Today I had the opportunity to meet the 6th man to set foot on the Moon : Ed Mitchell.

Ed Mitchel and Alan Shepard Landed to Lunar Lander Module on Februry 5th, 1971 with Stuart Roosa in the orbiting Command Module.

They collected over 42kg of moon rock.

In Europe the opportunity to go see a Moon Walker is very rare, so when I heard about it from a fellow scifi fan it took less than 5 minutes to decide and and a few more to buy the ticket. Who knows if a living Moon Walker will ever come so close to where I live – about 1 hour’s drive.

Mitchell talked about his way to the Moon, from a farm boy with hay fever (ouch!) and a keen interest in flying machines, via a naval career to becoming an astronaut, and finally being selected as member of a backup crew on Apollo 10. Apollo 10 was a test flight for the Lunar Module, and it approached the Lunar surface until the height of just under 16km, at the time the closest any manned space craft had been to the Moon. No landing.

The Mitchell/Roosa/Shepard crew was intended to go with Apollo 13, but due to health risk Apollo 13 was launched with the backup crew. Most of us will know that Apollo 13 had an accident and could not land on the Moon, but they were – with many difficulties and a lot of expertise – brought safely back to Earth – by a very small margin. I still remember those days when a lot of people all over the world were biting the nails ….

The Apollo 14 mission went with very few surprises, we were shown lots of photos from the mission, including Al Shepard’s golf demonstration on the Moon.

Like essentially all astronauts who went to the Moon, He told us about what the view of Earth hanging in the sky, so far away did to him. The realization of how small and fragile it is, how thin the atmosphere is, the thing that provides us with oxygen, and, as important, a shield against Solar and cosmic radiation.

Briefly he mentioned his personal belief that aliens have visited Earth, and his interest in experiments and research in parapsychology. Since most of us came to hear about his journey to the Moon, we were quite happy with the balance of subjects in his talk, although it is apparent that the last two subjects are close to his heart.

All in all a very interesting afternoon. If another Moon Walker will come to a place near me, I shall take the opportunity again if at all possible.

Update : July 7 : Pictures added :

Ed Mitchell on his epiphany on the way back to Earth

Ed Mitchell answering questions form the audience

At Fedcon in May/June this year I took a large amount of pictures of cosplayers, and here are two that I tried to edit a bit to emphasize the cosplayers, and leave the background more like a background.

Take a look and see how you like them .

Norse Gods at Fedcon 2014

A real Klingon, right down to a battle injury 😉

I have been scifi active again.

On Sunday, March 18th I participated as a guest host on the podcast :

Downbelow : A Babylon5 Introcast

The podcast has two Babylon 5 veterans and two absolute novices, and is spoiler free up to the episode talked about.

I was on episode 11 where we dealt with season 1 episode 7 : “The War Prayer”.

I have previously, successfully introduced a few friends to Babylon 5, and avoided spoilers, so I was pretty confident that would not be a problem. But, after all, this was my first full participation in a podcast, so I was a bit nervous. Speaking over the other hosts is, after all, not polite.

Things went well despite some technical problems in the beginning and at the end, and I am on the list for another episode as guest host.

The next week end I was in Copenhagen for Dancon, a small local convention with 30 – 40 participants, where I had another first, holding a talk about Straczynski (JMS), the creator of Babylon 5 and writer of a vast amount of TV, comics and film, and more. This was done with a friend who knows the comics much better than I do, so he talked about comics and a bit of films, and I talked a bit about JMS and his TV writing career

The biggest problem was simply the vast amount of material. certainly not enough time for more than scratching the surface of the whole thing. We agreed that, after a bit of a pause, we should take a more limited subject and go deeper at a later convention.

so – within one week I got to do two new things in connection with scifi. It was fun, even if I was a bit nervous, and I will probably do it again.

In connection with the Downbelow Podcast I have created some Babylon 5 pages that will remain spoiler free for the newcomer hosts of the podcast. See links to the pages above.

A few days ago Netflix became available where I live.

Apart from an issue with a crashing Silverlight on a Mac Mini (probably due to overheating) Netflix runs nicely on a somewhat stronger machine (Quad Core i7).

The Prisoner (1967) :
This story of a secret agent who quits his job and finding himself “stranded” in “The Village” on a remote island is very good.
The story has a surreal feel to it, and I take it that it is part of the attempt to break down the sense of reality for this “Number 6”. His main antagonist is “Number 2”, and there is a good deal of psychological drama and warfare. The series lasted only 17 episodes and was created by Patrick McGoohan who also played the lead role.

Orphan Black (2013) :
I was recommended to check out this series, and I like it.
Season 1 started airing in early 2013 and has 10 episodes.Sarah is a witness to the suicide (jumping in front of a train) by her double, and takes over her identity.
It turns out that there are more “doubles” of Sarah, and that they are all clones.
As the mystery is slowly, but surely revealed, Sarah and her “Sisters” become involved in a drama of life and death.
The acting of Tatiana Maslany as the many clones is nothing less than spectacular.

From now on I will probably delve a bit more into Netflix and what is available here, before returning to the Farscape DVDs (The DVDs are not going anywhere, the Netflix selection changes all the time.)

The Lurker’s ratings :
The Prisoner : 8/10
Orphan Black : 9/10

At a local Fantasy fair The group of musicians were playing Irish inspired music.

Even if the light was rather low this image was within reach of my old DSLR, an EOS300D with the kit lens.

In particular, I like the concentration on the music that I detect in this image.

Concentrate and Play