Space Waves

August 7, 2018

Who'll be the first to take American astronauts to the International Space Station to claim the U. S. flag?

On the first space shuttle mission, STS-1, the crew planted the flag in the hatch of the International Space Station in 1981. The final 2011 shuttle flight left the flag behind in orbit, a prize to be claimed by the next crew to fly into space from U.S. soil.

SpaceX and United Launch Alliance (a Boeing and Lockheed Martin partnership) are locked in a pitched battle to be the first to reach orbit with astronauts on board their capsules. The commercial spaceships will be the first to launch U.S. astronauts from U.S. soil since NASA's space shuttle fleet retired in July 2011. Since then, NASA has relied on Russian Soyuz rockets and spaceships to fly U.S. astronauts in space.

After months of testing, a SpaceX Dragon capsule with its stubby nose and matte-black fins, was shipped to Cape Canaveral in mid-July. However, this Dragon won’t carry crew on its first flight, instead, it’s due to make an uncrewed practice run to the space station on a mission known as DM-1.

WFIT (NPR Radio - Melbourne, Fla)

August 7, 2018

Who doesn’t love the genius of Andrew Lloyd Webber? The knighted English composer has created some of the most recognizable musical theatre productions of all time—from Cats and Evita to Jesus Christ Superstar and Phantom of the Opera as well as other hit musicals.

Singers from Orlando Light Opera, a program of Central Florida Vocal Arts, and Opera del Sol will join the Space Coast Symphony Orchestra in a stirring tribute to Webber with Music of the Night on Saturday, August 11 (7 p.m.) at the Scott Center for the Performing Arts at Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy and Sunday August 12 (3 p.m.) at the Community Church of Vero Beach.

Delivered with the twin attributes of plush and power, Music of the Night promises to showcase all the glamour, magic and mystery of both musical theater and opera repertory. Broadway veteran Michelle Knight (Disenchanted, Jersey Boys, Finding Nemo) headlines the show along with mezzo soprano Sarah Purser, tenor Kit Cleto and baritone Michael John Foster. Also featured in the powerful concert are Stephanie Newman, Stephanie McCranie, Brian Hayes, and Andrew Lejeune. In addition to songs by Webber, the music of Sondheim, Rodgers, Weill, and other composers will be highlighted.

Long Island Boating World Magazine

September 2018

It could be a portal into the world F. Scott Fitzgerald described in his seminal novel "The Great Gatsby." Or an American version of the British mega-hit television show Downton Abbey. It's Castle Hill, a 59-room Stuart-style mansion overlooking the pristine sands of Crane Beach, once the summer estate home of Chicago industrialist Richard T. Crane, Jr.

Today, Crane Beach is part of the Crane Estate in Ipswich, a splendid property owned and protected by The Trustees of Reservations. Just 30 miles northeast of Boston, it's a wonderful destination for history buffs and nature devotees alike. All told the estate encompasses more than 2,100 acres of beachfront, dunes, maritime forest and planned landscapes, managed for both recreation and conservation.

Bequeathed by the Crane family to The Trustees in 1949, the 1,400 acre Crane Memorial Reservation’s barrier beach stretches along Ipswich Bay and is separated from the mainland by Essex Bay and the Essex and Ipswich Rivers. The reservation includes a variety of habitats, including a drumlin known as Castle Hill, shrub thickets, cranberry bogs, salt marshes, dunes, and forests.

Native American tribes that originally inhabited the area called it “Agawam,” which translates to a lowland, marsh, or meadow. Colonized in 1633 by John Winthrop, Jr., son of the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Ipswich primarily remained a fishing and shipbuilding colony until the 1820s, when smugglers brought in the country’s first stocking machine from England. Amos A. Lawrence established the Ipswich Hosiery Mills in 1868, and by the turn of the century, the town had become the largest stocking manufacturer in the country.

Vero Beach Magazine

August 2018

Super-yacht owners accessorize their boats in a myriad of ways, from amphibious vehicles to a jet-chopper hybrid that will get them to the helicopter pad on deck faster. Latest on the list: a luxurious personal submarine.

Code named Project Neptune, the world's most luxurious personal submarine design was revealed at the 2017 Monaco Yacht Show in the glitzy South of France location. The initial drawings show a sleek looking sub with blue and gray colors, blade-like pontoons and an enormous transparent acrylic "bubble" of a cabin for maximizing incredible underwater views. Project Neptune's price tag, a cool $4.4 million, plus options.

The three-person sub marries the diving and operational expertise of Vero Beach's Triton Submarines with Aston Martin's design, materials and craftsmanship. Loved and revered in Britain, the century-old automaker is best known for making beautiful high performance sports cars. However, Aston Martin recently branched out into complementary side ventures. Project Neptune enhances its brand into new aspects of the luxury world such as the AM37 powerboat that partnered with Quintessence Yachts and a 66-story residential tower in Miami.

Triton has pioneered the sale of million dollar personal submersibles to the ever-growing - in both size and numbers - global fleet of super yachts. Triton's bright yellow subs are also aimed at explorers, scientists, and filmmakers pushing back the ocean's frontiers. In 2013, the first astonishing video footage of a giant squid was captured from a Triton 3300/3 submersible, while in 2016 Sir David Attenborough (at age 90) was seen exploring the Great Barrier Reef in a Triton sub for his BBC documentary series.

 WFIT (NPR Radio - Melbourne, Fla)

July 5, 2018

Anthony Horowitz knows his way around the bloody murder mystery genre. He is responsible for creating and writing some of the UK’s most beloved and successful television series, producing the first seven episodes (and the title) of Midsomer Murders and is also the writer and creator of award-winning series Foyle’s War, both of which aired on PBS.

Horowitz has been commissioned by the Conan Doyle Estate and Orion Books to write two new Sherlock Holmes novels and by the Ian Fleming Estate to write the James Bond novel Trigger Mortis, which was published in September 2015. His first Holmes book-- The House of Silk-- was published in 2011 and internationally lauded as the top title of the autumn. The sequel, Moriarty, was published in October 2014 with similar success. Horowitz is known to younger fans as the writer of the Alex Rider series that has sold 19 million copies worldwide.

The 62-year old prolific British author's latest whodunit, The Word is Murder, opens with widowed socialite Diana Cowper, who makes arrangements for her own funeral, when the time comes. Her time comes just a few hours later. Cowper is found choked to death with a scarlet curtain cord in her home. Horowitz himself becomes a character when an ex-London cop named Hawthorne approaches Horowitz, the novelist, to chronicle how Hawthorne can crack the Cowper case and regain respectability.

Fired from his job at Scotland Yard for poor conduct, now Hawthorne wants Horowitz to turn his "real-life" cases into books, splitting the profits from the book 5o-50. Hawthorne seems to be straight out of central casting: aging loner who has problems with authority, smokes like a chimney, and is secretive, impatient, homophobic and tightfisted.

Space Waves

July 1, 2018

The crowds are back.

The launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy from the Kennedy Space Center earlier this year was the latest in a series of milestones that has revived interest in the space industry and the hallow grounds that stretch along the Florida coast in Brevard County that has witnessed so many epic flights into outer space.

Traffic near the Kennedy Space Center was bumper to bumper, hotel rooms were sold out and hordes of press descended on the Kennedy Space Center, just like the good old days of the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. That's quite a turn-around from seven years ago after the government shutdown of the shuttle program, which led to massive furloughs in NASA’S workforce and employees leaving the Space Coast.

And it's only getting better.