Closing Keynote - Space, So What? - Professor Anu Ojha OBE

Closing keynote from the 2019 UKVMUG from the director of the National Space Centre in Leicester

[edwardrichardson]

Anu should be on one of the Artemis III missions. He's in shape, he's a skydiver, but more important - it does a thousand times more good for space exploration to send enthusiastic, verbally-proficient astronauts who SELL IT, who engage the next generation. Norman Mailer's terrific "Of A Fire On The Moon" (Mailer was tasked by Time Magazine to cover the Apollo 11 launch) has some comical moments where he is giddy with joy for this "surreal adventure" but clashes and clangs comically w/ the 'cool as a cucumber' test pilots and scientists. Neil Armstrong was very tight-lipped and quiet about it until near the end of his life when he went on a little crusade against Obama killing America's manned spaceflight program in order to turn NASA into a global warming propaganda machine. When Neil did talk about it, he mentioned things like - upon leaving the surface of the Moon - seeing the wave of dust their engine kicked up disappear across the horizon! As it had no 14psi of gases to collide w/ like on Earth and just 1/6th the gravity, the dustcloud just shot across and over the Moon's horizon. This dazzling little moment would be forgotten had someone not asked Neil what the coolest thing was he saw on the Moon at question time. Anu would not have to have that prodded out of him and would in fact be the first to spill out just how alien this experience can be. That's what sells it.