A NOTE TO MY HIGHER PATRON TIER MEMBERS: I apologize I haven't had my ducks in a row, things are moving quickly but please expect your rewards to become available later this week, I recently spent some of the channel money to increase our cloud storage, and I am currently uploading EVERYTHING I have...it's going to take a while. Thank you so much for your patience.
Happy May everyone. I can't tell you how thrilled and enthused I am about spending more time to work on projects like this. As promised, I opened a dedicated savings account for the channel, and I "brought the receipts" as it were. I know this is probably unprecedented, but that's how committed I am to making this the most transparent, positive operation ever. I am blessed every day with your financial trust and support, and I intend to deliver on that by laboring to give you more of the best possible 'product' I can, and by being upfront about costs.
I recently looked around on Ebay, did some "dumpster diving" for Shuttle footage. Just looking out for future projects...I actually found some interesting raw footage from the 1990s, incl. a sequence of Mir. Anyway, the third image attached is the box art for a Discovery program that was actually sold and shipped. Gary Sinise, the whole works. "Inside The Space Shuttle".
Box art: the Gemini spacecraft (Not the Space Shuttle, and predating it by two decades).
Pardon my soapbox, but these media companies really are just playing softball. It's not THAT hard to at least try to do a little better. I've made plenty of mistakes, always owned them -- but I have gone to lengths to try and give you something better than some of the slop I am seeing, particularly with the intrusion of generative AI. This is some pretty lame stuff they're throwing at us and trying to convince us its worth digesting. Fast food. Frankly, I prefer Homemade.
Anyhow, that's my rant.
ON FUNDING: We are at $2,467 out of 4K needed...nice job everyone! Thank you all so much. I take no pleasure in it, but as The Right Stuff put it: "No bucks, no buck rogers." I exclusively work with digitization companies such as Colorlab, and never parasitic 'stock footage' entities such as Periscope, who will acquire PUBLIC DOMAIN footage, slap their watermark on it, and try to sell you 'distribution rights'. Please, please, please -- be aware of this. You DO NOT NEED to buy 'rights' for any of this footage. It belongs to you already. (Please see Periscope's "price page" for an idea of how much they are ripping folks off.)
ON SCRIPT: Got my sources, and I'm doing reading and research now.
ON "FOOTAGE": No change here, but I'd like to mention 3 new people who are officially involved with this project.
1: Dave Farina, a.k.a. "Professor Dave". He is known for going after flat-Earthers and others trying to monetize pseudoscience. He is educated in organic chemistry, and he will be talking to us a little bit about the exciting possibilities of life outside of our humble home.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorDaveExplains
2: Dr. Melanie Good
Dr. Good is a professor at UPitt and co-director of undergraduate studies in physics and astronomy. Her previous research involved the detection and characterization of exoplanets using aperture photometry. She helped create an exoplanet transit search group, and she is just the whole package. Absolutely fantastic and scarily smart.
3: Diane Turnshek
Diane is an author and lecturer in the Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon University. She runs the Astronomy Public Lecture series at Allegheny Observatory where she works as a professional astronomer. She is extremely nice, very passionate and just an all-around wonderful, warm person. She "gave me the time of day" as it were, volunteering herself and really getting involved in this project in a big way.
I can't wait to bring these wonderful women and men to you, I know they will absolutely enhance the storytelling and bring real credibility to the science. It's going to be fantastic.
ON EDITING: I've been recording CGI and other sequences in physics engines and digital planetaria. We've got a really good Atlas-Centaur now that actually incorporates the insulation panels on the Centaur falling away. It looks really good!
That's all for now. All good news.
-Jackson