Model Airplanes

WASHINGTON — Apollo 11 command module Columbia spent 8 days, 3 hours, 18 minutes and 35 seconds in space. It spent 46 years at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. And now it’s being prepped for a 142-day mission in Pittsburgh.

The module, which took Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon, is the centerpiece of a four-city tour celebrating the approaching 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission ahead of the 2020 opening of a permanent Smithsonian exhibit on moon exploration in Washington.

The traveling exhibit begins Oct. 14 at Space Center Houston, then moves to the Saint Louis Science Center on April 14, 2018. It is scheduled to be at the Heinz History Center from Sept. 29, 2018, to Feb. 18, 2019, before its final tour stop at The Museum of Flight in Seattle. Following the tour, the module will return to the Air and Space Museum for placement in the new exhibit “Destination Moon.”

The tour will mark the first time the Columbia will leave the museum since it opened in 1976.

“Apollo 11 was one of the most important human space flights in the history of the whole space age,” exhibit curator Michael Neufeld said. “It paved the way for exploring the moon. Its mission was mainly just to show that we could do it — that we have the technology to explore the moon.”

Pittsburgh is a fitting stop on the tour, said Andrew Masich, president and CEO of Heinz History Center.

“It’s perfect for us because our theme

Article source: http://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2017/02/22/Smithsonian-Apollo-11-space-exhibition-to-come-to-Heinz-History-Center-in-Pittsburgh/stories/201702220194

Six-time Tony Award-winning costume designer Catherine Zuber and legendary scenic designer Tony Straiges are among the 2017 TDF/Irene Sharaff Awards recipients which were just announced by Theatre Development Fund (TDF), a not-for-profit service organization for the performing arts. The awards will be presented at a ceremony on Friday, April 28, at 6:30pm, at the Edison Ballroom (240 West 47th Street). Ms. Zuber was selected to receive the 2017 TDF/Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award for costume design and Mr. Straiges will receive the Robert L.B. Tobin Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatrical Design. The awards are presented through Theatre Development Fund’s Costume Collection.

Additionally, costume designer Paloma Young (represented on Broadway this season with Bandstand and Natasha, Pierre The Great Comet of 1812) will receive the TDF/Kitty Leech Young Master Award (formerly the TDF/Irene Sharaff Young Master Award, now re-named in honor of the late designer Kitty Leech who passed away last year), andERNEST YOUNG (Penn Fletcher Embroidery) will receive the TDF/Irene Sharaff Artisan Award.

During the ceremony, as a special memorial tribute to the legendary designing team MOTLEY, who were designersMargaret Harris, SOPHIE HARRIS and Elizabeth Montgomery WILMOT, there will be a screening of an original 15-minute film on their career, created by designer Suzy Benzinger.

TDF/Irene Sharaff AWARDS VOTING COMMITTEE:

The awardees were selected by the TDF/Irene Sharaff Awards Voting Committee, which is comprised of leading members of the theatrical costume design community. They are: Stephen Cabral, Chair; Gregg Barnes, Suzy Benzinger, Dean Brown, Traci DiGesu, Linda Fisher, Lana Fritz, Rodney

Article source: http://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Catherine-Zuber-and-Tony-Straiges-Among-2017-Theatre-Development-FundIrene-Sharaff-Awardees-20170222

It all started with a small tip of intelligence.

A U.S. airman in Virginia spotted a piece of intel thousands of miles away. Ten days later, warplanes bombed 11 sites in the Middle East where American military officials say Islamic State militants manufactured deadly drones.

The operation — detailed for the first time by Air Force officials to Military.com — underscores a growing trend in modern warfare in which troops at their home bases are intimately involved in wars half a world away. It also highlights a new way of analyzing intelligence to find, track and kill enemies and their weapons, they say.

“Analysis is the foundation that’s going to drive everything,” Air Force Lt. Gen. VeraLinn “Dash” Jamieson, the service’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, said in an interview at the Pentagon on Thursday. “This [way of] thinking is not just top-down driven. It’s going to be enabled bottom up.”

Jamieson noted the airman — identified only as Senior Airman Jean, assigned to Distributed Ground System-1 at Langley Air Force Base — was able to maneuver her way through the data in large part because of her training in critical analysis and observation.

Jamieson, who assumed her post in November, said the intel career field and the service as a whole are shifting toward an analysis-based infrastructure that will enhance multiple missions across the force.

In this case, the airman’s instincts kicked in while working the Distributed Common Ground System, a globally networked system that

Article source: http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/02/22/strike-on-isis-drone-cell-highlights-airmans-novel-intel-method.html