space
First Black NASA Administrator Charles Bolden ‘Pleaded’ To Get Into Naval Academy
This is an interesting short read/listen that appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition about a moment in one person’s journey. From the strategies employed when asking for help to the personal resilience and effort it takes to get where you’re going, there’s a lot to pick up from this piece.
h/t Leland Melvin
Why Has NASA Not Gone to Mars with Humans Already?
- The tech to keep people alive BOTH ways is still being developed. Some problems are similar to ones we’ve solved when sending folks to the Moon but MANY are different.
- It’s crazy expensive to solve these problems and it takes time. You can’t throw twice as much money at some of these problems and expect them to be solved in half the time.
I never stopped fighting to make it home.
No matter what happens,
tell the world,
tell my family,
that I never stopped fighting to make it home.
Here’s the new trailer for The Martian.
Starcadian and DJ Meegs to Perform at Red Rocks on H Street for Yuri’s Night DC 2014
Organizers for the Yuri’s Night DC event previously held at Science Club will be hosting a free event at Red Rocks on H Street this year. The event celebrates the first human in space Yuri Gagarin who orbited Earth on April 12, 1961 aboard Vostok 1. Interestingly, April 12 also marks the anniversary of the first shuttle launch in 1981.
An Unofficial NASA TV Commercial by a Citizen Scientist
This is what happens when you take a great song like Genesis by Justice and add NASA.
Vintage 1977 NASA Video talks about Voyager 1
On September 12, 2013, NASA officially announced that Voyager 1 had left the solar system and begun it’s journey into interstellar space. Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977 to study the outer Solar System and interstellar medium. As of August 2013, it is 125 Astronomical Units (AU) from the Sun. One AU is equivalent to the average distance of the Earth to the Sun, roughly 145.5 billion miles. Voyager is currently the furthest man-made object from Earth.
As a throwback to the year Voyager 1 was launched, we found NASA’s Highlights of the 1977 Aeronautics and Space Report. The report outlines some of NASA’s projects at the time, including the Space Shuttle, Voyagers, Landsat, Spacelab, HEAO-1 and energy research.
Martian Electric Spaceship Circa 1962
“This artist’s concept from 1962 show a three hundred-sixty ton spaceship, powered by a forty-megawatt nuclear-electric power plant, transporting a three-man crew to Mars. As envisioned by Marshall Space Flight Center engineers, a five-ship convoy would make the round trip journey in about five hundred days.”
Preparing for Space Travel – Michael Hopkins and VR Hardware
NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins, Expedition 37/38 flight engineer, uses virtual reality hardware in the Space Vehicle Mock-up Facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center to rehearse some of his duties on the upcoming mission to the International Space Station.
NASA Releases Space Junk iBook About Orbital Debris Management & Risk Mitigation
This is pretty cool, the NASA Academy of Program/Project and Engineering Leadership (APPEL) has released a free iBook and ebook PDF about space junk. This is the official page for the NASA Orbital Debris and Risk Mitigation iBook on the NASA website.
Games in Space
Some of you who grew up in the 90s, as we at UPT did, may remember the Wing Commander computer games. Fighting against the feline-esque Kilrathi you were aboard a…