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Jason Kahn

This week could have run out of control, but I kept somewhat of a tight hold on the reins, but still, towards the end….things frayed a bit…

Thanks to Mark, I played the proper episode of the Dark Inspectre by Jason Kahn. Last week I played episode 4 which I was sure was the proper episode….Nope. Mark wrote to tell me that I played episode 4 last month! So this week I play episode 5 – Thanks Mark.

But first I lead off with an Indie song from the game “To The Moon”. The song’s title is “Every-thing’s Alright” and it is sung by Laura Shighara. Laura sings all the parts and plays the instruments and I think you will fall right in love with the tune.

From the Beam Me Up Blog – research that black holes may indeed evaporate and that gravity may not be a fundamental force of nature! The Swiss are planning to launch an $11-million satellite called “CleanSpace One” in the near future as a start to cleaning up space junk. NASA activated Robonaut for a first ever robot / human hand shake. oh goodie…….

I take a short break to play the audio of Sagan’s wonderful “Pale Blue Dot” if you have never heard it before, your in for a treat and if you have, the revisit is just as moving. I finish reading from the blog with Topless Robot’s 10 toys with really questionable names and let me tell you it is beyond comprehension how some of these made it through product QC….I mean a game called Ball Buster? Really?

And the final story of the program is the fourth episode of Erin Bassett’s “Clock Work”. I really hope to have more of this extraordinary series in the future.

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Jason Kahn

Listeners of the live show said that this was a bit of a “giggly” episode. Well considering that this was episode 300 I was a bit giddy plus a few of the station’s show hosts were out in studio 3 making sure I didn’t get too serious.

Anyway, this week I play episode four of our favorite Psychic detective Jack Garrett on New Arden in “In Plain Sight”. I then review the movie “I am Number Four” blu-ray and as luck had it
was able to find a cut of one of the songs to play, Adel’s “Rolling in the Deep” is used in the movie very effectively I might add. From there we head back to the Beam Me Up blog and talk about Mars reaching aphelion this week and play a report on the event from Earth Sky. I find a Youtube short that shows a fascinating experiment on-board the ISS concerning of all things, knitting needles and drops of water! Boing Boing posts a link to a decidedly weird video from the band Total Ghost called “Space Station” now what is really funny about this is that SpaceX founder Elon Musk Tweeted this video saying it would be an appropriate theme song for their efforts to get private industry into space. Even though the video is totally out there the mind set is really dead on! Scientists from Russia have finally reached the surface of Lake Vostok more than two miles under Antarctica ice! Back to Earth Sky, I run an article on the discovery of more of brown dwarf class y stars. These stars are some of the more unusual of their class.

Finally I play a story from this month’s Antipodean flash fiction site. This story is called “Love in a Time of Entropy” by Geordie McLeod and is a great short story that I had a great deal of fun reading.

That’s pretty much it for episode 300. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed doing it. Thanks.

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Tobias Buckell

Right out of the blocks I play a news track from John Anealio called Steam Punk Girl.
John has managed once again to produce a fun toe tapping tune. It is always a pleasure
to play his new material.

Next the first story of the afternoon. The Universe Reef by Tobias Buckell which tells the tale
of an alien organism that has invaded Earth with devastating results. Also of note is Tobias
has a new book coming out feb. 28th 2012 called Arctic Rising.

The first news article is from Earth Sky and deals with the discovery of two ancient hominid
skeletons that shows a mix of early hominids and modern humans. Next from the Beam Me Up
blog: a novel new way to look for extra-terrestrial intelligent life, the Grail moon orbiters are
starting operation. The first order of business was the first films from the craft Ebb showing the
far side of the Moon, scientists are making great strides in computer intelligents working towards
hardware that will allow people with with illness, or damage that has otherwise left them mute -
allowing them to speak again, biologists have been able to make headway towards turning ordinary
skin cell / stem cells into brain cells. This research could one day help people with all kinds of
brain injury or disease, Dr. Neal DeGrasse Tyson spoke recently on MSNBC’s Rock Center about
the failing space program. Check out the excerpt from this on the BMU blog.

I had enough time to play another piece of music. I play Creep by Radio Head. For not much more
reason than it is a strange piece, but it really could be a piece used in a science fiction or horror
film.

Oh one more news article, did Meteors bring life to an early Earth? Earth – Sky has a few ideas.

An on to our last story of the program: Life Plus 70 by Key Liu spins time travel and copywrite
trolls in a whole new way!

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Harris Tobias

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D.Thomas Minton

Wow talk about a show that got away from me it was this one – episode 292.  The hour just screams by!   I start the hour off with a song from James Struthers called “You Me and Optimus Prime…”  It is from Struthers’ official YouTube video and the video is every bit as much fun as the song.

Next the first story of the evening, I reenter the world of Clockwork by Erin Bassett.  This week is episode 2.  Ester returns to the academy  only to again come in contact with the mysterious Holland .   At the bottom of the hour is the conclusion of Thief of Futures by D. Thomas Minton.   Eshram has been pulled reluctantly out of retirement for a theft he finds for all intents, abhorrent, but the further he delves the more complex becomes the project and less clear as to the why and even more so the who.  When clarity finally comes it may be too late!

I didn’t have much time today for news other than the Dawn orbiter completed its’ maneuver to its’ new lower altitude of 130 miles.  The pics from the framing camera aboard the craft is already taking stunning photos.

And finally – the creator of Captain America – Joe Simon – has passed away at 98.

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D.Thomas Minton

Little bit shorter episode this week.  I fell short by about eight or so minutes.  However I think you will be entertained.

While I got organized I played Karma by Kokia which I have not played for a while.  This song was of course one of the opening titles used in the anime series Gunslinger Girls.

My first story this week is a flash fiction piece from down under.  From the pages of Antipodean is Jason Butterfied’s excellent flash fiction story called “Out of Time” .   At the bottom of the hour is part one of Thomas Minton ‘Thief of Futures’.   Where in the not so distant future a person’s “Future” becomes a commodity, if it proves to be of exceptional quality.  And a X futures thief trying hard to protect what is most important to him, his daughter.

From the Blog: Russia’s failed Mars exploratory rover mission failure mean that scientists and engineers behind the Phobos-Grunt mission could face criminal prosecution.  In an update however:  The European Space Agency (ESA) announced that they will attempt to contact the stranded Russian Phobos-Grunt spacecraft that became stuck at a low-Earth orbit due to engine failure that followed its launch on November 9.    Back in 2010, an out-of-character Stephen Colbert sat down with astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson at Montclair Kimberly Academy to talk for 90 minutes about science, society and the universe. I have the video embedded on the blog.   Comic book character Booster Gold is heading towards a meeting with the SyFy channel with a live action series in the offing.  The Navy is phasing out its steam based catapult aircraft launching system and will be replacing it with an electromagnetic catapult launching system. Plans are to install the new system on the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier now in production.   Intel is hard at work in hopes of bringing augmented reality technology into its’ chips. The Terminator tech of the future….today huh?  NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft is hoping for a third extension of it’s mission.  Controllers fired the spacecrafts engines to keep all mission possibilities open.  From the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a short over-flight of the proto planet Vesta. This 3-D video incorporates images from the framing camera instrument aboard NASA’s Dawn spacecraft from July to August 2011.   There is a lot more on the blog, I just didn’t get a chance to get to it all.

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Jason Kahn

Well rounded episode of Beam Me Up this week on episode 287.  I lead of first with a new offering from Symphony of Science called Onward to the Edge, featuring excerpts from speeches made by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox, and Carolyn Porco and set to some great music.

Our first fiction offering is a brand new story arc from Jason Kahn and Cyberstudios online.   Jason once again takes us to New Arden and our favorite physic detective Jack Garrett.  This arc is In Plain Sight and episode 1 is “On The Mend”  As you might recall with the last story, A New Beginning, Jack managed to solve the case, but took an amazing amount of damage in doing so.  On the Mend literally picks up where a new beginning ended.  But far from being lauded for his crime solving, it would seem that New Arden has a short memory.

The last story of the afternoon is part 2 of Elliot Bangs excellent story “This Must Be the Place.    With Many Many thanks to the voice work of Andy and Diane Finkle!

Last week we found the main character Loren Wells seems to have secrets to keep.  Foremost of all is every time Andria sees him, he appears to be a different age and sometimes he knows her, but often he has no clue!  In part 2 and the conclusion Andria uncovers what has got to be one of the strangest retirement plans ever!

From the Beam Me Up Blog:

Orion crew capsule is scheduled for a mission in 2014!  NASA  reports that the plan is to send the capsule through two orbits, ending up farther from Earth than any craft intended for human transport has been since 1973. Then, Orion will return for a splash-down in the Pacific.

According to BBC news online the Russian space agency reports that shortly after launch, the Phobos Grunt probe failed to fire its’ mains to launch it towards Mars and is now stuck in an Earth orbit and that engineers have two weeks to correct the fault before the probe’s batteries run out.

And something I thought I would never hear – In a paper which will be published this week in Nature, Professors Christian Knigge & Malcolm Coe from the University of Southampton worked with Philipp Podsiadlowski of Oxford University to reveal how they have discovered two distinct populations of neutron stars…  Two?!!!!  I can just handle how weird the universe is just having one type of these monsters!

That and some clever animations on the blog.

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Kit St. Germaine

Once again we get into the scaring season in Episode 282.

This week’s story is a true horror piece produced for radio by Kit St. Germain as well as a very talented acting troupe performing- Mr. Bronze from a short story written by Phil Voyd. Heather Brown engineers. And the narrator in the story is Mark Oliver. Ben, the “star” of tonight’s outing is a consummate body builder, working all the way from a literal 90 lb weakling to wining the Mr. Bronze trophy. Everything was going right in his world, that was until he found this weird photo album, then things got decidedly worse.

From the Blog I review Rio the Movie. Unfortunately this Plot-line for this film is something you have seen over and over again, especially in animal based animation. How did I rate it? Well animation is good but the plot is soulless and the studio flips you off with no extras. 6…I suspect everyone was in for a payday on this one. Next I found something interesting in Dvice…..a Princeton Grad Student has created a device that is wired with a complex system of electrical sensors to make the plastic sheet fly?!

Is SpaceX up to picking up space missions of resupply and service in effect privatizing many of the low Earth orbit projects… Antipodean issue 160 is out…. and have you see where Mars Curiosity Rover is going to land? Yeah, inside the Gale crater, this bad boy has a central mountain over 3 miles high and the crater itself is 90 miles across, but still…it is quite a feat of programming.

Of course I could not resist starting the program with news of the October sky and a new song from Anealio called I want a Stormtrooper for Halloween….

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C.J. Wolf

This week on episode 280 of Beam Me Up I start off with a funny track from Star Wars Fan Girl  called the Star Wars Blu-Ray rap!  Once again fans are up in arms with George’s ‘tweaks’ to the Star Wars Universe.

The first story this week is a tale for all the world in the same universe as Firefly.  But even if not, Good business with guns is a fun telling of the Empires outer fringe worldsand how everything old is new again and in boarder towns, as is often the case, a person’s reputation is maintained at the business end on a gun.  Our reader for this story is Ron Huber who always adds his own spin to everything he reads.

Our second story was written and read by C.J. Wolf titled After Hours at the Black hole.  Often when you throw something away, you would rather it not reappear and certainly not at the worst of times. C.J. Wolf puts a whole new spin on “the trash man”  with devistating effect!

From the blog

The Blu-ray movie disk is on tap this week as a review is the film “Source Code” directed by Duncan Jones and starring  Jake Gyllenhaal Michelle Monaghan Scott Bakula.  Kind of a retelling of the classic science fiction theme.   Around the World in 63 Seconds From the ISS A time-lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night.  Stunning pics of Vesta from Dawn  and musing as to what exactly happened when the UARS burned in.

That’s this week’s program, last in September.  Next week starts my favorite month.  See you then.

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Adam-Troy Castro

Fast moving and plenty of stuff this week on Beam Me Up episode 279.

I start things off with one of the fast pieces of music for the animated series Naruto Shippuden   Syoujo by Scandal.

In this week’s blog, it seems everyone is talking about the star system discovered by the Kepler Space Telescope.  One planet but two sun which brings to mind almost immediately  the Star Wars World Tatooine!  Everything from a ghost planet to a frozen -100 degree world was bandied about.

The Russian resupply crash was caused by a clogged fuel line in the third stage engine of the Soyuz rocket. This particular fuel line was driving a turbo pump that pumps fuel into the main combustion chamber, so when the pump failed, the third stage shut down.  However knowing the cause and getting back on track for a crew change in early November a tall order at best.

Hey, did you ever see James Cameron’s “The Abyss”? It still rates right up there as one of my all time favorite science fiction movies and not for the end, because the end was a cop out and a sell out and didn’t come within a row of assholes of making sense, but up to that point wow, it’s Alien only underwater where EVERYTHING kills you! The reason there was never a remake or part two? No one would go back for a remake.  Well I found this series of “the making of” on the movie “The Abyss” and if you never saw the movie you don’t know what you missed and if you did, then check out the “making of” because it is fascinating!

NASA has a newheavy-lift launch vehicle that they say will provide an entirely new national capability for human exploration beyond Earth’s orbit. The Space Launch System will give the nation a safe, affordable and sustainable ….hummm I heard that somewhere before…

Up for discussion is five possible ways time travel may work….  the functional word here is MAY  because I seriously doubt WILL.

And for our story this week.  Part 2 and the conclusion to Adam-Troy Castro’s   wonderful and controversial  “ Arvies”