Podcasts:
365 Days of Astronomy, Cheap Astronomy
It's
nice to hear a familiar voice again.
When I
first began soaking up podcasts during my long drives to and from work, Astronomy
dominated my playlists. And the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast was the center of
my audio universe. As their About page explains "The project was started
as part of the International Year of Astronomy 2009." 365 Astro has
published a new podcast almost every day since January 1, 2009, and I am proud
to say I listened to every single one, at least for the first two years, I even
sponsored episodes three times in mid-March 2009, 2010 and 2011 to honor the
birthday of Spock and Micro, two wonderful cats who shared our lives for too
few years. Then, early this year I suddenly found myself over saturated from
listening to the same shows every day, so I went on an Astronomy podcast diet.
One of
the many impressive qualities of the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast is that it's
a community effort. Episodes are created and presented by volunteers,
especially amateur astronomy enthusiasts, from all over the planet. If you
think the typical podcast/radio show format with one or two hosts and one or
more guests being interviewed is a lot of work, imagine coordinating a
different podcast creator every day, many of whom have never done a podcast
before. Impressive.
Now,
in all fairness, not all of the contributors to 365 Astro have been newbies. My
absolute favorite regular presenter has been Steve Nerlich, an Australian (love
the accents!) who also produces the excellent Cheap Astronomy website and
podcast. Actually, many of Nerlich's episodes appear in both podcasts series.
Nerlich always manages to pack a lot of information into a ten minute talk that
is consistently interesting and learned. The guy knows his stuff. Plus, he has
a quirky sense of humor. Always hang around to the very end to hear his funny outros.
Some of
the newer podcasts I began listening to slowed down their release cycles in the
summer, so after a while I took a peak into the recent episode lists for some of
the astro podcasts I kept downloading even though I wasn't playing them (did I
mention I'm a packrat?).
Scanning
the deep list of 365 Days of Astronomy podcasts, I was intrigued to notice a
three part series by Steve Nerlich on Apollo 11. The next day I enjoyed about a
half hour of fascinating, even gripping, explanations of what it took to fling
three guys a quarter of a million miles away, land two of them on a dusty
barren landscape, and somehow get them back again complete with a pulse. Folks,
it's not as easy as it sounds, and remember we pulled this off 40 years ago
when space travel was still in its infancy.
Indeed,
Nerlich's first installment detailed the major practice runs NASA conducted
leading up to the Apollo11 mission. It's quite incredible to realize that many
of the absolutely critical steps that had to go right had only been done once
or twice before. We're not talking tried and true routine here. It really is a
wonder nothing fatal happened.
The
middle podcast in the series explored what happened when Armstrong and Aldrin
were landing on the moon, and what they did there. The landing was fraught with
potential mishaps. I won’t describe them because Nerlich does it so much better,
it's well worth the ten minutes it takes to get the story from him. Part two
also tells of a piece of scientific equipment that was setup and is still
working today. Wow!
The
last of the three podcasts described getting the three astronauts home (yes,
there were three - Michael Collins stayed in the orbiter - extra Trivia points
if you recall his name). Again, it may seem routine, but getting a small chunk
of metal traveling at over 10,000 miles per hour into Earth's atmosphere
without burning up is neither routine nor trivial. As Nerlich points out, the
heat shield reaches temperatures rivaling that of the surface of the sun. Hot,
very hot. Then, we're reminded that the three spacers spent three weeks in
quarantine making sure moon bugs did not wipe out life on Earth.
If you
have about 30 minutes to spare, maybe 35 with the intro and outro parts, I
highly recommend this three part series. Fortunately, you can also access
complete transcripts from both the 365 Days of Astronomy website and Steve
Nerlich's Cheap Astronomy website. The Cheap Astro links are very clean and
simple PDFs, so start there. But I'm also linking to the 365 pages because
that's what I heard.
I would
not be surprised if 40 more years elapse before humans walk on the lunar
surface again. These excellent podcasts help us appreciate just how out of this
world complex it really is.
365 Days of Astronomy: July
16th: Apollo 11: Part 1 - Getting There
Presenter:
Steve Nerlich, host of Cheap Astronomy
Release
Date: July 16, 2011
365 Days of Astronomy: July 21st:
Apollo 11: Part 2 - The Landing
Presenter:
Steve Nerlich, host of Cheap Astronomy
Release
Date: July 21, 2011
365 Days of Astronomy: July 24th:
Apollo 11: Part 3 - Getting Back Again
Presenter:
Steve Nerlich, host of Cheap Astronomy
Release
Date: July 24, 2011
You
can find the Cheap Astronomy transcripts at:
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