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Astronomy Cast Episode 296 from Monday, March 4, 2013. Space stations, Part 1. Skylab and Salute.

Welcome to Astronomy Cast, our weekly facts based journey through the cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know.

My name is Fraser Kane, I'm the publisher of university and with me is Dr. Pamela Gay, a professor at Southern Illinois University, Evertsville.

A panel you don't.

I'm doing well, how are you doing, Fraser?

I'm doing really well. Do you have any announcements?

We are still advertising our classes at CosmoQuest, so if you would like to take a course either on stellar astronomy,

with Ray Sanders, our own dear astronomer, or a class on cosmology with author and PhD, Matthew Francis, you can sign up for those at CosmoQuest.org slash classes.

I would also ask that all of you pay attention right now to what's going on with education funding in America.

There is currently a movement to remove education funding from NASA, which means no more mission dollars being spent to help educate kids about the latest discoveries coming out of spacecraft, Hubble, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Messenger.

And if these programs matter to you, contact the White House, which is where all of this is starting and contact your senators and your congressmen.

And I say that as an independent citizen and someone working as a volunteer on CosmoQuest.

All right. Yeah, no, I think this is going to impact how and where it's going to impact us.

But I think we're already starting to see the crunch with a lot of the people that we work with, a lot of the programs and the missions that we talk to.

They all have a lot of outreach, a lot of educational stuff, and so that will be too bad to see that go.

We've all been asked to assume zero budget starting in 2014.

My team here at CosmoQuest were desperately trying to raise money.

And we've pledged that any money that we raise beyond what we need for our own salaries, we'll use to contract people who lose their jobs in this and people are losing their jobs in this.

So if you can give, we will do what we can to keep the excellent EPO going beyond what governmental budgets allow.

Right. Okay, great. So let's get on with the show then.

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