Monday, January 07, 2008

Stardance

At last summer's Heinlein Centennial, in addition to speaking on panels, singing, and more, Jeanne and Spider Robinson presented the Stardance Project, a real zero gravity dance project based on a science fiction novella and trilogy. At the presentation, they described the project and the funding difficulties they had, and Peter Diamandis volunteered Zero-G flights for them to get the project moving.

Now, they have a blog that shows their progress with the zero gravity dance, now in the "familiarization" stage. This particular post from Spider draws parallels to Ansari X PRIZE sponsor Anousheh Ansari and her blog from the ISS, and this blog from the ground as a new form of space-related art is made. The Heinlein Award, Heinlein Centennial, and Diamandis's early work with the X PRIZE are all discussed.

Here's another key post with a graceful teaser video of the dance as they find out what the environment is really like. Science fiction author Allen Steele is one of the commenters to the post.

The blog is fairly new, so you can probably read all of the posts in time sequence.

See more about the Stardance project here and here.