Yuri's Night | Blog

T-minus One Week and Counting

2007-04-06T03:25:00.000Z

Wow. One week left. One week to raise the party count above 120 and make this the biggest Yuri's Night ever, one week left to invite everyone you know to participate in something that can make space bigger and the world a little smaller, one week to get your cool spacey outfit together, one week till I turn 33...

One week. Seven days. 168 hours. 10,080 minutes. How lucky I feel to be alive. On April 12th, 2007 my grandfather Abuelito (who loves flying- especially the Spitfire, loves Snoopy and loves me) will turn 92. He reminds me to enjoy the minutes, even the boring ones, or the stressful ones, or the scary ones. Why? Because they are mine.

During the last week everything starts to come into sharp focus, extraneous motions are eliminated until only the essential remains. What a sweet spot. To have a life so rich that a day can be filled with love, triumph, fear, defeat, and joy. Not every day of my year is like that. But Yuri season is.

Come and be a part of the people who are making the future happen. Its time to stop watching and start creating-- otherwise I may never get my flying car... or see the day when you arrive on the moon and no one asks you what country you are from.

The begining of a journey

2007-03-10T03:44:00.000Z

Tomorrow I leave for Egypt.

I am quite excited to go, it is truly one of our passions- exploration. The idea of breaking your patterns, your routines and taking yourself out of your everyday normal environment. It is a great way to see something that is otherwise normally transparent to me- like water to a fish!

When I leave my home country I notice all sorts of things- how the air smells different, how people look at me differently, how the food tastes, the sounds of unfamiliar languages being spoken with ease. It makes me appreciate the things that I love and hold dear and that are familiar to me and at the same time expands me-- I come home with a bigger comfort zone.

Now imagine leaving your home planet for the first time! What would you see? What would you smell? What different sounds would you hear? How would you be expanded? and how much more of an appreciation for home would you have? Not for the home of the town you grew up in- but now with a sense of connection to the whole planet as home. Like water to a fish.

Once you have been out in the blackness of space- the distance between people can seem to melt away. What if I dared connect? What is their story? What don't they want me to know, what are they scared of, what do they dream of? What if I shared first?

Perhaps the greatest part of the journey is coming home and keeping that willingness to be in the unfamiliar going as long as possible...

The Thread of Life

2007-02-17T17:55:00.000Z

It is such a great feeling to be a part of something.

This morning I was looking over the lists of places that people are reading our website from: Ankara, Athens, Basel, Jidd Hafs, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Vienna, Montreal, Munich, Moscow, Stockholm, Ottawa, Little Rock...

I got present to what an amazing little planet this is and how one little thread of life and dreams can tie us together. In 2003 I went to Moscow for the first time and when I walked into Red Square I just burst into tears and the awesome beauty of St Basil's Cathedral. It had been an icon in my mind of a distant world, something from Disney's 'It's a Small World' and suddenly there it was bigger then life.

Yuri's Night is about giving that feeling away to people. Having them stop and take a moment to let it sink in how connected we are and how much a dream of a beautiful future for humanity can tie us all together. Thank you to the early pioneers of space flight who were able to be the carriers of that dream and to the visionaries of today who have dedicated themselves to making the magic and power of space flight available to us all.

My stand is that the courage and the boldness that it takes to realize that dream, will be the tipping point that has humanity give up that anything under the sun is impossible.

FASHION in SPACE

2007-01-04T07:56:00.000Z

Result of "HYPER SPACE COUTURE DESIGN CONTEST"
FASHION in SPACE
Authorized by JAXA's Open Lab

- About this contest:
http://www.space-fashion.com/english/Welcome.html

You can see photos at links below, though articles are written in Japanese.

- Fashion designer, Eri Matsui who was a judge in the contest and winners works: http://aerospacebiz.jaxa.jp/openlab/interview/05/index.html

- Wedding dress by Eri Matsui using Fibonacci series:
http://aerospacebiz.jaxa.jp/openlab/interview/05/02.html

- Wedding dress by Eri Matsui suitable for microgravity environment:http://aerospacebiz.jaxa.jp/openlab/interview/05/03.html
* Both left and right white wedding dresses are same design.
Left wedding dress were shaped to show the image of weightlessness.

Moon Trees!

2006-11-22T17:24:00.000Z

I was looking for who to talk to at the Sierra Club about our Yuri's Night Space Trees when I found this...

http://www.sierraclub.org/e-files/moon_trees.asp
(Sierra Club article with link to: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/moon_tree.html)

A story about how Command Module pilot Stuart Roosa of Apollo XIV brought 400 seeds with him around the moon!
They were planed all over the world when he got back. But no one knows where all of them are? Can we help find them?

The Moon Trees are a great way to show another connection between space and the environment and that Cosmonauts are the only ones to plant trees when they return from space! Let us make sure we help preserve and celebrate the space trees (and all trees) that we have and see if we cant find more to add to the list!

Sierra Club comments that soon the Moon Trees may be the only living things that have been to the moon and back- let's make sure we do not let that happen either!

If you know of a Moon Tree location not on the list email dwilliam@nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov.