Talking Space

Expedition 41 is in the books and we revisit the landing and the passing of the baton to the Expedition 42 crew along with the International Space Station increment poster: a salute to  "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by  Douglas Adams. EFT-1 Preparations are rolling forward (in a literal sense) and the team discusses the  EFT1  press briefing about the Orion mission. The European Space Age...

On a sobering edition of Talking Space, the team gathers to discuss the  loss of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two  on 31 October, 2014 over the skies of the Mojave Desertin California. The ill fated test flight of the VSS Enterprise left the pilot, Peter Siebold,hospitalized and sadly took the life of  it's co-pilot Michael Alsbury. The acting administrator of the  US National Transportation Safety...

On this special episode of Talking Space, we throw out our originally-scheduled show to discuss the loss of the Orbital Sciences Orb-3 mission. The Antares rocket had a failure upon launch and exploded within 20 seconds of lifting off. The rocket was unmanned, carrying a Cygnus spacecraft with more than 5,000 pounds of supplies and science experiments to the International Space Station. In this ep...

The Talking Space team plays "catch-up" this week opening the discussion with NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP) decision. NASA decided on 16 September, 2014,  to go with the conical shaped spacecraft offered by Boeing (CST-100) and  SpaceX (Dragon Version 2)   over the Sierra Nevada Corporation lifting body design, Dreamchaser . This week, a judge with the US Claims Court allowed NASA to contin...

Our guests for this episode  Kathryn "Kat" Robison  and our very own  Kassy Tamanini  (aka Craft Lass) took on the task of studying the impact of social media on space flight outreach and awareness. In an academic paper entitled " Hastags for Outreach ", both had an opportunity to present their findings at the  2014 International Astronautical Congress  held in Toronto, Ontario from 29 September  ...

On this episode of Talking Space, we look at two interesting events you can see with the naked eye, the Supermoon and the Perseid meteor shower. We talk about whether the supermoon is really that noticeable, or if we just make it seem bigger since we know it's supposed to be bigger. We then talk about three launches within one week, all from the same launch site in Florida. We also look at a fourt...

On this episode of Talking Space, we continue our discussion of SpaceFest VI, which was held in May in Pasadena, California. We begin where we left off last episode, with a look at some of the talks and panels from this year's event. We look at ion engines, the Russian space program, comets and more, all of which were discussed at the event. We include a final recap of some more of our favorite mo...

On this episode of Talking Space, we begin our two part discussion of a recent trip to Pasadena, California for SpaceFest VI. The event features astronauts, artists, and other vendors and speakers as a way to talk about current topics in the space community and meet some of the people who made the past possible. During this part, we talk about the events leading up to the event including a tour of...

On our 200th episode of Talking Space, we welcome on decorated fighter pilot and two-time shuttle astronaut Bob Springer. We begin with his military career and his favorite planes to fly. We also talk about his time in the TOPGUN program. Then it's onto how he got from test piloting to being a space shuttle mission specialist. Then it's on to his flights, including two that never flew and the conn...

SpaceX launched CRS3 successfully and the Falcon 9 first stage made a zero velocity soft landing in the Atlantic. We also noticed that typical NASA news conferences vs one with SpaceX is quite different. We look forward to Orbital making their first night launch mid-June from Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport with cargo to the ISS. So, were you concerned about the problem on the ISS with MDM possibl...

On this episode of Talking Space, we talk with the Executive Director and co-founder of Explore Mars, Chris Carberry. In the interview, we discuss what Explore Mars is all about, and as you can guess, it has a lot to do with Mars. We begin with discussing the upcoming "Humans 2 Mars", or H2M conference coming up in Washington D.C. from April 22nd to the 24th. We then go into his thoughts on manned...

On this episode of Talking Space, we talk about the recent Soyuz launch to the ISS, and the glitch that turned a few hour rendezvous into a two-day event. We look into what may have caused the event and look back at the classic "Era of Reliability" Russia declared at the end of the shuttle program in 2011. We then talk about a range outage that has delayed two launches until an unknown time and wh...

Robots, Wheels and Wings literally covers these three topics with a couple of interviews and our comments. First we cover F.I.R.S.T. as in For Inspiration And Recognition Of Science And Technology http://www.usfirst.org/ Mark went to the March 15, 2014 Orlando, FL Regional FRC Robotics Competition. Along with seeing some real #omgrobots he interviewed former FIRST Regional Chairman and former NASA...

On this episode of Talking Space, we return from a long hiatus to recap some of the space news of the last few weeks that was important to us. We begin with a look at the 2015 NASA Budget proposal and what that means for some NASA programs and what we think of the cuts and gains. Next, we talk about the ISS, including the release of a record 33 CubeSats and the return of the Expedition 37/38 crew...

On this episode Sawyer and Mark cover a wide variety of topics and catch up on some news we promised to share like the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture from October 2013 titled “The Chelyabinsk Meteor: Can We Survive a Bigger Impact?”  http://youtu.be/Y-e6xyUZLLs    Another video to check out is one from the NASA YouTube channel titled “2013 Astronaut Class Talks STEM at Smithsonian Air and Space...

On this episode of Talking Space, we welcome The Spaceflight Group's Jason Rhian to discuss his trip to see TDRS-L launch. Along with talking about the launch and TDRS-L, we discuss some other experiences he had while at the Kennedy Space Center including some insider information on Dreamchaser as well as a "look" at Orion. We wrap things up with a happier look at NASA's Remembrance Week. For more...

On this episode of Talking Space, the ship runs a little light, as Gene and Sawyer start with the wake-up of Rosetta after 31 months of hibernation, and we talk about the ambitious goals this mission has set. We then talk about the newest approved NASA budget and is it really a "hip hip hooray" like some are saying? We then start round two with a look at ESA's service module for Orion and rumors o...

On this episode of Talking Space, our first news show in 2014, we discuss a whole bunch of commercial news. We discuss Virgin Galactic's latest test flight of SpaceShipTwo, SpaceX's most recent launch of Thaicom 6 aboard a Falcon 9 v1.1, and Orbital's Antares launch bringing Cygnus to the ISS. In regards to Orbital, we also look at the man behind the name of this particular Cygnus capsule, C. Gord...

This Episode of Talking Space brings you a recording from August 7th 2013 at the Alachua County Library Headquarters branch in Gainesville, FL. The presenter is Peter Chitko from NASA Kennedy Space Center. Peter Chitko is employed by NASA as the Mechanical Division Engineering Technical Integration Manager.  In 1983, he joined NASA at the Kennedy Space Center, which was the launch site and preferr...

On this episode of Talking Space, we close out 2013 and Season 5 by looking back at some of our favorite moments from our first 5 seasons on the air, both from the show, from personal experience, and from space news in general. Enjoy moments from shuttle launches to exhibit openings to some words from past episodes that have a totally new meaning all these years later. We hope you enjoy listening...

On this episode of Talking Space, we take an in-depth look at the issue with the coolant pump aboard the International Space Station, the first spacewalk to repair it, and its affect on the Orbital Science launch that was scheduled for earlier this month. We then talk about ESA's Gaia spacecraft, which plans to create an in-depth map of our Milky Way galaxy. We then talk about China's successful l...

On this episode of Talking Space we talk with Liz Warren, Ph. D. from NASA ISS Program Science Office Communications Integration at Johnson Space Center. We learn about the upcoming Orbital Sciences CRS cargo launch and experiments (some from students) it will take to the ISS. We also hear about some of the effects of microgravity on the human body.  Liz says we need to keep our people healthy in...

On this episode of Talking Space, we discuss the dire state of planetary science at NASA. We look at both an article and a video by Bill Nye of the Planetary Society which lay out what the future of planetary science is, or shall we say isn't. We then mention the winners of the Axe/Lynx Apollo contest who will be going to space, and some interesting demographics about the group. We then talk about...

On this episode we discuss the multiple launch attempts by SpaceX of the SES-8 satellite. Frustration at lack of information provided by SpaceX to the press gets considerable attention from the Talking Space panel. Will it change when crew launches begin? We sure hope so. Did you know Kimbal Musk, brother of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk started a blog in November of 2005? It is named “Kwajalein Atoll and...

On this episode of Talking Space we discuss the SpaceX launch attempt of 25 November 2013 which ended with a hold then a scrub with plans their next try for 28 November. The ExoMars mission entry descent and landing module has been named after Italian Astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli. We talk about the discoveries Schiaparelli made in 1877 of "canali" or channels on Mars. ExoMars first launch is s...