Views From Space, Gary Kitmacher @benwl

Uploaded October 2010 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

Space Center Lecture Series
Views From Space, Gaty Kitmacher
Feb. 5th, 2009
Houston TX

Views From Space combines the history of civilization, exploration, and spaceflight with exhilarating images from spaceflight.

Kitmacher's work is well known - the systems he has conceived and developed, like the soft stowage system, CTBs, used on every flight since STS-71, or the COSS computers first used on Mir, the Priroda Lab Module which served as the center of US operations on Mir, the contracts and international processes he established for integrating payloads, or the ISS Cupola, Nodes and Racks, developed while he served as the Station's Man-Systems Architect in the 1980s. His Emme Award nominated book, Reference Guide to the International Space Station is in its third printing, and his ISS Interactive Web Guide won the Adobe Max Award for the best government website last year. Kitmacher has had a long interest in the uses of photography from space and has written extensively on this for the NASA History Office.

Boiling water with a soldering iron in microgravity

$Plasma Exhaust From The VASIMR VX-200i, HD This is one test firing in a series of experiments with the VASIMR VX-200 plasma rocket prototype. The rockets 1st stage (a Helicon plasma source) was fired at 30 kW using a state-of-the-art solid state RF power supply, and the rockets 2nd stage was fired at 109 kW using a second solid state RF power supply. Argon gas was used as the propellant, and gives a distinctive purple/blue/UV glow. The second half of the video is slowed down to 1/10 speed during the firing of the second stage. The plasma diagnostics that can be seen in this video are situated on an x-y motion stage capable of moving side to side 200cm and in an out 500cm with 0.5mm precision. Because of the extreme temperatures and heating within the plasma exhaust, the diagnostics are all constructed out of refractory metals, high temperature ceramics, or graphite (or all three). The rocket and everything else seen in this video is located within a vacuum chamber, used to simulate the vacuum environment of space. Two cameras mounted within the vacuum chamber record a simultaneous top view and side of the VX-200 plasma exhaust. The VX-200 is the precursor to the VF-200, a flight demonstration unit that is intended to fly on the International Space Station (ISS). http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/dec/HQ_08-332_VASMIR_engine.html www.adastrarocket.com$

Space Tools used for Final Hubble Repair, HD

HD: Going To The Sun Road 2, Glacier National Park