Mark your calendars! Spacefest 2009 will be held on February 19-22, 2009, in San Diego, California!
Spacefest is a convention for space enthusiasts. The inaugural meeting was last year, and it was a tremendous time (see my reports here, here, and here). Almost every living astronaut who walked on the Moon was there, and let me tell you how thrilling that was! I was there to give my Moon Hoax talk, and Carolyn Porco gave a tremendous speech about Cassini. Andy Chaikin gave an Apollo talk (his book A Man on the Moon is considered to be the Bible of Apollo, and Tom Hanks based his HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon" on that book). My buddy Seth Shostak from SETI was there, as well as famed comet hunter David Levy.
I’m not sure who will be there next time, though many astronauts have already signed up. I have as well! I’ll have to find something else to talk about, but happily I’ll have a new book to plug, so I’m sure I can come up with something.
March 7th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Now why can’t anything cool like this happen in Chicago? What do astronomers and astronauts have against the Mid-West? It’s centrally located, we have the second largest airport in the country, and we have a really cool planetarium! What more do you need? (And don’t say sunshine! There’s no reason why this kind of thing has to happen in January! Chicago has a summer!)
March 7th, 2008 at 8:33 am
Sorry, February, not January. I guess I should have said winter.
March 7th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Cool! I can easily drive down from LA and stay at my sister’s house while there. I’m looking forward to updated guest lists as the event draws near.
March 7th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Phil,
I could listen to your moon hoax talk again. It was great!
I’m starting to bug the wife to let me go by myself as she wouldn’t be interested. Spacefest 2007 was a highlight for last year. Hopefully, I’ll see you at Spacefest 2009.
Jim
March 7th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Awesome. I’m in North County, so not a big effort to get to. Have to go see Mr BA himself.
March 7th, 2008 at 11:13 am
RE: Moon Hoax.
My father worked for Bendix at the Kennedy Space Center until just before the conclusion of the Apollo Project. He worked on the elevators for the VAB and the launch towers. He would not have been “one of the insiders” in any Hoax, as would a lot of others.
However, where’s the “not one of the insiders” who just happened to be on scene when the Astronauts were returned from the Apollo capsule and saw something strange. There was the supposed insider from Area 51 that the UFOlogists, (Bill Lazar?), but where’s the innocent/unknowing member of the 400K people working on Apollo?
J/P=?
March 7th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I’ll do my best to go there!! it sounds simply great
December 8th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
[...] Spacefest, a fantastic conference featuring scientists, astronauts, artists, and space afficiandos. I’ve written about it before, so you can get the details [...]