Robert A. Black, Mathematical Storyteller

CNN's Anderson Cooper brings you... Thanksgiving in space! That's what they're having on the space shuttle Endeavour today. You can find out more here . Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Today, NPR reports that the Government Accountability Office has listed NASA among "13 urgent issues facing the new administration." Yup, you heard that right. With all that's going wrong in the country these days - the stock market crashing, homes being foreclosed, the auto industry going bust - NASA made the list of things that President-elect Obama needs to focus on. Specifically, the GAO is concerned about the multi-year gap between the retirement of the space shuttles and the launch of the new Ares rockets. I've mentioned that in this blog before. Now that the International Space Station is almost done, we're going to be stuck relying on another country - most likely Russia, who isn't being entirely friendly right now - to get there. It's got people worried. And Barack Obama wasn't exactly the most NASA-friendly presidential candidate. A position paper his campaign released early in the year proposed cutting NASA's budget and delaying th...

The first Japanese citizen in space was Toyohiro Akiyama , a journalist who visited the Mir space station in December 1990. He's best known for the acute case of space-sickness he developed during the flight. Supposedly the Mir crew called down to Moscow at one point and said, "We've never seen anyone throw up so much before!" But if you compared the way space is depicted in Japanese and American popular media, especially in media aimed at kids, you'd think the Japanese were the ones with the long history of space exploration, and we Americans were the ones whose first astronaut spent the entire flight barfing. The Japanese have a long track record of producing stories about space flight that are far more realistic than what you typically find in the US. The latest example is Rocket Girls , a 12-episode anime series based on a set of children's novels. The premise starts with a private Japanese company that is trying to get into space, but is struggling wi...

If you were interested in my interview on The Space Show, but didn't have time for the entire program, I now have the highlights posted on my author website. You can find them here: http://www.rablack.com/Space_Show/Space_Show_Clips.html Meanwhile, India has reached the Moon! The Chandrayaan-1 probe went into lunar orbit this past week, and is now getting ready to begin its exploration. You can find out more here: http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/Nov08_2008.htm