AmnonGovrin's blog

The party took place at a restaurant on Cocoa beach called Fishlips (isn't that a good nick name for a 1930s mobster?). After an eventful day (traffic, Atlantis launch, hanging out at Kennedy Space Center Visitors Center and watching Magnificent Desolation - Walking on the Moon 3D with fellow A4Hs), I drove to Cocoa beach (location of Fishlips). It was already packed with people from the NASA Tweetup and others who came to party after watching the launch. There was beer and food and joy all around - after all, everyone there was a space enthusiast who 4-5 hours earlier got to see a perfect space-shuttle launch...

Read about it and reminisce - http://www.spacepirations.com/2010/06/space-tweep-society-1st-anniversar...

Virgin Galactic is arguably the leading private space tourism company, having actually built their suborbital craft and carrier and having flown them both. Their web site and publications all look taken from a sci-fi movie, with weightlessness touted as a wonder worth $200,000. One of the slogans Virgin Galactic uses (in the training page) is "Feel the Freedom of Zero G."

However, there's a dirty little secret that no one over at Virgin Galactic is talking about...

Read all about it on http://www.spacepirations.com/2010/05/virgin-galactic-dirty-little-secre...

A Letter to the Hubble Telescope

This weekend was a milestone for bringing space technology to the masses. The first demonstration of a type of race never seen before took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Two X-Racers took off and competed in the sky, in what seems to be described as a combination between NASCAR and Star Wars pod-racing. The X-Racers, delta-winged rocket engine planes with 2000 lbs of instantaneous thrust at a flip of a button, go through a virtual course in the sky, projected onto the pilot helmet and also on huge screens for the audience enjoyment.

Read more about this (there's also an Israeli connection) at http://www.spacepirations.com/2010/04/rocket-racers-racing-for-space-age.html

A4H's very own Bruce Davis was among the select few invited to attend the Presidential Space Summit held at the NASA Kennedy Space Center on April 15, 2010. At the event, President Obama outlined his new strategy for human spaceflight, which includes the expanded support for commercial space transportation systems - the same systems that will also enable the nascent suborbital and eventually orbital science research community.

On April 12, 2010 Veronica Ann Zabala-Aliberto revealed Astronauts4Hire on The Space Show alongside her impressions from the Space Access conference.

Listen to it here: http://thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=1342

On April 20, 2010, Amnon I. Govrin called in and discussed Astronauts4Hire.

Listen to it here: http://thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=1347

More info at www.astronauts4hire.org

On April 10th, about an hour before the festivities officially began, I drove the short 10 mile distance from my home to Boulder, parked and walked to The Lazy Dog on the Pearl Street Mall. About ten people were busy decorating the place, emptied from tables apart from side booths. Ryan Kobrick (a fellow Astronauts4Hire founder) was orchestrating everything, from helping the first band get ready to decorations.

The Monty Python movie And Now, for Something Completely Different, which contains sketches from the group's Flying Circus TV show, is in my opinion a classic example of ADHD-like symptoms - do something, lose focus and switch to something else - in a series of confusing segues. It's been 2 months since Obama dropped the proposed axe on Constellation, and after reading, hearing and watching a lot of opinions about it, I'm left with a feeling that this is just one more jerking motion of a space policy in a series of other jerks and twists that can be labeled as the U.S. ADHD space policy.

Read the rest of my idea on Spacepirations - http://www.spacepirations.com/2010/04/and-now-for-something-completely.html

I invite you to share your comments - Is the new policy the best thing since sliced bread in space?

On March 18th 2010 I visited the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) to see the facility here in Boulder and attend a talk by Dr. Stanley G. Love - a NASA astronaut that flew on STS-122. Founded in 1947, employing over 3,000 people in several states, SwRI is a very prolific multi-disciplinary institute, headquartered in San Antonio, Texas (for more information about the SwRI, visit its facts page). SwRI has a fairly large office (about a hundred people) in downtown Boulder Colorado.