Phil Plait vs. Katie Couric
My pal Phil Plait takes on Katie Couric for her boneheaded criticism of NASA on the CBS Evening News.First, Ms. Couric:NASA’s requested budget for 2007 is nearly 17 billion dollars. There are some who argue that money would be better spent on solid ground for medical...
White House Suppressing Science?
Has the White House been suppressing science again, particularly about global warming? This afternoon , I talked with Paul Thacker of Salon.com, who investigated and found evidence of that at NOAA. Listen to the conversation here. During the discussion, I invoked...
3-D Moon Movie
While I'm on the subject of movies, I'll also recommend a new Imax 3-D movie, "Magnificent Desolation: Walking On The Moon." Tom Hanks produced and narrates the movie, which is a combination look-back at the Apollo program that put 12 men on the moon and a...
Phil Plait, “The Bad Astronomer”
Phil Plait ("The Bad Astronomer") was back on my show this afternoon, but this time in the studio and for a whole hour. On his website, Phil has been talking about the controversy at NASA over a 24-year-old political appointee (George Deutsch) who was sticking his...
Astronaut Mike Mullane
With the 20th anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger explosion next week, I talked with astronaut Mike Mullane on my show this afternoon. He's a three-time shuttle mission specialist who has some harsh words for NASA in his book, "Riding Rockets." He explained...
We Are Stardust
Phil Plait is the guy I call whenever something cosmic goes down, such as this weekend's return of the Stardust mission after a nearly three-billion-mile roundtrip to bring pieces of a comet back to earth. On my show, Phil explained what that means, what NASA did, and...
Moon Walk, Moon Talk
Should we go back to the moon? It's been 33 years since humans planted footprints in the lunar surface, and now NASA has proposed spending $104 billion to get back there. My guest Gregg Maryniak voted an enthusiastic "yes," and explained why. Gregg -- one...
Phil Plait, The Bad Astronomer
Here's my conversation with Phil Plait, The Bad Astronomer, about the return of the shuttle to space. He explained why -- two and a half years after the Columbia disaster -- things are still falling off the shuttle. We also discussed whether NASA will, in the...