Librarian’s Note: Includes an article on the 2008 Lunar Regolith Excavation Challenge, which in my view is an incredible opportunity to do some ‘prep work’ for working on the Moon. There are a variety of techniques and designs applied to the challenge, and in this free market of ideas the better designs are going to rise to the top. The cover story is lushly illustrated look at the upcoming Hubble-servicing mission, including a cool picture of some of the custom tools. That is one sexy-looking drill. I also have a strong desire to add the Flown to the Moon Beta Cloth Patch Signed by Apollo 11 Crew found in the auction advert to the Lunar Library, though the Library’s budget is nowhere close to being anywhere close to affording something like that. I’ll just stick with books, magazines and videos…
The Out of the Cradle team wishes Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) the warmest congratulations on their successful attainment of orbit with the Falcon I. May all their launches be this smooth.
alights this week at Twisted Physics, another of the science blogs in the Discovery News Blogs stable. This week’s Carnival of Space is a hodgepodge of diverse topics, from Astronaut McAuliffe’s lesson plans to assorted more lighthearted bits. Enjoy!
Librarian’s Note: I didn’t think I’d ever find this one. The book certainly didn’t prepare me for the visual treat that is this movie. It’s a richly imagined story set on a colonized Moon, and the movie clearly had influences on British sci-fi from the 70s.
Montgomery, Anson
Choose Your Own Adventure #26: “Moon Quest”
Chooseco
09/2008
ISBN13: 978-1-933-39026-0 Publisher’s Web Site
Librarian’s Note: They’ve updated the illustrations, and it looks like several of the plotlines have changed. It’s not in the bookboxes yet (even the publisher doesn’t have it on their website), but Amazon can supply the remedy for your Choose-Your-Own-Moon-Adventure need.
Librarian’s Note: A nice article on some of the Moonwalker wannabes following the NASA path to the Moon. Others are trying to pathfind new ways to the Moon, and I wouldn’t mind being one of the folks that says hi to the NASA guys when they finally arrive. The Top 50 NASA photos is nice also, and there are a couple more space articles as well. Well worth a look!
adAstra: The Magazine of the National Space Society
Special Report: “Space Ambassadors Takes Off”
MM Publishing
Fall 2008
Librarian’s Note: The NSS is teaming up with Virgin Galactic to create a cadre of Space Ambassadors who will carry the message of the importance of space development to schools, civic organizations, and so on. One Space Ambassador will actually travel to space aboard SpaceShip Two. Will you be the one?
is a special pre-conference performance for the folks of the .astronomy conference in Cardiff, UK. It’s dot astronomy because significant portions will be webcast, giving it that futuristic edge. This week’s Carnival of Space is a triptych of sorts,
-’Looking Up’,
-’News from the Frontier’, and
-’You Learn Something New Everyday (or at least every Carnival)’
Your friendly Lunar Librarian has long been an early adopter of technology, and is a maven of useful advanced technologies. Flexible Solar cells? Great stuff that. Aerogel? That’s the shizzle right there.
One of my favorite tools for educational outreach is a Space Blanket. I use this to explain the importance of high technology industry and why we do R&D. I ask if they have a roll of aluminium foil in their kitchen, and explain that it is formed by running the aluminum through rollers that squeeze it into a sheet. Low tech, but reasonably effective. The Space Blanket, on the other hand, is made using ion sputtering and vapor -phase deposition, allowing the creation of a layer of aluminum that may be only tens of atoms thick as compared with hundreds or thousands for aluminum foil. It’s a more efficient way of using the aluminum, and allows for large numbers of Space Blankets to be manufactured at a reasonable price. We then wrap up the kids like burritos to demonstrate the effect of having 85% of the body’s IR thermal emission reflected back to the body by the aluminum. The best was at one event where Raytheon had an IR camera on display so we could show the differences between exposed skin and the blanket. These can be found at pretty much any sporting goods store.
Katsuhiko Chiba
“Freedom 5″
Honneamise/Bandai Visual
2006 (2008) Publisher’s Web Site
Librarian’s Note: I’d pretty much give up on this one after my Update on space mange and anime when out of the blue I get a phone call from my local anime pop to tell me they’d managed to track down a copy. Both 4 & 5 continue the story with beautiful visuals and great endings.
Librarian’s Note: A very lucky colleague of mine at work got an invite for an up close look at the LHC, and he says it is a really impressive technological achievement. And to think that we could have had a super-conducting super-collider right here in the U.S. of A. Mad propz to the team behind this one, and congrats to CERN for pulling off what looks to be a significant scientific tool for research.
JPL has opened registration for this year’s crop. This is a phenomenal program that enlists educators in the community, teachers and others, like Civil Air Patrol folks, gives them training in the various Solar System missions that JPL is managing and how they improve our knowledge of our world in space, and then turns them loose in their communities to share the knowledge. You have to do four events per year to maintain your SSA status, but the Ambassadors provide a great resource for teachers and educators.
This one offered up by Irene Klotz over at Free Space at the Discovery News Blogs. This week’s Carnival of Space takes an alphabetical (and rhyming) look at our universe, from A to Z. It’s quite an impressive line-up, with many tasty space treats offered up for this week’s edition.
Hmm, let’s see if I can do a Lunar A to Z… READ MORE…
Howdy all! Your friendly Lunar Librarian is back, this time to share some of the many educational support materials that are to be found in the Lunar Library. Teachers have a tough job, made more difficult by the fact that many communities chronically underfund and overburden the teachers. Homeschoolers also bear the burden of paying taxes to support a school system in which their child(ren) are not enrolled, which taxes could be used to purchase expensive educational supplies. I’m not kidding when I say that this stuff is not cheap. Some of the children’s reference books in the Lunar Library, ones designed for use in schools, have been shockingly pricey even with any discounts I could scrounge up.
Luckily, the space advocacy community is well-stocked with people who believe in our space future, even if it doesn’t necessarily make a buck today. This means that there are also a lot of reasonably priced and even free resources available for teachers and educators.
