References and Interview Dates

NASA's 2009 Astronaut Class Selection Timeline and Stats

Space Studies Showdown: ISU vs. UND

Winning the Astronaut Lottery
A Facebook discussion I had with the Space Advocate got me thinking about the probability of becoming an astronaut. He had pointed out that a gambling website cited the odds of becoming an astronaut in the US as 12,100,000 to 1. According to that site, this is approximately the same as winning the California lottery (13,000,000 to 1), becoming President (10,000,000 to 1), or becoming a saint (22,540,000 to 1).  Maybe instead of "Wher

Two parental trips around the Sun
Happy Birthday Henry! My son is 2 years old today. It seems like I blogged about his first birthday just yesterday. Henry's vocabulary is fast-approaching 100 words (86 by my count), and he's just started combining two words together to make mini-sentences over the past few weeks. He knows about half the alphabet and can read about 50 words so far too. Thanks to our use of cloth diapers and EC, Henry is also mostly potty-trained, which is fairly rare for a child this age in the US. I feel extremely fortunate that my wife and I have flex

Space Simulators
Let's face it. Until the cost of spaceflight significantly decreases, only a few highly qualified and lucky people will be selected as astronauts to fly in space. But that doesn't mean they have to have all of the fun. Here are some free space simulators you can download to hone your skills. Some are targeted at students for educational purposes, some are just for fun, and others are real research tools used by NASA. ORBITER ORBITER is a free flight simulator that goes beyond the confines of Earth's atmosphere. Launch the Space Shuttle from Kennedy Space Center to deploy a satellite, rendezvous with

Terraforming Mars
The big news yesterday was NASA's annoucement that LCROSS definitely exhumed water in its October 9 impact into the Moon. That's good news because it confirms the presence of water on our closest neighbor. This means we have a ready source of hydrogen, oxygen, and water for rocket fuel and life support.

Billions and Billions of Worlds
In honor of the first annual Carl Sagan Day honoring the late, great astronomer and communicator, I'd like to share an inspiring link to a 360-degree panorama of the cosmos titled "One thousand billion worlds" by acclaimed astrophotographer Serge Brunier. Click the link to view full screen, wait for the Flash file to load in your browser, and enjoy exploring the