April 27, 2008
Education, History, Rockets
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You may have seen the report from the British UK Space Exploration Working Group suggesting that Britain can get two British Astronauts to the Space station costing less than £75m over 5 years by commercially engaging the Russian Soyuz program rather than the annual £60m cost of going with ESA, or indeed developing a British launch capability.
The Astronomer Royal on the other hand insists that unmanned space research is the way to go. You get a heck of a lot more science for your money
Dave and Leslie Wright from the British Rocketry Oral History program (BROHP) reminisce about the early days when Britain had its own launch capability and the UK Space conference that they host each year.
Want to be a rocket Scientist? Well a new book from a rocket scientist Lucy Rogers may be a good start. Lucy is also the chairman of the Vectis Astronomical Society on the isle of Wight. Their website must be one of the most elaborate. Check it out but .. turn down the volume on your PC first.
April 20, 2008
Education, History, Media, Moon, Rockets, Solar System
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Next year marks the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing in the Sea of Tranquillity on the moon. In today’s episode – assistant director & co-producer Chris Riley talks about the recent film “In the Shadow of the Moon” which recounts that period and someone who was a part of it – astronaut Buzz Aldrin on his interest in Astronomy.
A short written account of his visit including a lunch with him and his wife is here.
April 14, 2008
Education, Solar System
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Its that time of year. Summer time has arrived but not yet.. the summer. Local astronomical societies all over the country are winding down from the previous season and preparing for the next. In today’s episode a little more about two individuals who have been on the speaker list for many astronomical societies. Martin Lunn from Aurora Books and Andy Lound from Odyssey Class Dramatic lectures.
April 14, 2008
Uncategorized
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The 24 hour downtime wasn’t planned. A loss of some config files on Sunday evening at my webshost (IXwebhost) took much longer to recover than I had expected. Infact I am still waiting for them to contact me! I now know much more about cgi-bin folder, .htaccess file and hsphere than is healthy. Thanks to regular automated backups that no data was lost. Nice to be back.
April 6, 2008
History, Media, Moon
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The veteran BBC aerospace correspondent Reg Turnill recalls some of the key moments that he personally covered during the height of the space race. Reg has recorded his eye witness account in his book The Moonlandings.
Chris Lintott one of the authors of Bang! and a co-presenters on Sky at Night far too young to have experienced the Apollo program personally, looks forward to the next manned mission to the moon. You have probably heard of Galaxy Zoo but did you know Galaxy Zoo 2 is in the pipeline too.
April 2, 2008
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About 20 years after Galileo used the telescope for astronomy, William Crabtree and Jeremiah Horrocks used it to observe a transit of Venus in 1639. Carl Barry and Lilian Fletcher researched documented this unique event. If you missed it a 19mb video here.
Former executive Paul Allen (Allen Telescope Array) from Microsoft and Wayne Rosing (LSST Observatory) from Google are modern examples of private investors in space research.
Emerging from the the industrial revolution in the 19th century Lancashire were two similar individuals who contributed to making large mirrors and large telescopes. James Naysmith and William Lassell.
