Terranauts

If you can do something three times, doing it three more times doesn't sound like it should be that hard.  Unless, of course, you're talking about orbiting the planet. In this episode we take a look at the third Project Mercury manned orbital flight - which doubled the number of orbits from 3 to 6 and we talk about why that was a lot more work for the Project Mercury Terranauts than you might have expected.

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In this episode we return to the story of Project Mercury. Having managed to achieve its original object of getting and American into orbit, Project Mercury, life was now changing as NASA's manned space activities expanded to include the new Gemini and Apollo programs.  And, now that NASA had discovered it knew how to get a humans into orbit, they needed to start thinking about what they were going to do there.

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Last week, on 28 January, NASA marked its Day Of Remembrance. It was a day set aside to honour the sacrifices of all astronauts who have died in the pursuit of the human exploration of space. In this episode of Terranauts, host Iain Christie sits down with Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield to talk about those we have lost and what their sacrifices have meant.

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The need to do big things is a basic human urge.  The need to do them together is an even more basic one.  Going to space satisfies both those urges in fundamental and sometimes profound ways. But human beings have been captive to the Collective Power of The Big Idea for a long time.  In this episode, Terranauts host Iain Christie muses on how the theme of working together to accomplish big things can be seen as far back as ancient Athens and how it expresses itself today.

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When we left Project Mercury they had finally managed to have a successful orbital flight.  All of the technologies, techniques and procedures had been tested.  The global tracking network was in place.  There was only one thing left to do.  Put an astronaut in the capsule and get him into orbit... and bring him home, of course.  In this episode of a Terranauts Guide To Leaving The Planet, NASA finally makes it to the big leagues - getting to orbit and setting a course for the moon.

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This week's installment of The Terranauts Guide to Leaving the Planet is called "Project Mercury Gets Around."  When we left the Mercury Flight Control team they were just about to make their first attempt to get an American into space.  Once they cleared that hurdle though, the game would change again, as they confronted all of the things they would need to learn in order not just to get to space, but to stay there for at least one orbit around the earth.  Oh yes, and did we mention, the President was about to let the world know that he had much bigger plans for the American space program.

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In this episode of a Terranauts Guide to Leaving The Planet, we return to the story of First Terranaut Gene Kranz and the early days of NASA's Mercury Project which was supposed to get the first American into space. As we found out last time, though, Project Mercury was having trouble getting more than a few inches off the launch pad. In addition to that, they had some pretty big challenges to overcome. Most of which had nothing to do with getting to space, and everything to do with connecting places on Earth.

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If you were going to spend some time on board a drilling rig in the North Atlantic, in the foggiest place on the planet where icebergs are common, you would probably want Des Power looking over your shoulder from space.  Des and the team at C-CORE have been solving the problem of tracking icebergs from space for more than 20 years.  Des didn't start out wanting to go to space, but that's where he spends a lot of his time these days and there are a lot of people who are glad he does.

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Today we have another instalment of the Terranauts Guide to Leaving the Planet. The guide is our exploration of spaceflight, the challenges that have been overcome in getting there, and the people who overcame them. Today's focus, a young engineer named Gene Kranz who would later become the NASA Apollo Flight Director, and who famously said of the rescue of Apollo 13, "failure is not an option."

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Meet Terranaut Sarah Gallagher, Science Advisor to the President of the Canadian Space Agency, professor at Western University in London, Ontario, and supermassive black holes and galaxy researcher.

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