Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of two of the greatest speeches of the 20th century. You can find out what Michael Collins and Neil Armstrong said to Congress over at Tor.com…
space
Found: Kepler-16b, a planet orbiting two stars
Informally known as Tatooine. Formally known as Very Cool. Thanks NASA, thanks Kepler Mission!
Meanwhile, over at Tor.com…
…you can find a piece I wrote about the unsung anniversary of an un-delivered speech from space history, called “In Event of Moon Disaster.”
As Frank Borman knew, success wasn’t (and still isn’t) inevitable, but planning for all contingencies makes it more likely.
Atlantis
Yuri Gagarin’s first orbit
And the signed copy of Apollo 13 goes to…
Brian A. — who improved his odds by purchasing a couple copies of T-Minus — had his number come up in the drawing, so he gets the book. Congratulations Brian, and thanks to all who entered. As I knew would happen, almost everybody had something interesting to say beyond just “sign me up,” so I enjoyed hearing from you all!
[In case you missed my comment at the close of the drawing, here’s how I picked: I listed out the entries as they came in and assigned numbers to each one. For example, if
Buzz Aldrin had been the first to respond, with just a comment or email, and
Sally Ride was second and she reminded me she bought three books last
year, and Alexei Leonov responded third and showed me he had purchased
a copy of T-Minus that day, and then I got another entry via the blog,
the list would have looked like this:
1 Buzz Aldrin
2-4 Sally Ride
5-17 Alexei Leonov
18 Alan Bean
and so on. Then I went to www.random.org and put in the total
number of entries (18 in the example above) and it spit back a
number at me (11 for this test case, so congratulations to Alexei
Leonov), and then I contacted the person who got the book!]
Again, thanks to everyone who entered. When I find something else cool to give away, I’ll do this again.