Tag: Ball Aerospace

Safer Rocket Fuel // Inland-Ocean Connection

The Tuesday, Sept. 17, show offers two features:
Feature #1 (start time TK): Once hadrazine, now green. Ball Aerospace’s Chris McLean, the Program Manager for the Green Propellent Fusion Mission, talks with co-host Jim Pullen about testing a much safer spacecraft fuel.

Mississippi River Basin
Courtesy U.S. EPA

Feature #2 (start time TK): The 100-year flood ravaging Colorado has shown us painfully clearly the power of water. We’re seeing how surging rainfall and overflowing streams can destroy homes, roads, indeed whole communities in their path.  But what’s less visible is how extreme weather events like this one in the nation’s interior affect oceans in powerful ways. Our watersheds east of the Continental Divide carry water, and tons of nutrients, into the Mississippi River Basin.  Rainfall, storm water, and fertilizer runoff from croplands and backyard lawns contribute to the humongous Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico. To discuss our inland connection to oceans Dr. David Guggenheim, a marine scientist and founder of the nonprofit Ocean Doctor, talks with co-host Susan Moran. Vicki Goldstein, founder of Colorado Ocean Coalition, also discusses the inland ocean movement, including the second annual Making Waves event this coming weekend.

Hosts: Susan Moran, Jim Pullen
Producers: Jim Pullen
Engineer: Jim Pullen
Executive Producer: Susan Moran

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Robert Arentz – Asteroid Impact Hazards & Ball Aerospace

Main Feature (starts at 5:25). We talk with Dr. Robert Arentz from Ball Aerospace in Boulder about what’s new and interesting at Ball and in space missions in general including asteroid impact hazards on Earth and what can be done about it.

Hosts: Joel Parker and Jim Pullen
Producer: Joel Parker
Engineer: Joel Parker
Executive Producer: Jim Pullen

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:59 — 21.0MB)

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Dr. Paul Lightsey

Dr. Paul Lightsey
Dr. Paul Lightsey and JWST (start time: 5:55). Paul Lightsey, mission system engineer for the James Webb Space Telescope, joins us to share his intimate knowledge of the telescope’s optical element. JWST is the replacement for the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. The telescope will stare back so far in time and space that it will be able to see the first stars and galaxies in the universe being formed.

Hosts: Jim Pullen and Beth Bartel
Producer: Jim Pullen
Engineer: Jim Pullen
Executive Producer: Joel Parker
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:52 — 21.9MB)

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Front range water / Kepler planet-hunter

Rocks at Lake Mead show the drop in water levels from the high-water mark. (Image courtesy of Flickr user ChrisMRichards.)

Our two features for this week’s show:  Susan Moran interviewed Joel Smith, principal at Stratus Consulting in Boulder, who has been helping the city adapt to climate change—in particular, by smartly managing its water supply; and Tom Yulsman interviewed John Troeltzsch, the Kepler mission program manager for Boulder-based Ball Aerospace, which built one of the key instruments for the mission, as well as the spacecraft itself.

Cohosts: Susan Moran, Tom Yulsman

Producer: Susan Moran

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:54 — 21.9MB)

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From Jars to the Stars / Plants moving uphill

Artist's rendering of the Deep Impact spacecraft encountering a comet
Artist's rendering of the Deep Impact spacecraft encountering a comet. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/UMD/Pat Rawlings.

Our guest this week is Todd Neff, who was a science reporter for Boulder’s Daily Camera newspaper and is author of a new book, From Jars to the Stars: How Ball Came to Build a Comet-Hunting Machine, about the history of Ball Aerospace. Neff joins us to speak about that history and the challenges Ball faced when designing and building the Deep Impact spacecraft that intentionally collided with a comet in 2005. We also hear from Jon Stewart of the BBC’s Science in Action about how climate change is actually driving plants downhill.

Hosts: Joel Parker, Ted Burnham

Producer: Joel Parker

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:06 — 23.0MB)

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