Podcast: At the Edge of Space
- By Maggie Masetti
- April 30, 2010
- 1 Comment
Click to listen! (8MB MP3, right-click to save)
Transcript (Text, PDF)
When you were a kid, dreaming of the future, did you expect to have a flying car someday? Or to live on the Moon? Traveling into space has fueled the dreams of many people, but the reality is that space flight is difficult and expensive. Though escaping Earth’s gravity to reach orbit is a real challenge, it is much easier and less expensive to take sub-orbital flights – that is, those that reach an altitude of 100 km (approximately 62 miles) above Earth. This may prove to be an affordable way for scientists to do science in space, especially with the technology to do these getting close to being ready for use.
One of our scientists, Joe Hill, builds x-ray and gamma ray instruments… and she also wants to be an astronaut. Recently, she was given the opportunity to participate in sub-orbital scientist training, which took her one step closer to realizing her dream of going into space.
More About Joe Hill’s Experience
Joe Hill provided us with a few links of interest. Here are two videos of her training experience:
- My soon to be suborbital life – Storming the Suborbital Frontier (YouTube)
- NASTAR’s video on the training (Quicktime .mov)
You might be interested in reading Joe Hill’s blog on the experience or following her twitter account:
- Adventures of an Astronaut Wannabe (Nature Network)
- http://twitter.com/spacepurple
Here are a few pictures of Joe:
Credits:
Host | Maggie Masetti |
Guests | Joe Hill |
Interviewer | Maggie Masetti |
Editor | Maggie Masetti |
Theme Music | Naked Singularity |
Transcript | Maggie Masetti |
Website Support | Meredith Gibb Maggie Masetti |
Producer | Sara Mitchell |
Responsible NASA Official | Alan Smale |
[…] But how about putting people closer to space? Space Adventure, the American firm that arranges the space tourism visits to places like the International Space Station has signed a deal with Armadillo to develop a vertical launch vehicle to put people to the edge of suborbital space for a few minutes before plunging down again. This delight will put you back $102,000, around half the price of a seat on SpaceShipTwo. If you’d rather just sit back and hear about suborbital flight and training, here’s a podcast from Joe Hill on NASA Blueshift. […]