Science Comedian » NASA

TIME 100’s Elon Musk

Brian — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 19:57:03 +0000

Time Magazine has announced the Time 100 – their annual list of the most influential people of the year. It’s divided into four main categories: Leaders, Heroes, Artists, and Thinkers.

One of those Thinkers is Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal and current CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX.

Jon Favreau – director of the Iron Man movies – wrote the entry on Musk, having used him as a model for the billionaire Tony Stark character. David Clair and I made a new video about him:

Here’s the new video on Time’s site.

For a more in-depth piece, check out our previous piece about SpaceX and private enterprise in space:

Space: The Private Frontier

Brian — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:55:56 +0000

My new video (produced by David Clair) is up at Time.com. It’s about Elon Musk and SpaceX – and we were almost finished with it when the topic exploded into the news a week or so ago – Obama, the budget, the future of NASA, Ares and contracting out space flights to private companies. We didn’t set out to address all that but we did include it. Check it out…

Videos for Time Magazine

Brian — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:38:08 +0000

You can easily access all the science videos I’ve made for Time Magazine’s website at this link – the results from a search on my name (Brian Malow) at Time.com.

Herschel Space Observatory – Time Magazine’s Best Inventions

Brian — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:16:24 +0000

Time Magazine has released its list of the 50 Best Inventions of 2009. It’s worth checking out – tons of interesting stuff.

Topping the list is NASA’s Ares Rocket. Yay! And the Herschel Space Observatory is also on it, which happens to be the subject of our latest video for Time.com.

Herschel is a European Space Agency mission but, like so many space ventures today, it’s an international collaboration. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed two of the three instruments with which it will study the far-infrared and submillimeter wavelengths – analyzing some of the coldest objects in space, hoping to shed light on star formation. And, cooled by liquid helium to just a fraction above absolute zero, Herschel’s instruments are themselves some of the coldest objects in space – at least for the next three years, til the helium runs out.

We visited JPL and CalTech to speak to Paul Goldsmith, the NASA Herschel Mission scientist.

For more information about Herschel:

Jet Propulsion Laboratory Herschel Mission Home Page

Herschel at CalTech

ESA Science & Technology: Herschel

Herschel Science Centre

Herschel on Wikipedia

Hawking, Space Colonization and Jupiter Impacts on Time.com

Brian — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:46:27 +0000

“Science Comedian: Talking Hawking, the Moon and Beyond” – our newest video essay is up on Time.com, as part of their celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. It’s about Stephen Hawking and space colonization.

In April, 2008, Hawking came to Washington, D.C., to honor NASA on their 50th birthday. He presented a new speech entitled, “Why We Should Go Into Space.” That’s the jumping off point for the video. We wrote it. My friend Craig Duff produced it. Tara created some cool graphics, including the exploding Earth animation, and that ridiculous driver’s license for Homo sapiens.

As if to add an exclamation point to its message, between the time the video was finished and the time it was uploaded, a mile-wide hunk of rock and/or ice slammed into Jupiter. Check out the coverage by Bad Astronomer Phil Plait.

As I said in the Time piece (pun intended), “If that had happened here, you probably wouldn’t be watching online video right now.”