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Remembering Columbia
Carl Meade and Laura Woodmansee
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On Sunday - May 18th, 2003 - our guests on Hour 25 were former astronaut Carl Meade and author Laura Woodmansee. We spoke with them about what it takes to have a job where you face danger every time you go to work and remembered the crew of the Columbia. Carl Meade is a former astronaut, having flown to space on STS 38, 50 and 64. On his last trip into space he test flew the SAFER maneuvering unit that astronauts today on the International Space Station wear while going EVA. During that test of the SAFER Carl suffered a complete systems failure that left him testing a maneuvering unit that could no longer maneuver. Like they say, there's no silence like the silence of a critical system that stops working when you're in space. Carl has a unique perspective for discussing the risks of spaceflight, as well as explaining how and why people accept those risks. |
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Laura Woodmansee is an author and proponent of human spaceflight. She recently had a book published, Women Astronauts, that chronicles the activities of the various female space travelers. Featured in her book is a CD with a series of interviews with various women astronauts who speak about the challenges they face in their work and the joys of flying in space. It is a poignant experience to watch the interview with Kalpana Chawla and hear her talk about what a 'magical' experience it is to view the Earth from space while floating weightless at one of the Shuttle's windows. Women Astronauts is published by Apogee Books, a firm that has brought out a number of really great books about space exploration. They are perhaps best known for their "Mission Reports" series of books that reprint various NASA reports about the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions. Their books almost always include CDs or DVDs that showcase photography and movies from space. The books from Apogee are universally well done and fascinating. I can recommend all of their books without reservation. Click here to go to the Apogee Books web site and learn more about their books. |
Concerning the gap in our shows and the audio quality of tonight's interviews.
When thinking about what to do in remembrance of the loss of the Columbia I had thought it would be good to do a series of interviews with people discussing how people deal with dangerous occupations and why it is important that we don't let this accident become a reason for not continuing on with the exploration of space by humans. In the interest of time I decided that we would gather these interviews by telephone.
However, after getting the first couple of interviews I discovered that there were serious technical problems with the audio quality of the interviews. {Much more so than the normal poor audio quality associated with phone interviews.} So we stopped getting new interviews and focused on trying to get the existing interviews into a shape that would be suitable for broadcast. That turned out to be a much bigger job than I had expected.
And, don't forget, the extra work needed to clean up those interviews had to be squeezed in between my full-time job as an aerospace engineer and my part-time job as a college instructor. Well, you can imagine what a difficult - and slow - process it was to get those interviews cleaned up.
But that work is done and the interviews are now on-line. Their audio quality is still not up to our normal standards, and for that I offer my apologies to you.
Listen to this week's show |
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If you enjoyed this show and would like to know when other interviews are uploaded to the Hour 25 web site, then send an email to me at [email protected] and I will add your name to the free Hour 25 Newsletter mailing list. That way you'll get a brief notice in your email every time a new show gets uploaded to the web.
The Great Hour 25 Disk Crash of 2002 - On-Going News
As a result of our recent hard disk crash the Hour 25 newsletter mailing list has vanished into the digital darkness. It would be very helpful if subscribers to the Hour 25 Newsletter would resend their email addresses to me {[email protected]} so I can reconstitute the Newsletter mailing list. {If you have done this "post-crash" then I have your email address and you don't need to do anything.} New editions of the newsletter will start coming out "real soon now". In the same vein, if you previously sent in an entry for the Karen Willson Five Word Challenge, now would be a good time for you to fish around in your "sent mail" folder and resend your entry. Or come up with a new one and send it in. {And please put "Five Word Challenge" or some approximation thereof in the subject line of your email to make it easy for me to keep track of your entry.}
Links for more information relating to this week's show
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The Columbia Accident
For more information about the loss of the Columbia you might consult these links. {Please note that with the large amount of interest in the Columbia accident these web sites are quite busy and you may have trouble getting into them.} |
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For On-Going Updates on Space News
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Copyright © Warren W. James, 2000-2003. All rights reserved.