The Space Above Us

Hey all!

So yeah, I sort of dropped off the radar for a while there. I explained it in Supplemental 9, but basically what happened was I enrolled in an Aerospace Engineering Master’s degree at Purdue (whoo!) and my first class, Orbit Mechanics, completely took over my life. In addition to my full time job and living my life, I suddenly had 20+ hours a week of classwork to attend to, with one week spiking up to 35 hours. It killed me to let the podcast go dormant but there was really no alternative.

But the semester is over now! I’m delighted to report that I earned a B+ for the class, which was easily the hardest B+ I’ve ever earned. I’ve started back up on the Expedition 1 episode but with holiday travel coming up, there’s no way it’ll be done before I have to hit the road. That means that the total episode count for 2024 was a kind of pathetic seven but what’s done is done.

So what’s next? What’s next is I keep working on the Expedition 1 episode, taking advantage of 16+ hours of train travel in my near future. It should be posted some time in the first week of the year.

After that, I start my next class: Applied Control in Astronautics. I have heard that this class is also pretty demanding, but not as much as Orbit Mechanics. Regardless, I am absolutely committed to not allowing the podcast to lurch for month after month without update again. There are a few things in its favor. First, my brain tends to sort of wake up with the new year. I don’t know if it’s the increasing day length, the paucity of events on my calendar, or just having survived the holidays, but I always feel mentally better starting in mid-January. Second, last semester acclimatized me to a crushing workload to the point that I should be able to squeeze podcast work in. Third, we’ll be back to regular shuttle missions. It was really unfortunate timing that this unusual and difficult episode came up right as I lost almost all my free time, but I guess that’s just how it goes sometimes. Shuttle missions are, much like the shuttle itself, somewhat routine for me at this point, so they’re much easier to work on. Of course, we have STS-107 looming, but that’s still a ways out.

Anyway, I’m sure you’re all sick of my rambling explanations of what’s up with the schedule, so I’ll try to resolve that in the best way possible: regularly releasing episodes! Thanks to everyone who listens and everyone who takes the time to read this stuff. See you in the new year!