April 18, 2015 9:33 am

Sunday, join Bill Nye for a tour of the Planetary Society’s LightSail Spacecraft

Bill Nye has been “the science guy” for so long that it’s easy to forget he was an engineer long before he was a science educator.

That fact is quite apparent on Sunday’s Cosmic Queries: LightSail with Bill Nye.

Listen to him describe, in loving detail and passionate prose, the materials, components, mechanisms and mission parameters of the Planetary Society’s LightSail Spacecraft, and you will be listening to an engineer who once worked on the Boeing 747 and now gets to build and launch his own revolutionary new type of spacecraft.

And when I say his own, I am not discounting the rest of the Planetary Society of which he is the CEO.

But the pride in his voice is the same pride one hears from Elon Musk describing the Falcon 9 or the Dragon, or Peter Diamandis describing Planetary Resources’ Arkyd prospecting spacecraft. It’s a pride that doesn’t waver when answering a fan’s question about why this solar sail spacecraft will turn out any differently than the Society’s first failed attempt in 2005.

Because Bill knows that this time is going to be different – if for no other reason than that this time, there’s a Plan B.

Join guest host Bill Nye and comic co-host Chuck Nice this Sunday, April 19 at 7:00 PM EDT on our website, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn and SoundCloud.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Jeffrey Simons