"The "Liverpool" connection.
On the "book front", I’m flattered to report that C-SPAN’s BookTV program has scheduled three additional airings of a talk I gave on "Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program" before the Orlando Rotary Club in December. The first is on Saturday, February 9th, at 8 a.m.—tune in or set your DVR! The link to C-SPANs television schedule is below. http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=8985&SectionName=&PlayMedia=No If you can’t wait ;), here’s the link to the video clip. http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=203165-1 And, just for good measure, "Scientific American" is featuring the book in its Book Club, and they have an introductory discount offer for new members. Here’s the link for that… More to come-- Photos courtesy of Pat Duggins and the Associated Press
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February 4, 2008—The countdown for Atlantis starts Monday evening and, two hours later, a song from "Fab Four" heads toward the North Star. NASA is commemorating its 50th anniversary this week, and part of the celebration means beaming the Beatles song "Across The Universe" by radio out into space. Sort of makes up for the fight Carl Sagan wrote about in his book "Murmurs of Earth." The story goes that the famed astronomer and host of PBS’s "Cosmos" series, wanted George Harrison’s song "Here Comes the Sun" from Abbey Road for a message from Earth to be etched onto a gold record and loaded aboard the Voyager spacecraft, bound to leave the solar system. The Beatles reportedly said "yeah, yeah, yeah", but according to Sagan, their record company said no. So, whether you believe the story or not, songs from Elvis and Chuck Berry sailed off into the universe, and one from the Beatles didn’t.
The planned Thursday launch date for Atlantis brings the European Space Agency’s Columbus lab back into the limelight. The ten ton compartment is waiting for the trip to orbit and its installation on the International Space Station. The photo shown here isn’t an interior shot of the actual lab, but rather a close-up of a five-foot long scale module of Columbus commissioned by ESA and set-up at the KSC Press Site. I built models as a kid, and I can only imagine how much glue this thing took ;). I spoke to Atlantis Astronaut Hans Schlegl about the actual Columbus lab, and he couldn’t hide his pride about the module that will go into space. He pointed out that Columbus is for science—only. He was drawing a contrast between the ESA lab and the American "Destiny" laboratory, now attached to the station, which doubles as the outpost’s control center.