Tag: nasa

Gene Cernan RIP: Speaking To The Last Man On The Moon

Posted on January 16, 2017January 16, 2017 by Ewan Spence

[audio:http://archive.org/download/sxswbaby_20150319_19_LastManOnTheMoon/sxswbaby_20150319_19_LastManOnTheMoon.mp3] Gene Cernan died today. He was the last man to walk on the moon, an astronaut from a time of heroes, a pilot from a time where best friends didn’t come home. He also drew his daughter’s initials in the moon dust. They’re still there… � I was very lucky to speak to him in 2014 as he promoted Mark Craig’s documentary/biography ‘Last Man On The Moon.’� I’ve posted it above, and I’m going to listen to it again. Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and

Trivial Posts #18: A Block Of Time, A Book Of Delights, And A Picture Of You

Posted on October 6, 2015October 6, 2015 by Ewan Spence

Since the last weekly newsletter I’ve been to San Francisco… and made it home again. Lots to cover this week, so without too much hesitation… What Have I Been Up To? Every time I decide to fly to America, something ‘big’ happens back home, and this week was no exception. A week of catching up with old friends and new companies in Silicon Valley clashed with the BBC saying something about how the UK Song for Europe was going to be selected. My thoughts on that are here (and you can catch up on all the continent’s Eurovision news through

Trivial Posts #15: Photographing Pluto, Styling Star Wars, And Space Whisky

Posted on September 13, 2015September 15, 2015 by Ewan Spence

An interesting week for me, with Apple featuring heavily on the professional side of things, and rather a lot more space/sci-fi/fantasy coming up in my links than normal. You can read about all of that here, unless you’ve already had them sent to you because you signed up to the mailing list! What Have I Been Up To As a tech writer I look on a big Apple event with a mix of christmas morning glee and Kasparov style planning. Pretty much every writer on the planet has the same raw materials (the streamed presentation) and the challenge is to

Pluto Flyby, Using The Camera That Was There

Posted on August 29, 2015August 30, 2015 by Ewan Spence

Using the available data and images, with a bit of computer wizardry and filling in the blanks, Bjorn Jonsson has put together a video interpretation of the Pluto flyby �by the ‘New Horizons’ probe. Just stunning. Pluto’s atmosphere is included and should be fairly realistic from about 10 seconds into the animation and to the end. Earlier it is largely just guesswork that can be improved in the future once all data has been downlinked from the spacecraft. Light from Pluto’s satellite Charon illuminates Pluto’s night side but is exaggerated here, in reality it would be only barely visible or

First star on the right, and straight on until morning

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Ewan Spence

Tim Fernholz looks at Elon Musk, SpaceX, and the commercial race to space: Last month, NASA said it would pay SpaceX its largest single contract ever, $2.6 billion, to shuttle US astronauts up to the International Space Station (ISS). It�s one of two companies that will build vehicles to replace the discontinued space shuttle and return the US to the list of spacefaring nations. The other, SpaceX�s frequently testy competitor Boeing, will do the same job but at more than half again the cost�some $4.2 billion. In fact, SpaceX has a chance at beating the aerospace giant to be the