So again, THANK YOU to all of you who donated!  And THANK YOU to all of you who have supported us even “just” with your kind words. (In quotes, because it’s not ONLY with your kind words, but usually great suggestions and general community help as well.)  You guys are the best and truly we would not be here and able to do all that we do if it were not for you.

Mission Madness presented by NASA EDGE

Mission Madness Trash Talk

I’ve already filled out my bracket…. and even let the boys over at NASA EDGE what my picks are.

“5 On Mar 09, 2009 12:38:17 AM  Cariann  wrote:

What? That’s insane!

Here are my final 4:

Nebula- Apollo 11
Galaxy- Vikings I & II
Stellar- Apollo 13
Horizon- Gemini IV

Winner: Apollo 11 (The *clear* winner)

And I would *love* to hear why I’m wrong!
cariann@spacevidcast.com”

If you don’t know what Mission Madness is… well…  It’s like March Madness, but for NASA missions.  64 missions have been chosen to participate in this years game.  And if there are missions that you are not familiar with, the bracket is actually interactive.  You can click on the name of the mission and get some details.  Then once you’ve made your choices there are some arrows you click on the advance your pick to the next round.  Keep in mind, that until March 19th, all you are doing is filling out a bracket.  March 19th and 20th are the dates for the first round of voting.  The link above is where the pre-voting trash talking is going on… and I’m sure will continue.  The NASA EDGE guys weigh in as well… so it’s not just a bunch of us “amateurs” making comments; It’s actual trash talking!  I have to say, it’s a ton of fun *AND* I’m learning about some missions that I was unfamiliar with!  If it is popular enough this year, I’m sure they will continue it next year too… and all those people who were upset because their favorite mission was not up for play this year… well, *some* of them will be happy.

So, some of you have been asking me about what Spacevidcast is doing for Yuri’s Night.  Well, here is what I know so far:

I connected with someone who was already running a Yuri’s Night party in Minneapolis.  And their Yuri’s Night just happened to be on the last day of Minicon.  I had heard of Minicon, mostly because I live in Minneapolis.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with Minicon, please let me explain.  Minicon is fan run science fiction convention run by the Minnesota Science Fiction Society, or minnstf. It is held yearly on Easter weekend.  And one of the best things about it is that it is entirely volunteer run!  This year’s guests of honor are: author Karl Schroeder, artist Stephan Martinière, and scientist Seth Shostak.  

Now, at this point we are not sure of our exact set up at Minicon for the weekend, but are pretty sure we will have some sort of booth like area where we can broadcast from.  Trust me: I’m working on getting some face time with Seth.

Then, once Minicon is over, we have Yuri’s Night.  The really nice thing about having the two events linked like that is you can pay for the whole weekend and that will include Yuri’s, or you can just pay for Yuri’s and  you can get into the Con all of Sunday!  

Now here’s the important part:  If you want to buy tickets for Minicon, you really should do it before March 15th 2009.  The prices are as follows:  ages 13-20 $30 for the weekend, and 21+ $44 for the weekend.  Now while this does not include lodging, it does include food and non alcoholic drinks… and Yuri’s!  After March 15th 2009 13-20 will be $35 and 21+ will be $60.  (For those of you wondering the 6-12 crowd is $20 and younger are free no matter what) The other thing to consider are day rates which are: Friday only is $30, Saturday only is $40 and Sunday only is $20.  All information is here:  Minicon 44 Link.  

Please feel free to let me know if you are planning on coming to Minneapolis to go to either the con or Yuri’s Night!   I would love to hang out!  And even if you are not making a physical appearance, you can always join us right here on Spacevidcast.com!

And if you like it enough to want to buy it, now you can!

MWTA swag

I found this via @danohart on Twitter.  If you don’t follow him, you should.  He cracks me up!

Spacevidcast is in the current issue of TVGuide, so rus out and grab your copy!  The fun thing is that they had a fact checker call me, I corrected them on stats, and those corrections didn’t make it in.  We *average* 50,000 viewers per show.  Some shows are a lot higher, some are a lot lower.  I can’t find a pattern to it (I sure wish I could).  Of course we’re also watched in schools but those only count as 1 viewer to us (even though it could be in front of a couple hundred students) so I have no idea what our actual viewership is.  For all I know the 50,000 figure is dead on.  Stupid stats.

Anyhow, most of the rest of the stats are correct.  It is a good read and there are other New Media moguls in there as well such as Gary V and even Obama!

As we do any time we’re in traditional media, both Cariann and I are signing copies and giving them to family and friends.  If you want a signed copy then buy your TV guide and e-mail benjamin@spacevidcast.com for mailing instructions.  You’ll need to pay for return postage too, but you can slow boat it and that should not be too expensive.

SciFi Movie Generator

STS-119′s mission to the ISS and STS-125′s mission to Hubble are both delayed.  With the upcoming retirement of the space shuttle in 2010 what does this mean?  Will we be forced to extend the shuttle to 2011, 2012 and beyond?  Would we extend it anyhow?

Space Shuttle launch delays are nothing new, but we’re coming to the end of the shuttle era and getting ready to move on to Constellation.  2009 alone is supposed to see 6 Space Shuttle flights, two of which should have already gone up but have not (STS-119and STS-125).  This year we’re slated to launch: STS-119, STS-125, STS-127, STS-128, STS-129 and STS-130.  Then in the final year of the Shuttle program we are to launch STS-131, STS-132 and STS-133.  That’s a pretty full schedule for 2009, although it looks like we have a bit of room in 2010.

The bigger issue here is STS-125.  With the other Space Shuttle missions the crew can use the International Space Station as a safe haven should something cripple their vessel.  With STS-125 servicing the Hubble, it is too far away to utilize the ISS so NASA needs to keep a secondary shuttle prepped on the other pad (39B)  in case of an emergency.  This may cause a bit of a problem as NASA is planning on tearing down pad 39B but they can’t do that until STS-125 safely lands.

So what do you think?  What impact will the delay of STS-119 and STS-125 have?  Heck, do you think STS-125 will even launch at this point?  I believe it has been cancelled once already and with the problems they are having with Hubble maybe they just sit this one out.  Send in your comments as this is the topic of Spacevidcast 2.07 this Thursday — The Space Shuttle Retirement.

Hey kids!  Cariann here and I just thought I would start out by giving you guys some links to the shirts I have been wearing on our beloved Spacevidcast live’s this year.   I figure that I can do this about once a month so as to not overwhelm you all at once… and in the “off” chance that I may forget to include it in the show notes.  So, here we go:

2.01:  Topatoco This is the red ‘Not all dreams can come true” shirt.

2.02:  Topatoco This is the blue “…And bring the chicks this time” shirt.  If you like this one you better hurry as they are discontinuing it.

2.03:  Snorg Tees I thought it was love?

2.04:  Snorg Tees Blue Pluto

2.05:  Glennz The freshmaker!

2.06:  Computer Gear I know a little random, and to be honest, this is not where I actually got my shirt.  But where I got it doesn’t seem to matter as it is not on their website.  Sorry!

So, there you are.  All of the shirts I have worn so far on the show.

If there is something else you are interested in knowing, please feel free to ask here… I will try to answer as best as I can.

As you watch Endeavour float above the earth at a staggering 17,500 MPH I think it’s important to remember who we all are and where we came from. We, as humans, are explorers. We are curious. We are adventurous. We are daring and sometimes foolish. We are capable of uniting the planet over magnificent accomplishments and warring over petty words.

In 1969 Apollo 11 landed on the moon. In 1972 Apollo 17 was the last craft to take any humanoid to our neighbor in the stars. No one has been back since. No one has set foot on anything other than the Earth and our moon.

Did we lose our curiosity? Did we get caught up over petty words and wars so much that we forgot who we were? Who we are?

While NASA aims to put humans again on the moon as well as Mars many question the costs both financially and from a risk standpoint. Many wonder why we should even explore a planet that we can not inhabit, that many see as a fools errand. Even back in 1969 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, many people asked much the same question.

I started this site to educate people on the value of space travel. To get people excited about putting humans on the moon again. Putting humans on Mars. We are explorers, we belong out there in regions we have never seen before. The rain forests, the oceans and of course the stars. This will come at a heavy price, but the cost of not exploring, not advancing is far greater than that of forging forward.

Space flight has brought us amazing advancements in the quality of living for many across the world and it stands to continue to do the same. Poverty, global warming, recycling and feeding the planet are just a few areas that space travel stand to help us. Once we get over the petty quibbles and problems, take off the blinders we all wear, I think it will become clear that we belong out there, amongst the stars.

Starting directly after STS-123 SpaceVidcast.com will begin a weekly live videocast exclusively on Ustream.tv. The sole purpose of this videocast is to get all of planet Earth excited about space flight and living amongst the stars. Help us spread the word. Help us advance the human race. I hope we’ll see you there.