Category: Blog

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It might surprise you to know that I’ve never been to a rocket launch. Even though I’ve been publishing Universe Today for over 11 years, and written thousands of articles about space and astronomy, covering every aspect of the space industry, I’ve never actually experienced it first hand.

It’s the blessing and the curse of the internet, I guess. I started Universe Today in my spare time, from my house in Vancouver because it was possible. With myself as the journalist (and publisher), I didn’t need anyone’s permission to just start reporting. Thanks to the internet, I could reach an audience of thousands, and eventually millions – for free. And somehow it turned into a career. I was able to bring in enough advertising revenue to cover my salary, and even bring on other writers. But I’ve always been so busy handling the business/webmastering side of Universe Today that I’ve never taken the time to go to Florida and report on a rocket launch for myself.

Well, that’s about to change. On April 29th, 2011, the space shuttle Endeavour is going to blast off for the last time, delivering the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and an ExPRESS Logistics Carrier to the International Space Station. And I’m going to be covering the story, live, from the Kennedy Space Center, together with Jason and Ken.

This mission has a personal angle as well. It was just over 30 years ago, on April 12th, 1981 when the space shuttle launched for the first time – STS-1. My father was always a fan of space exploration, and he woke me up early that morning so we could watch the launch of Columbia together on our tiny black-and-white television. I remember that day vividly, and it was one of the turning points of my life. I can trace my entire career in space journalism right back to that April morning.

I’ve always put off making the epic journey from Vancouver Island to Cape Canaveral, but I just couldn’t put it off any longer. I had to do this one personally. See you in Florida.

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I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but Universe Today articles are showing up on other websites, including our good friends over at Discovery News, Physorg, and even the Christian Science Monitor. I’ve had a few people emailing me, warning me that people are stealing our content.

They’re not stealing, I’m encouraging them to steal. Here’s the deal, and I’ve actually said this for years and years: feel free to use Universe Today articles for anything you like. You don’t need to ask permission. If you find an article that you like, and you’d like to put it on your website, be our guest. Free. You can put it into a website, record it as a podcast, include it your Astronomy Club’s newsletter, etc.

All we ask is that you attribute Universe Today as the original source of the article, and that you give credit to the original writer. If it’s on the web, please provide a link back to the original article on Universe Today. I think that’s fair. Free content for your website in exchange for a link back.

I know that a lot of the big media companies have been slashing their news teams, and dedicated science news is one of the departments that got hit pretty hard. It’s too bad. There’s a huge hunger for good quality, original science news, and the success of Universe Today demonstrates this.

So remember. Steal our content, it’s free. Don’t bother asking, just take it. Put a link back to Universe Today if it’s on the web, and give the original author the credit so they can boost their credentials.

If you want to do something more complicated, or a cooperative news piece with Universe Today, just drop me an email. We’d be happy to help out.

Fraser Cain
Publisher

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I’m not a biologist – just a journalist who specializes in space and astronomy — so I won’t pretend to be knowledgeable about NASA’s announcement last week of the weird life in a California lake that appears to be able to live with arsenic instead of phosphorous. But I did want to bring to our reader’s attention some various points of view on the topic that have emerged since last Thursday’s press conference.

Microbiologist Rosie Redfield at the University of British Columbia has written what could be called a “take-down” of the science paper by Felisa Wolfe-Simon and her team. It is a detailed and thorough review, and her bottom line is: “Lots of flim-flam, but very little reliable information.”

Her opinion was quickly seconded by many other biologists/bloggers, as you can read in David Dodds post at Wired, and also this post by Larry Moran, a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto.

SETI’s Seth Shostak, however, has written an article about it at Huffington Post, and he says the news is “exceedingly cool.”

Our pal Phil Plait was a guest on CBCRadio and talked about the media hype/failure on this event.

Of course, there is always the web comic XKCD’s take on it, too.

Elizabeth Howell is a writer/blogger from Canada, and I met her when I was at Kennedy Space Center earlier this year for a space shuttle launch. She has a blog called “PARS3C” and each week she has a feature called “High 5” where she interviews a “spacey”-type person. This week, Elizabeth has interviewed me, so if you’d like to read it, head on over to her blog, where you can find out how I came to be a journalist, and what some of the articles are I’m working on for the future. And stay awhile and browse through the other articles that Elizabeth has written, too. She’s got a nice writing style, and covers a large range of topics — she was nominated for a Canadian Weblog award this year, too.

Thanks Elizabeth!