Podcasts about united space alliance

Did you know that the white material on the outside of space shuttles was not metal or glass but actually fabric? Specialized quilts, two inches thick, covered the space shuttles and protected the astronauts from deadly heat and radiation. Jean Wright was one of the eighteen “Sew Sisters” who crafted these thermal blankets, mostly by hand, with incredible precision and skill.  From sending letters to Johnson Space Center as a child with crayon-drawn patch ideas, Jean had always aimed to work for NASA, patiently applying and eagerly awaiting for the job she was meant to have, one that would help secure – in a literal sense- the materials that would protect the vehicles carrying the astronauts to space, and secure her place in NASA history… this is the conversation that you must not miss.  On this very special 200th EPISODE of the Casual Space Podcast, Beth enjoys speaking with Jean Wright, sharing her inspiring stories from her time at NASA as a “Sew Sister.”   Together, Beth and Jean discuss stories from Jean's newly-released book, Sew Sister: The Untold Story of Jean Wright and NASA's Seamstresses.  The book, just like this conversation, unveils both the grandeur of space flight and the intimacy of a needle and thread, and the story of Jean's childhood passion for space and sewing, and her fascinating work for NASA's shuttle program.  Listen as Beth learns the definition of what schnibbles* are.  Note: It's a variant of schnibbles, a far more common term for “scraps,” or “small pieces,” which is heard in parts of the United States that were settled largely by German immigrants. The term comes from German Schnippel, meaning “scraps.” Imagine having the task of cutting the fabric from the 1903 Wright Flyer that went to the Moon with Neil Armstrong, and several shuttle flight- so it could be displayed at the University of Cincinnati .  And guess what kind of fabric the Wright Brother's used for the first flight? A kind of high-end, expensive fabric women would use for their undergarments! “I'm all about fabric!” – Jean Wright, Casual Space Podcast  Jean Wright is a former NASA Aerospace Composite Technician- a NASA seamstress.  Jean worked with the United Space Alliance at the Thermal Protection System Facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. One of 18 seamstresses in this critical role, Jean and her co-workers dubbed their group, “The Sew Sisters”, using machines and hand stitching to build, create and repair thermal protection flight hardware and parachutes. Wright worked on the Endeavor, Atlantis and Discovery space shuttle missions. She also worked on test parachutes and aft-skirt blankets for the Orion spacecraft. When she's not sewing, Jean is a photographer for SpaceUpClose; www.spaceupclose.com  Beth's Note: I especially loved “Big Mo,” “Sweet Sue”, and “Lurch” - the names of the sewing machines used by Jean and her team at NASA (some from 1914)!  More about Jean:  Jean says she's retired, but she's ever the most incredible NASA advocate, photographer, speaker and representative.  Jean remains involved with NASA as a Docent for the Shuttle Atlantis exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center. She is a member of NASA's Speakers Bureau, representing the organization at civic, professional, educational and public events. She has been a keynote speaker at the MQX Quilt Festival in 2018, Women's History Month at KSCVC in 2018, Family Day at the Udvar-Hazy National Air & Space Museum in 2016, the International Quilt Festival with Astronaut Karen Nyberg and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. One of her life's biggest thrills was being asked by Mark Armstrong to cut and prepare for auction, pieces of historic muslin fabric from the Wright Brothers 1903 Flyer that his father, Neil Armstrong, carried to the moon aboard the Apollo 11 Lunar Module. Pre-order Jean's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Sew-Sister-Untold-Wright-Seamstresses/dp/0884489825/ref=sr_1_1?crid=35842DQC0D3T2&keywords=sew+sister+the+untold+story+of+jean+wright&qid=1693428497&sprefix=sew+sister%2Caps%2C103&sr=8-1  Apply for a NASA Moon tree here: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-forest-service-to-share-moon-tree-seedlings-promote-stem  And don't forget to send your story to space at www.storiesofspace.com

Bridget Brown is the Owner and Lead Web Developer of Pages and Post, a digital design agency based in Alabama. Bridget—a mechanical engineer by profession—served in the energy and aerospace industry before founding Pages and Post. She served as an engineer for the Southern Company and as a staff engineer and flight controller for the United Space Alliance. Bridget graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Mississippi and completed her Master of Business Administration at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Bridget joins us today to discuss her strategies for running her service-based company. She shares how she combined her technical and creative skills to build her business and divulges the tactics she uses to attract customers for Pages & Posts. She explains how the COVID-19 pandemic increased the demand for Pages & Posts' digital marketing services. Bridget also offers advice for hiring employees at the right time and reveals how she overcame pricing challenges early in her business. “Pricing can be tricky for a service-based business. To overcome that, I looked at my competitors and ensured I was up-to-date with them.” - Bridget Brown This week on SmallBizChat Podcast: Resources Mentioned: Connect with Bridget Brown: Become Your Own Boss Book GIVEAWAY! The 2020 pandemic has been so hard on America's small businesses - and America in general. If you're ready to start your dream business, then look no further! I'm currently giving away 1,000 free copies of my best-selling book: Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months. This book has helped over 100,000 people like you to start, build, and grow their small businesses… and now it's your time to shine. All you have to do to get your hands on a free copy is head over to www.beginmybiz.com/freeoffer to sign up for your free offer. You only pay shipping. Let's End Small Business Failure - Together! Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of the SmallBizChat Podcast - the show on a mission to improve small business success. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, and leave us a rating and review. Help us spread the word and end small business failure by sharing your favorite episodes with your friends and colleagues on social media. Visit our website or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or YouTube for more great content, tips, and strategies to improve your small business.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My guest today is Tyler Spalding, a Co-Founder of Flexa, a blockchain payments company based in New York City. Flexa is a versatile digital payments platform that offers several key features. Flexa has point-of-sale (POS) hardware compatibility as a merchant-focused app and is designed to reduce costs, settlement times, and fraud. Payments are collateralized by Flexa's ERC-20 token Amp, which can be staked as collateral that receives additional Amp as a staking incentive. Flexa is accepted all over North America; Flexa aims to scale globally and integrate with numerous apps and payment options. For merchants, Flexa offers a variety of payment integrations and plug-ins to enable digital asset acceptance using existing point-of-sale (POS) hardware and software. Flexa supports dozens of digital currencies for consumers — including cryptocurrencies, tokens, and digital dollars — for payment at thousands of stores throughout the United States and Canada — including Nordstrom, GameStop, Lowe's, and Petco. Flexa has a mission of eventually enabling digital asset payments for any app, using any currency, at any store worldwide. He has been preaching/mining/coding cryptocurrencies since 2011. Tyler is the former CTO of Raise, the world's largest gift card marketplace with over $1B in sales and $150M in venture funding. Tyler has more than 20 years of technology experience, has founded and sold three software companies, and is an active seed-stage investor in 25+ startups. He is an author of more than 50 technology patents and was previously an aerospace engineering faculty member at two universities. Tyler is also a former engineer for the United Space Alliance, the United States Air Force, NASA Mars Crew Module, and the NASA Space Shuttle Program. We discuss various topics, including the Flexa and AMP, the payment industry, why we are still early, etc. We begin our conversation by discussing the multiple inefficiencies in the payment industry. I share my personal experience with the challenges facing merchants when dealing with payment providers. Tyler explains why the inefficiencies are so prevalent. Tyler shares his experience from helping run Raise, where they developed various systems to combat fraud and other inefficiencies. Our conversation naturally leads us to Flexa, where Tyler explains how Flexa enables people to pay with crypto across millions of merchants and retailers. Tyler goes on to discuss the tokenomics of AMP. We have a fascinating conversation comparing the engineering challenges in blockchain and aerospace engineering. We also discuss the philosophy of Voluntarism and the importance of individual choice. Our conversation pivots back to Flexa, where we discuss the company's commitment to transparency. We also discuss how Flexa is supporting the infrastructure of El Salvador's transition to a Bitcoin Standard. We discuss how the crypto industry is still very early and why it is inevitable. Our final conversation topic centered on the social challenges of educating people on the proper custody of digital assets. Please enjoy my conversation with Tyler Spalding. -- This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co

People often ask me what it was like as a “NASA” insider. On this episode of Casual Space, one of the very best of the best, Michael Ciannilli joins me to share highlights and lessons learned from more than 25 years at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.  Michael “Mike” Ciannilli is NASA's manager of the Apollo, Challenger, Columbia Lessons Learned Program, where he helps innovatively and effectively share NASA's lessons of the past to help ensure future success.   Inspired by Mike and his work? Check out these videos from NASA EDGE,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvOHNIbVBRI and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtowgLH-HyA   And read more about Mike here:  As manager of this agency level program, Ciannilli oversees the Columbia Research and Preservation Office, which preserves all Columbia artifacts, as well as the loan program, which loans out Columbia artifacts for research and academic purposes. In addition, this role involves giving lessons learned tours for NASA engineers, scientists, interns, executives, commercial partners and others. During these tours, he uses the stories of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia to share what has been learned from these past mishaps to prevent reoccurrence in future applications. Ciannilli also does lessons learned events at Kennedy Space Center where he works to bring these past experiences and the emotions behind the accidents alive through multimedia and storytelling; these events will be expanding across the agency. In addition to his main activities supporting the agency, Ciannilli also collaborates with outside media organizations like National Geographic to share these lessons learned with a wider audience. Prior to his current role, Ciannilli was the lead of the Columbia Research and Preservation Office, a position that is now encompassed in his new role. He also led the creation and development of the Forever Remembered project for Columbia and Challenger at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Previously, he served nine years as NASA Test Director for the Space Shuttle Program at Kennedy, responsible for processing oversight of the space shuttle orbiters and ground support systems including launch and landing facilities. In addition, this responsibility included leading the launch team through launch countdown activities. He also was the Landing Recovery Director during that time, responsible for leading contingency operations during launch countdown and landing activities, including flight crew recovery. In 2003, during the Columbia accident recovery, Ciannilli flew extensively onboard helicopters across Texas supporting air search operations and Columbia artifact recovery.Before joining NASA in 2005, Ciannilli was a contractor for the United Space Alliance where he spent eight years as a Test Project Engineer, leading the testing and engineering integration during processing of the shuttles and launch operations, and before that he was the lead of the Launch Countdown Simulation Team, which developed simulations to train the launch team. As the simulation lead for the Mission Management Team, he also trained the leadership of the Space Shuttle Program. Prior to this he worked as a fuel cell systems engineer assigned to Columbia. He also worked as an intern for Pan Am World Services at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base and taught high school. He has received numerous awards throughout his career, including the astronauts' Silver Snoopy, NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, NASA Program Leadership Award, Launch and Landing Leadership Award, Launch Countdown Simulation Contingency Leadership Award, NASA Quest Outreach Award and a Columbia Recovery Team Award, among many others. Ciannilli has a Bachelor of Science in space science from the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida. Ciannilli grew up in Syracuse, New York. He enjoys spending time with his family, surfing, swimming, boating, sailing, hiking, skiing and film production.

This episode features Dale Nash, CEO and Executive Director of Virginia Commercial Spaceflight Authority. Also known as Virginia Space, the authority owns and operates the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) including three Launch Pads and a Payload Processing Facility, as well as the MARS UAS Airfield. Mr. Nash has 38 years of experience in the aerospace industry. He headed the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska for six years prior to joining VA Space. He has also served in senior management positions working Space Shuttle launch operations and program development on the Orion program with United Space Alliance, Lockheed Martin, and Thiokol Corp. Mr. Nash has a bachelor’s degree in Engineering from the University of Utah and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Florida.

Today’s guest is Mr. Gregory Coll who is currently running for U.S. Congress in Maryland and is  on the ballot in the general election on November 3, 2020. He advanced from the Republican primary on June 2, 2020.  Professionally, he is a systems engineer team manager, involved in NASA's space projects; Mr. Coll set his goals on obtaining a job working on the Space Shuttle program after graduating from college early.  He started with United Space Alliance working on the Main Propulsion System of the Space Shuttle in February of 2004, and it was a dream come true for him. Mr. Coll currently serves on volunteer boards, and is actively engaged in his community. 

Purdue University Chemical Engineering graduate, Caroline Kostak, worked as a flight controller with United Space Alliance out of college. After that she worked to help make buildings green in Houston, TX.  She was inspired from the movie Inconvenient Truth to work with green buildings. For Earth Day 2020, Caroline suggests that students can do an energy audit of their home and she encourages kids to get their parents involved. Caroline now works as a Spacesuit Systems Engineer, with a team, designing a new spacesuit that astronauts will wear on the next Moon mission. There are many variables to consider when working to design a new spacesuit. Caroline discusses some of these challenges that she, along with a team of approximately 250 people, is working on. Caroline explains that a person's ability to work with others is the key to success. She further discusses the materials that go into the design of the new Spacesuit, issues with Moondust, possible NASA spinoffs, various suits that the astronauts need, and the space station Lunar Gateway.

Dr. Frazier is an Engineering Manager at Intel's High Performance Computing group, and previously worked at the United Space Alliance working on 13 safe and successful Space Shuttle missions. He and Scott talk about his experience in engineering and science and what motivates him to give back. Dr. Frazier's Thesis Corey on Twitter

Rob Alexander is the current Executive Director of the International Institute of Space Commerce.He has worked in various capacities and projects associated with human space flight for the last 20 years, including at NASA where he was involved with the Space Shuttle and International Space Station. He has also worked on the commercial side of aerospace having been involved with United Space Alliance (a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin), McDonald Dettwiler (the Canadian space robotics company), and Science Applications International Corporation (an international engineering and science contractor). Topics covered in our conversation:> Some of the challenges of space travel.> Issues associated with travel to the moon and mars.> The vastly different effects of the two most recent presidential administrations on the progress of space exploration.> The primary purpose of his current role at IISC… leading the world’s leading nonpartisan think-tank dedicated to the study of the business, economics, and commerce of space.

Brandon Naids is CEO and Co-Founder of Talon Simulations, a low cost provider of virtual reality motion simulators. Naids got his start studying mechanical engineering at the University of Central Florida where he obtained industry experience through engineering internships with United Space Alliance, working on the Transition & Retirement program of the remaining space shuttles, and Universal Orlando Resort, acting as project manager on large-scale design changes. Talon grew out of the senior design project Naids collaborated on during his final year in his undergraduate studies where him and his team developed a prototype virtual reality flight simulator. The recognition and support from the university that followed led to the development of Talon Simulations, a company that now specializes in immersive and affordable motion simulators for entertainment and training applications. The company was built through the aid of a National Science Foundation grant and earnings from business competitions and you can now find their simulators in entertainment centers, technical institutes, and military training centers. http://www.talonsimulations.com https://www.facebook.com/talonsimulations https://twitter.com/talonsim

On this episode of Talking Space, we return from our three week summer break to catch you up on the latest in space news, starting with the successful launch of the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, (GRAIL) mission which successfully launched to study the moon and our own Mark Ratterman was there to cover the launch. Mark also gets a special interview with Kim Guodace, a former shuttle vehicle engineer for United Space Alliance. We then move on to the failure of a Progress 44 resupply ship launched aboard a Soyuz and how it may leave the International Space Station unmanned. We move onto the topic of space debris including the UARS satellite scheduled to crash back to Earth at an unknown location. We then discuss some stunning shots of the lunar landing sites taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, LRO. We finish off with pieces of metal on Spirit and Opportunity which were once a part of the World Trade Center towers which were destroyed in a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. Two images were inserted here. To view them, please visit http://talkingspaceonline.com Host this week: Sawyer Rosenstein. Panel Members: Gene Mikulka and Mark Ratterman Show Recorded - 9/11/2011

The team from CTTechJunkie.com shot exclusive FLIR infrared footage of Atlantis' final landing. They were also present for the shuttle's "tow back" to the Orbiter Processing Facility where United Space Alliance employees walked alongside the orbiter they have worked with for nearly three decades.

A look inside Space Shuttle Discovery with the help of United Space Alliance employees. Discovery is in the process of being prepped for shipment to the Smithsonian in Washington DC.