Episode 15 - Interview with Yoji Kondo a.k.a. Eric Kotani
Recorded at:
The Maryland Regional Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention
Balticon 39: May 27 - 30, 2005
with Paul Fischer
Balticon 39 Interview with author and Astrophysicist Yoji Kondo a.k.a. Eric Kotani
From Sunday, May 29, 2005
Read more about Yoji’s personal and professional life, and his Kepler project.
- This was a “no edit” podcast
- We talk about politics, political parties, and true liberalism
- “All astrophysicists are sci-fi writers
- Yoji has worked for NASA for the last several decades
- sci-fi vs. real science and shooting down satellites
- Action / Adventure novels
- Yoji is part of NASA at Goddard Space Flight Center. The big bureaucracy.
- Yoji has work on many projects, including some which used data from
Gemini missions. Manned space astronomy. Worked with observations from Skylab. - Yoji gets technical about high altitude infra-red astronomy.
- Yoji has observed galaxies, stars, and planets, but not extra solar planets until now.
He is a co-investigator in the Kepler mission. A satelite designed to detect extra solar
earth-like planets. 10^-5 acurate photometers which can detect if a small earth-like
planet crosses the path of light from a star to us. Will be launched 2008. Boosting off a delta
rocket. - NASA TV is the most boring thing on TV. The NASA podcast is also spectacularly boring.
I’m supposed to talk to Mike Griffin NASA Administrator. I’m a weasle.
I think they need more exciting people on NASA TV and the NASA podcast.
The also emphasize the wrong things in NASA media. - Yoji explains the economics of keeping something like Hubble alive vs. building it’s replacement.
- Getting people involved in making NASA TV and podcast more exciting. Letting people program their
own exciting media for NASA to show. Get John Williams, of Star Wars fame, to write a NASA
theme song. I want to program some time on NASA TV. - I might have a hard time getting to Mike Griffin, but I really need to make the effort.
Music by Bottomland. This week’s song is “High in the Music”.
Books by Eric Kotani available on Amazon.com
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January 12th, 2006 at 6:45 pm
Yes NASA’s podcasts do indeed suck.
January 12th, 2006 at 7:07 pm
At about 19:50 minutes into the podcast there is an abrupt change to something called the Overclocked Podcast and then at 22:35 it picks back up on this podcast. It doesn’t sound like the anything was cut out but was inserted. The podcast says it’s 44:16 minutes long.
January 12th, 2006 at 7:27 pm
Thanks for the 411. That Overclocked podcast thing is a promo I put in. I need to get some transition music so everyone knows it’s a promo I’m inserting. You scared me silly. I thought someone managed to insert something else into my feed.