Truck driver and amateur astronomer Mike Clements is building a telescope with a 1.8 meter (70 in) mirror he got as surplus from a government auction:

Here is a fun TV news video about Clements from last year:

And here is their updated report from this week:

Update: Via the comments comes this pointer to the company supplying Clements with the spray system to silver the mirror: Mike Clements – Angel Gilding.

Space Arts, Space films and videos, Space Music

Music video: “How Vainly Men Themselves Amaze” by Simon Lacy with Natasha Marsh & Jack Liebeck

October 24, 2013 TopSpacer

Simon Lacey has released a new video for the project A Quarter Of A Million Miles, which was inspired by Michael Collins’ famous book Carrying The Fire in which Collins described his role as the Command Module pilot during the Apollo 11 mission. (See earlier post here.)

How Vainly Men Themselves Amaze features soprano Natasha Marsh and violinist Jack Liebeck:

Simon describes the project here:

And here is the video released earlier this year titled The Thought of Floating In Space with Liebeck on solo violin:

Space Music

Music video: “Good Morning Moon” by Marian Call

October 24, 2013 TopSpacer

Here’s a very nice space song by Marian Call called Good Morning Moon, which she wrote and performed : Space Music: ‘Good Morning Moon’ by Marian Call : Discovery News. The song is from her Something Fierce album.

Activism, General, SpaceCasts

Recent spacecasts with Bob Zimmerman and David Livingston

October 24, 2013 TopSpacer

Bob Zimmerman on the John Batchelor radio program Tuesday night and talked about several commercial space topics: Tues 10/22/13 Hr 1

Dream Chaser drop tests to resume.
Cygnus has undocked from ISS. Mission essentially complete and a success.
Orbital pushes Antares for commercial sale.
A balloon company will fly you into space for a third of SpaceShipTwo.

He will also be on Coast to Coast with George Noory for an hour, beginning at 10 pm PT (1:00 am ET) on Wednesday night.

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David Livingston joined Batchelor on Wednesday for the latest episode of the weekly Hotel Mars segment to talk with Anatoly Zak, author of the new book Russia In Space : Wed 10/23/13 Hr 1 | John Batchelor Show

They discussed the following:

Russian divers find chunks of the meteorite (17 meters) that recently hit in the Chelyabinsk Region. Other hot Russian space articles and rocket news. Not only was this meteorite not expected, but another astral event occurred almost simultaneously. It was huge, and the fact that it landed in a lightly-populated area of the southern Urals was lucky for the whole human race. April 1908, 7:17 AM, in Tunguska: asteroid exploded in the air, unlike Chelyabinsk.

Some recent guests with David on The Space Show include: