Timelapse videos just get better and better. Here is a great one from Jack Fusco in which he shows starscapes moving above “some of New Jersey’s most beautiful beaches and shoreline locations” : Home At The Shore on Vimeo (via I09).
Home At The Shore from Jack Fusco on Vimeo.
A selection of recent space policy related items
While astronaut Cady Coleman was residing on the International Space Station, she spoke and exchanged email with actress Sandra Bullock to help her prepare for her role in the movie Gravity, which is set to be released on October 4th. : Astronaut gave ‘Gravity’ advice to Sandra Bullock from space – collectSPACE.
If you haven’t seen the trailer, here is the latest version:
This video of Coleman playing her flute on the ISS is not nearly as hectic but a lot closer to what life is like there:
And here is a duet with Ian Anderson:
I’ve plugged Rick Boozer‘s book The Plundering of NASA: an Exposé several times here. It’s about
the Congressional politics which force NASA to do the bidding of regional interests that cripple the nation’s capabilities in both exploring outer space and exploiting its enormous economic potential.
He focuses in particular on the hyper-expensive SLS boondoggle.
On his Amazon page he has just added a statement backing his stance from an unexpected source:
“I hope you continue as a voice against pork at NASA”
Lori Garver, (former Deputy Administrator of NASA) commenting to the author about The Plundering of NASA: an Exposé
I’ve written here about modeling rockets and spacecraft from kits, in paper, and in LEGO. Another medium for space models turns out to be fabric. Emily Lakdawalla, a senior editor and blogger at The Planetary Society, has posted recently about using plastic canvas to model scientific space probes:
“Ebb, Flow, New Horizons, MESSENGER, and Dawn, all to
the same scale (about 1:50).” – Emily Lakdawalla, Planetary Society
She also wrote about using the Japanese Amigurumi knitting technique:
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NASA and the on-line crafts site Etsy had a space-crafts competition in 2011 and a number of weaved space items were submitted. Unfortunately, Etsy took down most of the web pages displaying the entries and winners a few months after the end of the contest. I managed to find images of some of the items: