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With the purchase of all 3 courses you will receive a 30% discount!

This three-lecture course is designed to describe what it is like to be an astronaut, from the selection process through the experience of flying in space to the physiological effects of spaceflight on the human body.  

The first lecture will cover the astronaut selection process from historical and current perspectives.  Application requirements were significantly different for the Mercury Seven astronauts than they are for the selection of Group 23 currently in progress. The second half of the lecture will cover training for spaceflight.  The type of training required has changed a great deal from the early orbital flights to now preparing to again set foot on the Moon. 

The second lecture will describe what it is like to fly in space.  Joe will use pictures and videos to chronicle his experiences on four Space Shuttle missions and seven spacewalks.  Details of the Hubble Space Telescope servicing and assembly of the International Space Station will be presented.

The final lecture will address the physical effects of spaceflight on the human body.  It is not as easy as it appears.  The lecture will conclude with what is currently happening in space and a best guess summary of future planned missions.  Ample time will be provided in all lectures for questions. 

This course is comprised of three individual lectures.

This course summarizes our understanding of meteorites: where in space do they come from, how they were formed, their age and composition, the various types (classification), classic historic events and notable impact craters from around the world, how to identify them, where to collect them, and what they are worth. We’ll look at numerous images of the various types of meteorites and of impact sites as well as hand specimens from Gary’s personal collection.

This course is comprised of three individual lectures.

The sun appears very stable and unchanging to us on a daily basis.  But it is in reality unbelievably violent every second of the day.  Those processes provide the light and heat that make life here possible.  But they also emit a steady stream of energy (many wavelengths) and charged particles called solar wind.  That solar wind travels 93 million miles and impacts Earth constantly.  All those dynamic processes on the sun, their products (particles and energy), and their ultimate impact on Earth are all referred to as our Space Weather.  Fortunately we have very effective shields in place. This lecture will examine all those processes and the products for each step along the way.  All these events are monitored every hour by telescopes both on Earth and on satellites and compiled into daily weather reports just like we have for our daily Ground Weather.  We will also look at some of the very large events from the historic past and the major disruptions they produced.   Life on Earth as we know it is very dependent on that delicate balance between what comes in and how effective our shields are.   Were those shields ever ineffective in the past?

This course is comprised of one individual lecture.