Space Arts, Space films and videos, Space participation

Video: “Artist Depiction” to create documentary about space artists

The Artist Depiction Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign seeks support for a three part documentary series about the history of space art at NASA:

Artist Depiction is a documentary series about artists who have helped bring NASA projects to life. Their incredible artwork is ubiquitous, and yet these artists have been behind the scenes until now. We seek to give a voice to these artists: Don Davis, Charles Lindsay, and Rick Guidice. These oral histories will be lost to time without a series like this. 

Inside of a toroidal space colony as envisioned by artist Don Davis

Some background about the project is provided in this article: Upcoming Video Series Explores the Retro-Futuristic Space Colonies of NASA Artists – Gizmodeo

Why is the work of these NASA artists important in 2018? [Director Brett Ryan Bonowicz] explains that not only are these old space colony images still being used today to represent “the future,” they’ve also inspired so many of the designers that would come after them.

“Neill Blomkamp and Elysium. Christopher Nolan and Interstellar. Almost every day of our [crowdfunding] campaign someone mentions how ‘that artwork looks like Halo man.’” Bonowicz told me over email.

“It’s important to have these first-hand accounts from the artists that were depicting Gerard O’Neill’s original ideas about these colonies. Without these films those accounts are lost.”

And here is a brief video about the project: ADIndiegogo on Vimeo

https://vimeo.com/262936538

====

General

Carnival of Space #559 – NextBigFuture.com

NextBigFuture.com hosts the latest Carnival of Space.

“The new DARKNESS camera developed by an international team of researchers will allow astronomers to directly study nearby exoplanets. Credit: Stanford/SRL”

 

Activism, Space Policy, SpaceCasts

The Space Show this week – April.30.2018

The guests and topics of discussion on The Space Show this week:

1. Monday, April 30, 2018; 2-3:30 pm PDT (4-5:30 pm CDT, 5-6:30 pm EDT): We welcome back DR. TOM JONES, retired astronaut. Find out more about our guest at astronauttomjones.com. Topics include NASA’s proposed return to the moon, lessons learned from Columbia on flight safety, planetary defense, the 50th anniversary of 2001, & the flight of Apollo 7, and John Young’s legacy.

2. Tuesday, May 1, 2018: 7-8:30 pm PDT; 9-10:30 pm CDT; 10-11:30 pm EDT: No show today due to travel.

3. Wednesday, May 2, 2018: Hotel Mars. See Upcoming Show Menu and the website newsletter for details. Hotel Mars is pre-recorded by John Batchelor. It is archived on The Space Show site after John posts it on his website.

4. Friday, May 4, , 2018; 9:30 am -11 am PDT, (12:30 -2 pm EDT; 11:30 am -1 PM CDT): No show today due to travel.

5. Sunday, May 6, 2018: 12-1:30 pm PDT; 2-3:30 pm CDT; 3-4:30 pm EDT. No show today due to travel.

See also:
* The Space Show on Vimeo – webinar videos
* The Space Show’s Blog – summaries of interviews.
* The Space Show Classroom Blog – tutorial programs

The Space Show is a project of the One Giant Leap Foundation.

The Space Show - David Livingston
David Livingston
Rockets, Space participation, Spaceflight & Parabolic Flight

Videos: Blue Origin New Shepard reaches new max altitude on latest test flight

On Sunday, Blue Origin flew an un-crewed New Shepard fully reusable rocket vehicle to 107 kilometers (351,000 feet or 66.5 miles), well above the internationally recognized border to space. Before reaching apogee the system split into two parts – the booster and the crew capsule. The booster used its rocket engine to make a soft touchdown on a landing pad while the crew capsule floated safely to the ground with parachutes.

This was the 2nd test flight for this particular vehicle, the third version of the New Shepard design, and the eighth flight overall. The company, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, plans to carry out several more test flights to prepare for flying employees by the end of the year. If all goes well, in 2019 they will begin making routine flights to space with six public ticket-owners on board at a time. (Sign up here to receive ticket info when it becomes available.)  In the meantime, they will be flying a diverse manifest of scientific and technology experiment payloads for paying customers.

Highlights of the New Shepard flight:

A replay of the complete live webcast:

====

Mars, Space Science

Videos: Mars sample return mission + “Revving up for Future Exploration of the Red Planet”

Here is a new video from NASA JPL about a plan to return a sample of Martian soil to the earth:

And here is a video of a recent public lecture at the SETI Institute giving an overview of Mars research plans:

Three SETI Institute planetary scientists who have dedicated their career to the study of the red planet will tell us what we have learned from those studies, and what the next steps are in the exploration of Mars with the next generation of rovers. Janice Bishop will introduce the candidate landing sites for upcoming martian rovers. She will focus on the mineralogy determined from the CRISM spectrometer at Mars and what that can tell us about Mars’ early environment. Ginny Gulick will describe the fluvial morphology/water history of these sites as seen by the HiRISE and CTX cameras. Finally, Pablo Sobron will address the instruments scheduled for the Mars2020 and ExoMars rovers and how SuperCam, Sherlock and the ExoMars Raman/LIBS instrument will be used to explore mineralogy and organics at the future landing sites.

 

====

Everyone can participate in space