Guest: Dr. Ryan Kobrick. Topic: Yuri's Night Celebration 2012. You are invited to comment, ask questions, and discuss the Space Show program/guest(s) on the Space Show blog, http://thespaceshow.wordpress.com. Comments, questions, and any discussion must be relevant and applicable to Space Show programming. Transcripts of Space Show programs are not permitted without prior written consent from The Space Show (even if for personal use) & are a violation of the Space Show copyright. We welcomed Dr. Ryan Kobrick to the program to discuss Yuri's Night 2012 with us. According to the Yuri's Night website (www.yurisnight.net), "Yuri’s Night is a global celebration of humanity’s past, present, and future in space. Yuri’s Night parties and events are held around the world every April in commemoration of April 12, 1961, the day of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first manned spaceflight, and April 12, 1981, the inaugural launch of NASA’s Space Shuttle." Please note that today's program review will not be by segments given our discussion was ongoing throughout the show and the subjects and topics discussed did not change that much per segment. Dr. Kobrick started us out with a brief history of Yuri's Night but we soon got into the global parties and events, how to find a party or event near you, and how to host an event. As you will hear, if you contact Yuri's Night through their website, many people are willing to help you organize an event and there are lots of supporting materials for you to use. We also talked about Yuri's Night educational outreach for students of all grades. Previous Yuri's Night celebrations were discussed, we took a look at the different countries where events are held, and our guest fielded several listener questions on these issues. One question Ryan received from Chuck asked why a Yuri's Night and not a similar celebration for Apollo 11. Don't miss what both Ryan and I had to say about this in our response to Chuck. This particular question brought up the subject of NASA support for Yuri's Night and our guest had much to say about this as well. Another program Ryan talked about was Yuri's Night Live (http://live.yurisnight.net). Listeners also wanted to know if Yuri's Night was supported by other national space agencies and why there were no events in China. Later in the program near the end, we asked Dr. Kobrick about his own background in space, how he got his space interest, and what he hoped to be doing in the future. Visit his personal website, www.ryinspace.com. As you will hear, he has been involved in some interesting projects, spacesuit engineering and design projects, lunar dust studies, and he wants to go on to be a university professor when he finishes his Postdoctoral Associate program at MIT. After talking with him on The Space Show and having met and talked with him in person at conferences, I can honestly say that there are going to be some very lucky college students out there who end up in one or more of his classes. Before our program ended, we returned to discussing Yuri's Night and Ryan urged us all to register to attend an event or host one. With one month to go before Yuri's Night 2012 is here, the time is now to either plan and host an event or make arrangements to attend an event and participate. If you have comments/questions, please post them on The Space Show blog URL above. To contact the Yuri's Night 2012 team, use http://yurisnight.net/contact.
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