Monday 13 November 2017

Astronaut Untethered

Bruce McCandless, Space Lecture event. November 2017.


Apologies for the lack of detail in this write up - the event was as excellent as usual, with an incredible guest, but it fell in the middle of an incredibly busy couple of weeks for me and already the details are hazy.

While my memory is shot to pieces the same cannot be said of McCandless as his hour long lecture was interesting - and like so many events lately covered all sorts of topics, including quidditch!

From my point of view I was a little sad that there wasn't more of McCandless's memories and personal history - this is the area that I am most interested in - but I quickly became enthralled with his detailed analyses of why we need to keep exploring and the pros and cons of manned missions v. robotic missions.  At a time when I'd just finished Scott Kelly's autobiography which definitely talked about the downsides of space travel this seemed very apposite!

More detailed write ups of this event can be found if you read back through @Space_Lectures tweets and also on Collect Space. The talk, and the chance to briefly meet McCandless were brilliant and the deficiencies here are all mine.  Perhaps I was just overcome by winning in the raffle this time and then getting a wonderful piece of art signed (as shown in the image!)

I can't wait for the next event in March!

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