update and celebrate

April 12 will be the 25th anniversary of the first Space Shuttle flight, and the 45th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight. NASA centers are all up on the celebrating, and have tons of events scheduled at most centers. Find out about the center nearest you, and if they have public events in the press release here.


Also, people in Oklahoma... it looks like the Oklahoma Space Alliance is hosting a Yuri's Night event at 7:30 p.m. at Borders Books & Music in Norman. April 12, of course. Show up! Here's what their section at http://www.yurisnight.net/2006/ says:

Please join Oklahoma Space Alliance at 7:30 p.m. at Borders Books & Music in Norman, to celebrate Yuri's Night, April 12, 2006. After introductions, we'll begin with a talk on "Space Tourism: Where's My Ticket?" by Clifford McMurray, former Executive VP of the National Space Society.

Then we're planning a preview of our "Space Quiz," with prizes for correct answers (members of Oklahoma Space Alliance not eligible for prizes). The questions will be neither trivia nor deep physics, and you're all welcome to debate the answers and the way a question is worded.

We are working on an additional activity involving a space tourism company. Please look for a later details if this works out.

Book & movie lists will be available, and Borders has promised to make some of the titles easy to find.

Afterwards, those attending are invited to a house a few blocks north of Sooner Fashion Mall for the party portion of the celebration. Maps to the house will be available at the talk.


In other news, I'm back in Oklahoma. Again. The conference wasn't bad, and was actually pretty great up until the last hour or so when we hit some harder issues. I think we did some good work. NASA Academy alumni, find out about the specifics on the forums at spacealumni.com (where you should register immediately, if you haven't already). Alumni also have a frappr map that has little markers on the world map for each NA alum who inputs his or her current location. There's only about 50 of us right now (of around 500 possible directly Academy-related people), and we really are geographically diverse like you wouldn't believe.


There's someone doing a long (twelve-week) bedrest study and keeping a blog at http://stardustholiday.blogspot.com/ She seems to keep in good spirits (and is hardcore dedicated to take this on in the first place), but today's post was especially cute. The study itself is to collect data on the effects of exercise on muscles and bone density in space analog conditions.


MSNBC has a "So You Want To Be an Astronaut"-type multiple choice test based on the real standards, they say.

I got to that from a story on (Oklahoma-based) Rocketplane and a game that combines weather prediction action with a spacey fun prize.