Mike Hodel's Hour 25

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May 2003

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Index to our previous shows

  • May 18, 2003 - Carl Meade and Laura Woodmansee
  • Shows from February, 2003
  • Shows from January, 2003
  • Shows from December, 2002
  • Shows from November, 2002
  • Shows from October, 2002
  • Shows from September, 2002
  • Shows from August, 2002
  • Shows from July, 2002
  • Shows from June, 2002
  • Shows from May, 2002
  • Shows from April, 2002
  • Shows from March, 2002
  • Shows from February, 2002
  • Shows from January, 2002
  • Shows from December 2001
  • Shows from November, 2001
  • Shows from October, 2001
  • Shows from September, 2001
  • Shows from August, 2001
  • Shows from July, 2001
  • Shows from June, 2001
  • Shows from May, 2001
  • Shows from April, 2001
  • Shows from March, 2001
  • Shows from February, 2001
  • Shows from January, 2001
  • Shows from November - December, 2000
  • Shows from September - October, 2000
  • Shows from July - August, 2000
    •

    The patch for the crew of Columbia

    Remembering Columbia

    Carl Meade and Laura Woodmansee

    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.

    		   Carl Meade - Click on this image to view his official NASA Biography
    Women Astronauts by Laura S. Woodmansee. Click on this image to go to the web site for Apogee Publishing.
    		     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
    webcasting
    • Click here to listen to the entire show. {57:55}
      Or
    • Click here for the show's intro music.{0:41}
    • Click here for the show's opening. {5:37}
    • Click here for our interview with Carl Meade. {34:06}
    • Click here for the transition between our two interviews. {0:36}
    • Click here for our interview with Laura Woodmansee. {14:55}
    • Click here for the show's closing.{2:00}
      Or for more Hour 25 Interviews
    • Click here to listen to an earlier interview that we did with Carl Meade.
    • Click here to listen to our most recent Shows.
    • Click here for an index of all Shows on our site.
    Click here if you have a problem hearing the show and you're using Internet Explorer.

    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 wwjames@earthlink.net 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 {wwjames@earthlink.net} 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

    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.}

  • NASA has a web site with information about the loss of the Columbia, the on-going investigation into this accident, the crew and other related subjects.
  • This NASA web page contains pictures of the crew of the Columbia along with other pictures from their mission. {Audio files from STS-107 can be found here and video files can be found here.}
  • You can find the Press Kit from the STS-107 mission here.

    • For On-Going Updates on Space News
  • The Reusable Launch & Space Vehicle News web site web page that is part of the Hobby Space web site is a really good place to watch for news about, well... Reusable Launch Vehicles and related subjects. I check it out just about every day and often find news there that doesn't show up anywhere else. Give it a look. {And while you're there be sure to check out some of the site's other pages. Wow! Is there a lot of information there.}
  • The Space Today web site is a great place to find space news from all over the 'net.
  • The Spaceflight Now web site carries real time information about current space missions and presents a lot of space and astronomy news. This is the place I go to when I want up to the minute information about current space missions. Do I need to say more?
  • The NASA Watch web site is another great place for getting information about current space missions. Check there also for news about other 'goings on' within NASA. Highly recommended.

    ISS News
  • The Florida Today web site has a very interesting report about the causes of the ISS budget problems and their impact on the space program. It makes very interesting reading.
  • Click here to view the press kits for various ISS missions.
  • Check out the NASA International Space Station web page or the Boeing web page to learn more about this project.
  • A great source of news about Russian space activities, including their work on the ISS, can be found at the Russian Space Web.
  • Do you wonder where the Space Station is right now? You can use your browser to view real time maps showing the location of the ISS by going to this link at the NASA Space Link web site or here at the Johnson Spacecraft Center. Please note that your browser must support Java to make use of this satellite tracking software.
  • You can find out when the ISS - or many other spacecraft - can be seen from your location by going to this NASA web page. Please note; your browser must support Java for this application to work.

  • Click here for information about the audio files used for Hour 25 and for information about configuring your browser and downloading audio players.

    Please note web pages from external sites will open in a separate browser window and that Hour 25 Productions are not responsible for the content of any external Web Sites.


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