NASA invited me to the John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida to attend a special NASA Tweetup (#nasatweetup) for the Space Shuttle Atlantis launch of the STS-129 mission to the International Space Station. The Space Shuttle launched on Monday, November 16th at 2:28pm EST from launch pad 39A.

Here are my launch day photos & video that I uploaded live from the press center at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, which is located 3 miles from the launch pad.

As part of the NASA Tweetup, we took a tour of the Kennedy Space Center, stopping by the Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF), Apollo / Saturn V Center and ended up with an amazing visit to a close up view of launch pad 39A with the Space Shuttle Orbiter in place on the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) ready for take off.

While touring Kennedy Space Center, we drove by a gigantic eagle’s nest (as big as king size bed) which has been home multiple generations of eagles for over 45 years. KSC is part of Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which is also home to alligators, wild boar, black bear, manatee, Florida panthers and over 330 species of birds.

Photo Gallery: NASA Tweetup Space Shuttle STS-129

NASA photographer Carla Cioffi has been shooting a bunch of great photos of the STS-129 NASA Tweetup and uploading them to NASA HQ Flickr account.

More Coverage:

- The Associated Press

- Central Florida News 13

- Space.com

- Star Stryder

photos by Scott Beale

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guest post by Todd Lappin (Telstar Logistics)

Call it “one small step for man, and one giant leap for wannabe astronauts of all ages…”

Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11, a meticulously detailed children’s book by Brian Floca, was just named one of the Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2009 by the New York Times.

Congratulations, Brian!

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The Big Picture is featuring beautiful photos of Martian Landscapes shot from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

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photo by Pierre Ducharme

The Big Picture has some amazing photos of NASA’s launch of the new Ares I-X rocket which took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday.

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Sean McNaughton and Samuel Velasco created a beautiful infographic for National Geographic Magazine featuring 50 Years of Space Exploration (larger version).

via Information Aesthetics

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image via Scott Beale

Bryan Christie created a wonderful infographic showing all the past and future missions to Mars, beginning with the Soviet Union’s Marsnik 1 in 1960.

via Fast Company

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photo by Scott Beale

While checking out APE 2009, I stopped by Josh Ellingson’s table and noticed that he has a awesome new painting of Carl Sagan that goes well with the recent “A Glorious Dawn” video. Curiously our two new Laughing Squid stickers that Josh is seen holding match the palette of his painting.

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guest post by mikl-em

photo by Geof Teague

For the second year in a row, a group of San Francisco theatrical mavericks are transposing a triumvirate of cinematic thrillers to a small San Francisco stage. Last year’s trio of B-beginning movies include The Blob and The Birds.

This year it’s Blue Velvet, Bride of Frankenstein, and Barbarella. A diverse set of B’s indeed. You can blame the fine folks at Foul Play Productions for that.

I have one piece of bad news and two bits of good: Blue Velvet has come and gone. But Bride of Frankenstein and Barbarella still await your attendance.

Bride is up right now (Thurs-Sat until October 17th) at StageWerx Theater, and it is quite an achievement. The play is presented in Black and White: costume, set, props, lighting, and skin tones are all painted, covered or otherwise adapted to a silver screen tone reminiscent of the 1935 original.

Featuring the original Franz Waxman score, and combining puppetry, shadowplay and myriad other theatricalities of a bygone era, Bride of Frankenstein is a perfect October offering, with showmanship and genuine thrills throughout!

With the dramatic lighting design and pointed use of shadows through the production, there’s a definite call-back to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. While he’s technically filling Boris Karloff’s tremendous shoes as The Monster, the remarkably named Fennel Skellyman physically evokes the gangly, alien-headed horror of Nosferatu–the true O.G. of cinematic killer creatures.

Played for fun and style, not for horror, The Bride is a blast and the entire cast is wonderful including Jim Jeske, Gerri Lawlor, Jordan L. Moore, and director Flynn De Marco. I can’t do justice to the ingenuity of the props, lighting, and staging here, but suffice to say it’s great.

You can buy tickets online for the last two weekends of Bride of Frankenstein.

Barbarella will open on October 22 and run for 9 shows only. Starring the remarkable Khamara Pettus, in the role that Jane Fonda could no longer play, and with projections, animation, and puppetry, this show promises to make up for the color deprivation of the Bride’s run.

The film is a cult classic space romp from 1968, an outrageous one-of-a-kind, sexified carnival from the 40th Century. It was co-written by Terry Southern (Easy Rider, Dr Strangelove, Casino Royale) and features Marcel Marceau in a speaking role. It is the film from which the band Duran Duran took their name. I’m just saying.

photo by Geof Teague

Tickets are on sale now for all nine performances.

Five-Star Astro-Navigatrix Barbarella (Khamara Pettus) is on a mission to find and recover Duran Duran (Fennel Skellyman), creator of the abominable Positronic Ray. To track her quarry, she must penetrate the City of Night where the Great Black Queen (Gerri Lawlor) and her Leathermen hold power supreme.

Between the Bride of Frankenstein and Barbarella, you can bookend your Halloween appropriately between the scary and outrageous.

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“A Glorious Dawn” by Carl Sagan, featuring Stephen Hawking (Cosmos Remixed), a loving tribute to two great men produced by Colorpulse. Download the mp3.

via Nerdist

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Berlin TV Tower Lift Off by Fabian Tischer

via The Presurfer

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In celebration of today’s Moon landing anniversary Google has launched a Moon section in Google Earth, so that you can now explore the Moon in Google Earth.

Land on the Moon in Google Earth. With Moon in Google Earth, you can take tours narrated by Apollo astronauts, view 3D models of landed spacecraft, zoom into 360-degree photos, and watch rare TV footage of the Apollo missions.

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Today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission landing on the Moon.

Neil Armstrong was the first to set foot on the Moon, making his legendary quote “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”

video via Boing Boing

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Today is the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Saturn V rocket, which was the beginning of Apollo 11, the first maned mission to land on moon. Aboard were astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr.

The Big Picture is featuring some great Apollo 11 photos.

We Choose The Moon commemorates the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, replaying audio from the mission in real-time as well as posting on Twitter: @ap11_capcom, @ap11_spacecraft & @ap11_eagle

Footage of the Saturn V lift-off as it was broadcast on July 16, 1969.

NASA’s restored footage of Neil Armstrong’s first moonwalk.

I had the honor of meeting Buzz Aldrin at Yuri’s Night Bay Area 2008.

UPDATE: Eat Me Daily has a write-up about the food on the Apollo 11 mission.

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guest post by Jackson West

A Japanese satellite Kaguya, named after the alien visitor in an ancient folktale, has like its namesake character, finally found its home on the moon. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, (JAXA), has decommissioned its lunar orbital craft Kaguya by sending it spinning into the great green cheese in the sky. Thankfully, it was equipped with the latest in hi-definition camera technology, and sent back some beautiful photos as gifts to remember it by — much like the robe Kaguya-hime left for her adoptive parents before returning home.

via Burrito Justice

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Astrophotographer William Castleman shot a beautiful time-lapse video of the galactic center of The Milky Way during the 2009 Texas Star Party in Fort Davis, TX.

via MG Siegler

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guest post by Burstein!

photo by Thierry Legault

That photo is way more than lovely photo of our big glowing star in the sky. See that little speck in the lower left quadrant? That is the only image ever taken of a Space Shuttle and the Hubble Space Telescope in front of the sun!

photo by Thierry Legault

Thierry Legault took this amazing picture in the south of Florida at 12:17pm local time, which was just a few minutes before Atlantis connected with the Hubble for repairs. He used a Canon 5D Mark II with 100 ISO film at an exposure of 1/8000s.

This was not some lucky shot. Thierry has a a pantsload of amazing space photography. Spend some time poking around his site. You will not be disappointed.

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NASA astronaut Mark Polansky (@Astro_127), who is commander of the Space Shuttle, will be posting updates to Twitter live from space as well as taking questions from YouTube on the next mission the to International Space Station in June.

UPDATE: NASA astronaut Mike Massimino (@Astro_Mike) is posting updates to Twitter on a current mission.

via Los Angeles Times

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Yuri’s Night is an annual worldwide celebration of humanity’s achievements in space and honors Yuri Gagarin, the first person to orbit the earth. Yuri’s Night 2009 takes place April 4-12 with parties planned around the world.

This year Yuri’s Night Bay Area is temporarily relocating to California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, with an event planned for this Thursday, April 9th.

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guest post by mikl-em

Congrats to San Francisco artist Josh Ellingson, a long-time friend of Laughing Squid, on being featured in the Fresh section of the Communication Arts website. CA is the largest international trade journal of visual communications.

Bay area art fans with their eyes open have probably noticed Josh’s work in recent years in local weeklies, major magazines, posters for parties and concerts, or galleries and stores in San Francisco and beyond. Josh has designed ads, posters, and postcards for Laughing Squid over the years, too. The image below was one of the first in the Laughing Squid postcard series.

Josh will be at the Wondercon convention this week in San Francisco at Moscone Center South, you’ll find him in Artists’ Alley. He’ll have some new prints, making their exclusive debut at the convention.

In Josh’s own words from the Communication Arts piece:

I’m influenced by popular culture, particularly television and movies, and I’ve also always been a fan of comic books and collectible toys. I’m enamored with science and scientific advancements and lately, astronomy has had a big impact on my work. There’s something about the scale of the cosmic level that makes my brain buzz.

Josh has had exciting things happening. In addition to the CA feature his work has recently appeared on TV, in art shows in Arizona & South Carolina (upcoming), on limited edition tequila bottles, and in outer space. So it seemed overdue to cover some of the cool stuff he’s been up to since Scott last posted about him in July ‘08.

First off, that art-in-space thing. The illustration below, featuring burlesque icon Dirty Martini was chosen to be included in the first ever art show at the International Space Station, which is in orbit around a small blue planet called Earth.

In the images below, you can see Josh’s piece, fittingly entitled “Dirty Martini and the Birth of the Space Program”, on a wall of the space station:

There it is, over the shoulder of the ‘naut on the far left. Possibly the first Dirty Martini in space. Not likely, but possible.

Last month back on Earth, fellow bay artist KRK Ryden curated a show called “The Panelists”, featuring art that celebrates the comic book panel. It happened at Pravus Gallery in Phoenix, Arizona, where Josh’s work appeared alongside pieces by KRK, Mark Mothersbaugh, Niagara, Mark George, and many others.

Josh wrote about his wild time in PHX and there’s a blog about the show & artists. Here’s a video that Josh shot while he was there that shows everyone’s killer art…

The next gallery show for Josh will feature his brand new series “Carrying Home”. It’s a solo show at South Carolina State University running from Mar 23-April 14. Here’s one of the pieces, Vice, that will be up:

Back to last year, Ellingson-on-television happened in a surprising meeting of Reality TV and a Great Old One. The TLC show LA Ink shot a scene in the offices of Boom-Studios who happened to have Josh’s artwork on their walls. In fact it’s the cover art Josh designed for a comic that Boom published called Cthulhu Tales: The Rising. The door-sized image hangs proudly in their conference room.

Josh heard about it on the night of the show, and quickly ballyhooed it up on Twitter.

Here’s the original illustration, unsullied by TLC watermark, UPC symbol, or Josh’s Kraftwerk imitation…

No slight on Josh, but it’s rather a handsome take on Cthulhu, don’t you think?

Saving the boozed for last (or penultimate anyway), last year Josh also got a high profile, high concept gig, when he and a few other artists were selected to design custom bottles of 1800 tequila. What results are some really stunning alcoholic vessels.

Josh has more pix on his flickr stream, including shots of the billboards and sneakers that 1800 made of his work. NOTCOT.org has a post with great pix of the collection.

The original artwork is entitled “Eagle with Baby Dragons” (below).

Finally, here’s a short selection of the great posters that Josh created last year and throughout history…

This April you can go check out the Ellingson atelier in person when the Spring 2009 Mission Open Studios is on. Josh works out of the bustling 1890 Bryant Street Studios where he shares a large space with several other great local artists and the granddaddy of internet radio stations SOMA FM. Together they call themselves Local 303 and next month marks their 3rd anniversary in the space. Here’s some pix of their work and play over the years.

Okay, Josh, don’t do anything else for a while, okay?

photos & illustrations by Joshua Ellingson

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Joe Mackenzie has created The HAL Project, a fantastic tribute to HAL 9000 the AI enhanced computer aboard the spaceship Discovery in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Make sure to check out Joe’s amazing HAL screensaver, I’m running it now.

via Daring Fireball

image via The HAL Project

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