This week we speak to Lisa Young, Supervisory Conservator at the National Air and Space Museum, who has been responsible for the preservation of the spacesuits and spacecraft in the Smithsonian collection. Ever been to a museum and wondered about how they look after the spacesuits? Well Lisa is the expert. Lisa Young: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-young-06a22512/ https://airandspace.si.edu/people/staff/lisa-young  Full show notes: https://spaceandthingspodcast.com/ Show notes include links to all articles mentioned and full details of our guests and links to what caught our eye this ..read more

On 24th March of this year, George Abbey died at the age of 91. One of the most influencial people working behind the scenes at NASA for many years and someone who has come up many times during many interviews. So we wanted to spend an episode to pay tribute to his contributions. To do this we’re joined by Michael Cassutt, author of the 2018 book “The Astronaut Maker - How One Mysterious Engineer Ran Human Spaceflight for a Generation” George Abbey NASA Obituary: https://www.nasa.gov/people/george-w-s-abbey/ Michael Cassutt: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-cassutt-5680841/ X: h ..read more

On April 8th there will be a total eclipse travelling across Mexico, the United States and Canada so today we talk to Stephen Wolfram, who earlier this year released a book called “Predicting the Eclipse: A Multimillennium Tale of Computation.” - we learn about the history of predicting eclipses and so much more.  Stephen Wolfram: https://www.stephenwolfram.com/  X: https://twitter.com/stephen_wolfram   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwolfram/  Predicting the Eclipse: A Multimillennium Tale of Computation https://www.wolfram-media.com/products/predicting-the ..read more

This week we talk to Dr. Tracy Scott who has just started a project to bring together her own history as an early era “astronaut kid” (daughter of David R. Scott: Gemini 8, Apollo 9, Apollo 15) with her professional expertise as a sociologist and teacher. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings Dave’s Tour Dates: http://www.davejgiles.com/gigs Dr Tracy Scott: https://tracylscott.org/ https://sociology.emory.edu/people/bios/Scott-Tracy%20L..html Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prof.t.l.scott/  Image Credits: Life Magazine Space and Things: X: https ..read more

This week we conclude the interviews we recorded at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in January by asking about what it means to be a curator at the museum. We had three interview and we spoke to each of the individually about various aspects of life as a curator and have merged those aspects into this episode. We hope that you enjoyed the episode from our field trip and hope that we get to do more. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings Dave’s Tour Dates: http://www.davejgiles.com./gigs Dr. Margaret A. Weitekamp: https://airandspace.si.edu/people/staff/margaret ..read more

This week we speak to David Woods, the editor of a brand new movie called ‘Galileo Moon’ which is all about the Apollo 15 mission and is produced by the commander of that mission, Dave Scott. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings Dave’s Tour Dates: http://www.davejgiles.com./gigs David Woods: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-woods-22979734/  Galileo Moon: https://film.apollo15hub.org/ Apollo Space Journal: https://www.nasa.gov/history/afj/index.html  Full show notes: https://spaceandthingspodcast.com/ Show notes include links to all articles ..read more

This week we speak to Dr. Margaret Weitekamp, the Space History Department Chair at the Smithsonian Institution and the curator of the Air and Space Museum’s social and Cultural history of spaceflight collection, more than 5,000 artefacts that include space memorabilia and space science fiction objects. Dr. Weitekamp also recently published Space Craze: America’s Enduring Fascination with Real and Imagined Spaceflight, a wonderful book which we highly recommend.  100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings Dr. Margaret A. Weitekamp: https://airandspace.si.edu/people ..read more

This week we speak to Logan Jaeren who is just about to launch STEAM4SPACE to try and use his extensive mission patch collection to help inspire the next generations. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings STEAM4SPACE: https://steam4space.org/?page=section/home.html Space exploration Patches: https://sxpatches.com/  Logan Jaeren: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loganjaeren/  Full show notes: https://spaceandthingspodcast.com/ Show notes include links to all articles mentioned and full details of our guests and links to what caught our eye this week. Image ..read more

There are only 3 Space Shuttle Orbiters left. Atlantis is on display at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Endeavour will be on display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles and Discovery is at the Udvar-Hazy Center just outside of Washington DC. While we were in Washington we caught up with Dr. Jennifer Levasseur, the curator of the Space Shuttle Program for the Smithsonian and we tried to find out how you use a Space Shuttle to tell it’s history and inspire the next generation. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings Dr. Jennifer Levasseur: https://aira ..read more

February 8th 1974 marked the end of the crewed missions to Skylab, America's first space station. To celebrate this 50th anniversary we take a look at that mission and the legacy of Skylab. We're helped to do this by Dr. Teasel Muir-Harmony, curator of the Apollo Collection at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. 100 Patreons By Show 200: https://www.patreon.com/Spaceandthings More on Dr Muir-Harmony: https://airandspace.si.edu/people/staff/teasel-muir-harmony X: https://twitter.com/teaselmuir Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teaselmuir/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com ..read more