Spacevidcast: Online community for space enthusiasts

It's been almost 42 years since the first Americans set foot on the moon, but each time the U.S. sends an astronaut into space, it's no less breathtaking an event to witness. Via its web site, Spacevidcast makes available the wonder of each launch while providing a wealth of other space-related news and events to its audience.

"We do things like cover space shuttle launches in high definition, something that even NASA doesn't do," explains Benjamin Higginbothom, Executive Producer and Owner of Spacevidcast. "So when you go to our web site, you can get an actual 1280 X 720p streaming version of a space shuttle launch, or anything we can get our hands on in high definition. We cover any rocket launches. We have live weekly shows. We've got space pods. We have a ton of media that we throw at you, and we give you a ton of resources and tools to say, 'Hey, this is really cool'. We build on online community and engage with people with Twitter, Facebook, IRC realtime chat and bring it all into the show live."

This combination of live video and web hosting requires significant computing resources. During a shuttle launch, the viewership will be larger than CNN and MSNBC combined, and the entire audience will be accessing the feed through Spacevidcast's web site. Consequently, Spacevidcast needs a hosting solution that scales up for big events such as a shuttle launch but scales back down once those events conclude.

When it outgrew its initial provider, Spacevidcast decided to take its hosting needs to the cloud and chose Rackspace. "We're paying for what we need," says Higginbothom. "We're not buying our own servers and having to over buy for one day events like this, and at the same time, we're able to scale up to events like this...and [the system] just purrs along."

"Our goal is to get people excited about going back to the stars, going to the Moon, going onto Mars, doing more than just low Earth orbit," says Higginbothom. "[We feed] that passion that people have for exploration and get them excited about doing some really awesome stuff."

More info:

Spacevidcast web site: http://www.spacevidcast.com/
Spacevidcast on Twitter: http://twitter.com/spacevidcast

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Spacevidcast
• shuttle launch
• online community

[Mik3River4]

Ben nailed every question about spacevidcast. Great answers.

[ChrisAstro30]

Gotta love spacevidcast :D