Question: Are you interested in space?

Kevin Motherway answered on 10 Nov 2014:

Absolutely. I have to say I’m just slumming it in my current job until I get a call from Houston or JPL in Passadena. One of the two last men on the moon (and the first scientist) was Harrison Schmidt a Geologist and I’d love to follow in his footsteps. I regularly send emails around at works alerting people to the ISS passing over and I always try and throw in some connections. Read below from a recent email and judge how much of a space nerd I am….

“ISS passing overhead these nights and reasonable clear forecast for tonight

• Good pass at 21:30 to 21:38 tonight and very bright as it’ll be at 87 degrees elevation almost directly overhead rising in the West and setting in the East (yes that is backwards!)

• It’ll be travelling 7.6km/sec (27,600 km/hr), 414km above you head
• When you finally see it fade from view in the East it’ll be 2,183km away Mallow (the reference point for all good cartographers) flying directly over the Polish-Ukranian border.
• If you see it from start to finish from 21:30 to 21:38 it’ll have travelled nearly 3,650 kms in those 8 minutes (do the maths and check the speed in kms/sec)
• The European Space Agency ATV resupply vessel “Georges Lemaître” docked yesterday so the ISS is about the size of a double decker bus bigger tonight
• The naming the ESA supply capsule is a nice little dig at the Americans as Georges Lemaître was a Belgian Jesuit priest who published papers on the Big Bang and the expanding universe 2 years before Edwin Hubble who got all the credit and telescopes named after him.
• Georges Lemaître taught at the University of Leuven, where the nectar of the gods Stella Artois comes from.
• Artois has very good clean groundwater coming from a confined aquifer, excellent for brewing and it even comes out of the ground under its own pressure and that’s why we say such groundwater is “Artesian”

So in short, enjoy the ISS tonight by looking up into the expanding universe and toasting George Lemaitre with can of Stella* brewed from Artesian groundwater.

*Please drink responsibly/Other brands of Beer are available/Views expressed not those of the Agency.”