Tag: Space

Science for The People: Garden of Marvels

sftpThis week Science for The People learning about botany and the colorful science of gardening. Author Ruth Kassinger joins them to discuss her book A Garden of Marvels: How We Discovered that Flowers Have Sex, Leaves Eat Air, and Other Secrets of the Way Plants Work. And they’ll speak to NASA researcher Gioia Massa about her work to solve the technical challenges of gardening in space.

*Josh provides research help to Science for The People and is, therefore, a completely biased and cooperative member of the team. He does, however, insists on capitalizing the show name as he sees fit.

Donate to CosmoQuest

The lovely and talented folks at CosmoQuest are raising funds to keep their programs and staff going. Those programs include a variety of outreach and citizen science projects. Changes due to sequestration and the way that science education is being funded by the US government has left valuable programs like CosmoQuest with uncertain futures.

On March 22, 2013 we found out that many NASA EPO programs will be suspended as a direct result of US budgetary sequestration. The full ramifications are still being learned, but we are proactively working to raise money to make sure that CosmoQuest can continue to support its staff and its programs. As we are able, we will also use any monies we raise to contract amazing people whose jobs are negatively impacted by budgetary cuts.

Donate now to help keep CosmoQuest going, any amount helps.

Blast Off!

Finish this sentence, “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…”

Did you say, “Blast Off!” My wife and I both do. But, I suspect that our children won’t, because they will not grow up in an era heavily influenced by space shuttle launches.

I am an advocate for space exploration, but not necessarily manned space exploration. Still, this made me a little sad or nostalgic or it just made me feel old.

*If you start the countdown at 3, I invariably whisper “Contact” at the end.