International Spaceflight Museum

Thanks to ISM visitor KikoHunniton, a new video of the ISM has been posted to CNN’s iReport site. Click on that link to read the article, and enjoy the video here:

I reported at the weekly Wednesday 4 pm PDT/SLT meeting that we had a matching donor for the next month – if a person makes a donation, he’ll match it.  But I wasn’t telling the truth; the donor is me, and the staff can’t keep supporting Bravo by ourselves. 

Here’s our true situation:  Most of our donations come from the volunteer staff, a few large contributions (U$10 to U$50) each month and we can’t keep it up since we have to cover at least half of Spaceport Alpha’s rent/tier too.  So I’ll match all public [not staff] contributions up to one month’s rent for Bravo – U$195 – made before Sept 20th.  I apologize for trying to drum up contributions by using this tactic and then redefining the offer.

I’ve changed my original offer that didn’t put a cap on the matching because we’ve just got some outstanding publicity in RL  and possibly a big staffer donation too, which could lead to public contributions that would exceed my ability to match.  The new publicity that gave me renewed hope for a large increase?

*On Thursday, Hamlet Au’s New World Notes, one of the largest five sources of SL news, gave us a great post asking people to help.  [Clarification - my original offer was to cover this month's rent/tier, NOT indefinitely until the 501c3 came through.]  http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/08/save-spaceport-bravo.html 

*Earlier today (Friday), Rik Riel also gave us a supportive post as well at Betterverse.org.  http://www.betterverse.org/2009/08/the-second-life-spaceflight-museum-needs-help.html

Thanks to you both for getting our situation out to many avatars who have never heard of the International Spaceflight Museum before!

-Paradox Olbers, President of ISM and head of operations

One of our active members, Mike Goerisch, has just posted a truly excellent article in his blog with a spot-on, entertaining description of the ISM. Do have a look.

Kimberly Rufer-Bach’s new book, The Second Life Grid: The Official Guide to Communication, Collaboration, and Community Engagement, includes prominent mention of the International Spaceflight Museum, according to Dave Taylor (Davee Commerce in Second Life).

Kim knows what she’s talking about. This is her second book about Second Life®, and she has been a member of the ISM Planning Group for several years. Kim’s in-world development consulting group, The Magicians, has done some of the most original and effective builds in the virtual world.

Our congratulations and best wishes to MICA-VW (Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics – Virtual Worlds), the first professional scientific society formed entirely within virtual worlds. This week they were featured in Wired and Tish Shute’s blog.

When MICA’s founder, Piet Hut of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, first came to Second Life in late 2006, the ISM provided meeting space and an introduction to the culture and mechanics of our world to Piet and some of his astrophysicist friends. MICA met in the ISM Clubhouse and ISM Workshop for about a year until they acquired their own island, StellaNova, and joined the SciLands group in SL.

We at the ISM are very proud to be associated with this illustrious and innovative group, and are glad we were able to help them get started.

The ISM Balance Sheet has been replaced by a new Google spreadsheet because of a technical glitch with Google Docs. There is a shortened URL available, xrl.us/ismmoney1.

If you look at the bottom of the new spreadsheet, you’ll see we received a huge donation (L$30,000) from an avatar in the past day, which effectively saves Spaceport Alpha for this month! Many thanks!! (I am not revealing the avatar’s name at this time, since we don’t have permission to do so. If consent to let us acknowledge this generousity is given, we will publish it here.)

Now we just have to raise at least US$152 by the end of next week, and Spaceport Bravo will also be with us for at least one more month.

Thanks again for all your support since we started this museum, in 2005!

Do you Twitter? Even if you don’t, you can see what people are “tweeting” about the ISM by going to http://hashtags.org/tag/sl-ism. If you do have a Twitter account and want to discuss the musuem there, please use “#SL-ISM” somewhere in your message so it will get indexed.

Some examples of tweets using this tag:

This image is from a Twitter client called iTweet.

To find out more about hashtags, see the Twitter Fan Wiki entry. For more ideas on using Twitter and other online social network tools for nonprofits and education, visit Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog.

Some (okay, a very few) of you already know about the ISM Flickr group.  Now, we have TWO (!) groups:

• The SL-ISM group (the older one) will continue to contain only pictures of exhibits at the museum.
• The SL-ISM-events group (the new one) will be for pictures of events and gatherings held at the ISM.

So, if you’re a shutter bug (or, in this case, a Ctrl-` bug), come and join these two groups in Flickr, and show off those pics.

And, yes, the models in bikinis go in the events group too.

What do the ATV, the Mars Exploration Rover, and the F-1 Engine have in common?

They’re all at the ISM, and sponsorships are on auction this week.  Well, those three and the Nearest Stars to 10 Parsecs exhibit, which is hidden high above the giftshop annex inside the VAB.  These are four of our newest exhibits, never before sponsored.

Auctions end on October 27. Sponsorships will begin on November 1, 2008 and end on April 30, 2009.

* Automated Transfer Vehicle (Item # 120321473572)  SLURL / info
* F-1 Engine (Item # 120321475345)  SLURL / info
* Mars Exploration Rover (Item # 120321476292)  SLURL / info
* Nearby Stars to 10Parsecs (Item # 120321477371)  SLURL / info

To submit a bid on eBay:
1. Go to http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZism_exhibits
OR
a. Go to www.eBay.com .
b. Click on “Advanced Search” near the top.
c. In the Search panel on the left, choose “Items by Seller”.
d. In the “Enter seller’s User ID” field, type “ism_exhibits” and click Search.
2. Go to the exhibit you’d like to sponsor, enter a maximum bid amount and click Place Bid.

Well, fret not.  You get a chance this week to bid on the *other* Saturn — the Saturn 1B.

Four exhibit sponsorships are on auction on eBay this week:

• Saturn 1B (Item # 120285375766)
  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport%20Alpha/225/167/23/
• Real-Time Satellite Propagator (Item # 120285378454)
  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport%20Alpha/80/39/30/
• GSLV Rocket, India (Item # 120285379823)
  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport%20Alpha/71/128/34/
• SLV3 Rocket, India (Item # 120285380823)
  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport%20Alpha/86/138/34/

Sponsorships begin on August 1, 2008 and end on January 31, 2009.

Don’t delay!  Auctions start tonight at 6pm Pacific and end on Saturday July 26 at 6pm Pacific.