Space Shuttle narrated by William Shatner - YouTube

A very cool video of the history of the space shuttle program from NASAtv. From concept days all the way to leading up to the end of the shuttle program. interviews with astronauts, mission ops, ground ops and others telling the story of the Space Shuttle Program over the past 30yrs

Sam Blackburn: The voice behind Stephen Hawking at 70

Sam Blackburn has been Hawking’s technician since 2006. And for these 5 years, he’s the one responsible for the technology that has allowed Hawking to communicate through a computer and a voice synthesizer by twitching his cheek.

When he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (or ALS) at 21, physicist Stephen Hawking was only expected to live a few years. He turns 70 this week.

Since about 1986, he’s had to use a menu controlled by a computer system to speak. A computer highlights cells in a big grid of letters or words, and when the correct one is highlighted, he presses a switch.

But when he became unable to move his hands sufficiently, he moved to an infrared system mounted on his glasses, which detects movement in his cheek muscle. His facial muscles are the only ones he can control reasonably well.

When Blackburn first started, the system was breaking all the time. “I’d get calls at 1 o’clock in the morning saying ‘Stephen can’t speak, what do we do?’” he says. “So I needed to modernize the system.”

He did so incrementally, so the learning wouldn’t be too steep. “Stephen wouldn’t be able to ask for help because the very thing he wouldn’t be able to use would be the speech system,” he says. “Understandably that has made him very reluctant to upgrade.”

The only copy of Hawking’s hardware voice synthesizer is contained in a little gray box in Blackburn’s office. The card inside dates back to the 80s, and this particular one contains Hawking’s voice. There’s a processor on it that has a unique program that turns text into speech that sounds like Hawking’s, and they have only two of these cards.

The company that made them went bankrupt and nobody knows how it works any more. Blackburn is trying to reverse engineer it since they can’t just update the system with a new synthesizer.

“The voice is one of the unique things that defines Stephen in my opinion,” he explains. “He could easily change to a voice that was clearer, perhaps more soothing to listen to – less robotic sounding – but it wouldn’t be Stephen’s voice any more.”

However, Hawking’s progressive nerve decay means that his ability to control his cheek muscle is fading.

His rate of speech is down to about one word per minute. And while Blackburn’s been making slight advances in the current technology, they’re gonna have to move on to something new – like eye-tracking or brain scanning systems.

The challenge for Blackburn’s successor: to keep that well-known voice in working order.

Deaf Woman Hears Her Voice for the First Time - Video

29 year old Sloan Churman was born deaf. She used to read lips up-till now or used hearing aids to a very limited extent. Two months ago, she received Envoy Medical's Esteem Implant, which utilizes ear drum vibrations to bring hearing back to its users. Her husband captured her reaction on video. Her reaction was extraordinary and full of joy.

Reisman, Bowen Complete First STS-132 Spacewalk

Reisman, Bowen Complete First STS-132 Spacewalk

Astronauts Garrett Reisman and Steve Bowen completed a seven hour, 25 minute spacewalk at 3:19 p.m. EDT.

The new space-to-ground antenna they installed will increase the space station's ability to conduct two-way data, voice, and video communications.

They put into place a new tool platform for the Dextre robot, and Bowen prepared six batteries that will be installed during the second and third spacewalks by loosening the bolts that hold the batteries in place. The batteries weigh approximately 2,200 pounds.

Meanwhile, the space shuttle's robotic arm has successfully grappled the Mini Research Module-1 for relocation to the space station on flight day 5. It will provide additional storage space and a new docking port for Russian spacecraft.

This was the first of three STS-132 spacewalks, 237th conducted by U.S. astronauts, the second for Reisman and the fourth for Bowen. It was the 144th in support of International Space Station assembly and maintenance, totaling 900 hours, 58 minutes. First Spacewalk of STS-132 Complete

Mission Specialists Garrett Reisman and Stephen Bowen completed the first spacewalk of the STS-132 mission at 3:19 p.m. EDT. They installed a second station space-to-ground Ku-band antenna and a spare parts platform on Dextre, the two-armed robotic Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator. The spacewalk lasted 7 hours, 25 minutes.