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Thursday, September 11, 2008

Moon Walking

Some of the video podcasts I downloaded this week involved NASA and the space program. Specifically, the Apollo missions and how we landed on the moon. It was fascinating viewing.

I guess I take landing on the moon for granted since I don't remember a time when we hadn't been there. These short podcasts interviewed some of the astronauts, engineers, and specialists who played a part in getting us to the moon. Incredible stuff and I was glued to each of these podcasts.

One of my favorites--and I loved all of them--was an interview with astronaut Alan Bean. He was the 4th man to walk on the moon on the Apollo 12 mission. The part that really grabbed my attention, though, was that he resigned from NASA, deciding to let others fly the space shuttle, so that he could paint his experiences in space. He says something in the interview like if he didn't do it, no one else would. From what I saw, he was an accomplished artist and the paintings were cool!

Another podcast interviewed the mission leader and a third one of the engineers that helped get Apollo 13 down. Another podcast was with a woman who became one of the first female astronauts and there were many more.

These were ALL available on iTunes for free! I love free. :-) I think the Discovery Channel also has podcasts available on their website, but I wasn't able to find the space ones, so I'm not linking there.

You know, switching from a plain old MP3 player to an iPod was such a good investment! Now I can watch video podcasts, something I couldn't on my old player, I've discovered a ton of information on a wide variety of things on iTunes--from podcasts to video podcasts, to college classes--and I'm educating myself with something different every day. How cool is that?