We can’t get enough of talking about the moon and we love a bit of poetry, so it was a joy talking to Christopher Cokinos for this week’s podcast. Christopher has just released a book called ‘Still as Bright - An Illuminating History of the Moon, from Antiquity to Tomorrow’ - and it’s a must read! Christopher Cokinos:  https://www.christophercokinos.com/ Still As Bright: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Still-As-Bright/Christopher-Cokinos/9781639365692  Full show notes:...

With the recent moon landing attempts by private US companies having some mixed results, it seems that everyone is an expert on how to land something on the moon all of a sudden, well today we speak to an actual expert to find out what's really going on up there. Brandon Dotson has all the degrees and is currently writing a thesis on the difficulties of landing on the moon. Brandon Dotson: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=h-bD-jkAAAAJ&hl=en Full show notes:...

This week we speak to Lisa Young, Supervisory Conservator at the National Air and Space Museum, who has been responsible for the preservation of the spacesuits and spacecraft in the Smithsonian collection. Ever been to a museum and wondered about how they look after the spacesuits? Well Lisa is the expert. Lisa Young: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-young-06a22512/ https://airandspace.si.edu/people/staff/lisa-young  Full show notes:...

On 24th March of this year, George Abbey died at the age of 91. One of the most influencial people working behind the scenes at NASA for many years and someone who has come up many times during many interviews. So we wanted to spend an episode to pay tribute to his contributions. To do this we’re joined by Michael Cassutt, author of the 2018 book “The Astronaut Maker - How One Mysterious Engineer Ran Human Spaceflight for a Generation” George Abbey NASA...

On April 8th there will be a total eclipse travelling across Mexico, the United States and Canada so today we talk to Stephen Wolfram, who earlier this year released a book called “Predicting the Eclipse: A Multimillennium Tale of Computation.” - we learn about the history of predicting eclipses and so much more.  Stephen Wolfram: https://www.stephenwolfram.com/  X: https://twitter.com/stephen_wolfram  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwolfram/  Predicting the Eclipse: A...

This week we talk to Dr. Tracy Scott who has just started a project to bring together her own history as an early era “astronaut kid” (daughter of David R. Scott: Gemini 8, Apollo 9, Apollo 15) with her professional expertise as a sociologist and teacher. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings Dave’s Tour Dates: http://www.davejgiles.com/gigs Dr Tracy Scott: https://tracylscott.org/ https://sociology.emory.edu/people/bios/Scott-Tracy%20L..html Instagram:...

Sad news this week as the space world mourns the loss of General Thomas P. Stafford, pilot of Gemini 6 and commander of Gemini 9a, Apollo 10 and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. A true legend of spaceflight and he will be missed. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings Dave’s Tour Dates: http://www.davejgiles.com/gigs Tom Stafford Obituary:  https://www.space.com/nasa-astronaut-thomas-stafford-obituary  Bill Moore:  https://www.facebook.com/bill.moore.18007218  Full...

This week we conclude the interviews we recorded at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in January by asking about what it means to be a curator at the museum. We had three interview and we spoke to each of the individually about various aspects of life as a curator and have merged those aspects into this episode. We hope that you enjoyed the episode from our field trip and hope that we get to do more. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings Dave’s Tour Dates:...

This week we speak to David Woods, the editor of a brand new movie called ‘Galileo Moon’ which is all about the Apollo 15 mission and is produced by the commander of that mission, Dave Scott. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings Dave’s Tour Dates: http://www.davejgiles.com/gigs David Woods: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-woods-22979734/  Galileo Moon: https://film.apollo15hub.org/ Apollo Space Journal: https://www.nasa.gov/history/afj/index.html  Full...

This week we speak to Dr. Margaret Weitekamp, the Space History Department Chair at the Smithsonian Institution and the curator of the Air and Space Museum’s social and Cultural history of spaceflight collection, more than 5,000 artefacts that include space memorabilia and space science fiction objects. Dr. Weitekamp also recently published Space Craze: America’s Enduring Fascination with Real and Imagined Spaceflight, a wonderful book which we highly recommend.  100 Patreons By Show 200:...

This week we speak to Logan Jaeren who is just about to launch STEAM4SPACE to try and use his extensive mission patch collection to help inspire the next generations. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings STEAM4SPACE: https://steam4space.org/?page=section/home.html Space exploration Patches: https://sxpatches.com/  Logan Jaeren: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loganjaeren/  Full show notes:...

There are only 3 Space Shuttle Orbiters left. Atlantis is on display at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Endeavour will be on display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles and Discovery is at the Udvar-Hazy Center just outside of Washington DC. While we were in Washington we caught up with Dr. Jennifer Levasseur, the curator of the Space Shuttle Program for the Smithsonian and we tried to find out how you use a Space Shuttle to tell it’s history and inspire the next...

A recent NASA report wasn't too encouraging about the use of space based solar power to help solve the planets energy problems, but we think there might be more to it than the report suggests so we speak to an expert on the subject John Mankins, who has been working on this since the 1990s. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings John Mankins:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-mankins-a89a7130/  NASA’s Space-Based Solar Power Report:...

February 8th 1974 marked the end of the crewed missions to Skylab, America's first space station. To celebrate this 50th anniversary we take a look at that mission and the legacy of Skylab. We're helped to do this by Dr. Teasel Muir-Harmony, curator of the Apollo Collection at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings More on Dr...

Part 2 of our deep dive into space policy with Casey Dreier the Chief of Space Policy at the Planetary Society. This week we learn about the Mars Sample Return mission and how the upcoming US election might affect NASA. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings Casey Dreier:  https://www.planetary.org/profiles/casey-dreier Threads: https://www.threads.net/@caseydreierspace  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/casey-dreier-7371a054/ The Planetary...

This week we speak to Casey Dreier, Chief of Space Policy at the Planetary Society. We’ve been wanting to take a deeper dive into space policy for a while now and Casey is the perfect person to help us understand how it all works. Part 2 of this interview will be in next week’s podcast. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings Casey Dreier:  https://www.planetary.org/profiles/casey-dreier Threads: https://www.threads.net/@caseydreierspace  LinkedIn:...

We often get messages asking for advice on how to help encourage younger people with space flight. Well our guest this week has been doing that for over 25 years. Chris Barber founded ISSET space in 1998 and has had 60 different astronauts and cosmonauts involved with events around the globe to inspire people. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings ISSET Space: https://www.isset.space/ Mission Discovery: https://www.isset.space/pages/missiondiscovery Chris...

A new year brings in a new first, a new rocket from United Launch Alliance, the Vulcan Centaur, is due to launch on January 8th and the first private Lunar Lander. So we want to learn more about one of the payloads on board. With that in mind we speak to Charles Chafer, CEO of Celestis Memorial Spaceflights about their second Luna mission and their first deep space Voyager mission. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings Celestis: https://www.celestis.com Charles...

2024 is just around the corner so we carry on from last week and preview what we can hope to see in the upcoming year, to do this we're once again joined by the hosts of This Week In Space: Rod Pyle and Tarik Malik.  100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings This Week In Space Podcast: https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space Rod Pyle:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodpyleleadership/ Tariq Malik: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tariq-j-malik/ Full show...

It’s time for our 2023 annual review and we’re joined by two big stars of the space world to take a look back at what’s happened this year, the hosts of This Week In Space: Rod Pyle and Tarik Malik.  100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings This Week In Space Podcast: https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space Rod Pyle:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodpyleleadership/ Tariq Malik: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tariq-j-malik/ Full show notes:...

This week we’re joined by David Chudwin, author of a wonderful book called “I Was A Teenage Space Reporter” – David was among the only college journalists accredited to cover the 1969 Apollo 11 launch and first landing on the Moon. At age 19, he was one of only a handful of teenagers with official press passes at the Kennedy Space Center for the launch. He gives us a wonderful insight to what it was like being at the launch of the most famous space mission of all time, Apollo 11. 100 Patreons...

This week we want to share with you the story of the Sew Sisters, a group of women who used their skills to hand sew the thermal blankets used to protect the Space Shuttle. To do this we’re joined by one of the seamstresses, Jean Wright, who has just had a book written about her by Elise Matich called: “Sew Sister: The Untold Story of Jean Wright and NASA’s Seamstresses.”  100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings Jean Wright: X:...

With so much focus on new heavy lift vehicles at the moment, we wanted to talk about the iconic Saturn V, so we asked John Duncan, founder of ApolloSaturn.com to join us to talk about this iconic rocket. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings John Duncan: http://www.apollosaturn.com  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/apollosaturncom/  Full show notes: https://spaceandthingspodcast.com/podcast/stp170-the-saturn-v-with-john-duncan Show notes include links to all...

This week we talk to film maker Bill Muench about his brand new documentary “The Artist & The Astronaut” about Skylab 4 commander Jerry Carr and his wife Pat Musick. The 50th anniversary of Jerry’s mission has just started so this is the perfect start for us to kick start our own celebrations. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings Bill Muench: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-muench-37241a30/ The Artist & The...