Space
Category archives for Space
PNAS: Evie Marom, Aerospace Engineer
Posted by Chad Orzel on July 27, 2009 (On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This…
Man Walks on F*&%ing Moon
Posted by Chad Orzel on July 20, 2009 The Internet has been all abuzz today over the anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. Tor has the best one-stop collection of reminiscences, but there are plenty of others. They’re roughly equally split between “Wasn’t that the coolest thing ever?” and “Isn’t it a shame we stopped going. I was a bit over -2 when…
PNAS: Richard Edgar, Chandra X-Ray Center
Posted by Chad Orzel on July 20, 2009 (On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This…
When Press Releases Collide
Posted by Chad Orzel on June 25, 2009 Consecutive entries in my RSS reader yesterday: Salty ocean in the depths of Enceladus Discovery could have implications for the search for extraterrestrial life An enormous plume of water spurts in giant jets from the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. In a report published in the international science journal Nature today (25 June), European…
Inflatable Space Elevator, Eh
Posted by Chad Orzel on June 18, 2009 (Alternate post title: “Hey to James Nicoll”) Via John Dupuis, our clever neighbors to the North has come up with a possible (partial) alternative to rockets: “For decades, scientists have been grappling to find a more efficient means of getting payloads into space,” says Brendan Quine (right), professor of space physics and engineering in York’s…
Overbye on Kepler
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 3, 2009 Having complained about the lack of recognition for good physical science writing recently, it would be bad form for me not to note Dennis Overbye’s story about the Kepler spacecraft in today’s New York Times: Presently perched on a Delta 2 rocket at Cape Canaveral is a one-ton spacecraft called Kepler. If all goes well,…
Gravity Probe B Is in the Air
Posted by Chad Orzel on February 17, 2009 I no longer remember the context, but the Gravity Probe B experiment came up in discussion around the department last week, and nobody could really remember what the status of it was. It came up again during the “Physics: What We Don’t Understand” panel Saturday morning, where Geoff Landis was able to supply a few…
Fourth Time’s the Charm
Posted by Chad Orzel on September 29, 2008 Congratulations to SpaceX for successfully launching a payload into orbit after three failed attempts: The two-stage Falcon 1 rocket built by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) lifted off at about 7:15 p.m. EDT (2315 GMT) from the U.S. Army’s Ronald Reagan Ballistic Defense Test Site on the Kwajalein Atoll in the about 2,500 miles (4,023 km)…
Virtual Science Debate
Posted by Chad Orzel on September 15, 2008 As you might have guessed from yesterday’s tease, the folks at ScienceDebate 2008 have now managed to get answers from the McCain campaign (to go with Obama’s froma few weeks ago). Which means that while you may never see them answering science questions on a stage together, you can put them head-to-head on the Web,…
Science Outreach Through Fiction
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 22, 2008 Over at Tor.com, David Levine describes a really cool event he went to just before Worldcon: a crash course in modern astronomy for SF writers: The idea behind Launch Pad is Gernsbackian: getting good science into popular fiction as a form of public education and outreach for NASA. SF writer and University of Wyoming astronomy…
