I recently attended a lecture given by Prof John Zarnecki called "Fingers Crossed - 50 Years of Space Exploration".

Sending rockets into space and expecting them to work has always been a dodgy business. The Prof talked about some of his experiences starting with almost meeting Yuri Gagarin and working through his first xray rocket, Hubble FOC, Giotto, Beagle 2 and Huygens etc. Very interesting.

Anyway, the lecture is now available online at the BBC/OU Website.

Cheers,
Chris.

Man!!! This guy is absolutely great!!!

Does anybody knows how (or where) to download entire video PRRRLLLEEEAAASSSEEEEEE!!!

John's a hoot - I was fortunate enough to see a lecture by him about Huygens a few years ago ( and I asked a really good question afterwards which he was impressed by ) - he's the best thing in UK space science to match the likes of Jim, Steve, Alan etc.

Doug

Here are the direct links to the flash video files... you can dl them and combine in a playlist if you desire:

http://media.open2.net/ou-lecture-2007/int...tion_4x3_bb.flv
http://media.open2.net/ou-lecture-2007/1_4x3_bb.flv
http://media.open2.net/ou-lecture-2007/2_4x3_bb.flv
http://media.open2.net/ou-lecture-2007/3_4x3_bb.flv
http://media.open2.net/ou-lecture-2007/4_4x3_bb.flv
http://media.open2.net/ou-lecture-2007/5_4x3_bb.flv
http://media.open2.net/ou-lecture-2007/6_4x3_bb.flv
http://media.open2.net/ou-lecture-2007/7_4x3_bb.flv
http://media.open2.net/ou-lecture-2007/8_4x3_bb.flv
http://media.open2.net/ou-lecture-2007/9_4x3_bb.flv
http://media.open2.net/ou-lecture-2007/10_4x3_bb.flv


MODS -this should be kosher since it is publicly available online anyway.

Full Audio
Fingers Crossed: 50 years of space exploration

http://media.open2.net/ou-lecture-2007/spa...ation_au_bb.mp3
26 Mb

Jack

Converted to DivX and glued together:

http://paranoid.dechengst.nl/lectures/John...Exploration.avi (241 MB)

Slowness warning:

My upload is only 1 Mbit/sec so with a single user downloading, it will take about 50 minutes to download. (Your problem not mine )

Downloaded!
Thanks!
This place (UMSF) is starting to look like a (Alice in ) wonderland to me...you just have to wish hard enough and it happens..