A new podcast – Albertans in Space – will debut April 8, with the support of Telus Storyhive.
Season 1 is hosted by Calgarians Zac Trolley and Meghan Westelmajer and will feature eight guests from different sectors of the Alberta space sector. You can view the full guest list here, but examples include Wyvern CEO Chris Robson, artist Brian Versteeg and our founder of SpaceQ, Marc Boucher.
The podcast aims to highlight Alberta’s engineering prowess and to encourage folks in relevant industries – such as oil and gas, or agriculture – to consider the uses of space such as satellite communications or drilling techniques.
“You can see that there’s people trying really hard to see the growth opportunities here, and diversifying our economy,” said Westelmajer, producer of the podcast and a veteran of TV and film productions.
Westelmajer and Trolley are long-time friends, and long-time participants in space exploration projects. When Trolley applied for Mars One – a reality show and Red Planet astronaut mission project of the 2010s that was ultimately cancelled – Westelmajer helped with the application. Trolley himself is an engineer, International Space University (ISU) graduate and a participant in a past mission at the Mars Society Mars Desert Research Station, which runs analog missions.
“It’s a way to communicate with people outside the industry,” Trolley said of the podcast. “I’ve been trying to let people know in Alberta that they can be involved, that there are opportunities in space.” He added that the show is meant to show “stories of people that have already done that right here” to encourage artists, teachers, doctors and lawyers to consider similar paths.
While each guest had a relevant story to share, in the interview both Trolley and Westelmajer highlighted the work of the single astronaut candidate to appear so far on the podcast: Sherwood Park’s Shawna Pandya, who is scheduled to fly on a future Delta-class mission with Virgin Galactic as a part of the International Institute for Aeronautical Sciences.
Pandya is a medical doctor and ISU graduate who has been heavily involved in dozens of space initiatives for 20 years. Aside from past positions in places such as the Canadian Space Society or Association of Spaceflight Professionals, however, her resume also includes motivational speaking, neurosurgery (including work on the Canadarm-based neuroArm), a private pilot’s licence and teaching and research at the University of Alberta.
“She just absolutely was a gem to talk to in our final episode,” Westelmajer said. “The whole thing was [focused] on education and understanding the growth and potential of human beings.”
The duo are applying for Telus funding for Season 2 and already have a backlog of guests in different sectors of Alberta’s economy that they are proposing to join with the show. There is likely enough content to at least go to a Season 3, if possible, and Trolley and Westelmajer are applying for external funding grants as well to try to secure more funding.
The audience should be available to support these episodes, the podcasters said. In Episode 1, Westelmajer talks about how much she enjoys the 1998 blockbuster Armageddon in which a group of oil drillers – led by Bruce Willis – is tasked with redirecting a dangerous asteroid from Earth. The movie is often lampooned for its lack of scientific accuracy. But more seriously, “the reality is that these everyday people were able to go to space,” which she said is a message that still resonates a generation later. Of Albertans: “We’re the oil drillers” that were seen in that movie, and she said the key to expanding engagement in space is to let people imagine themselves and their expertise in roles related to it. “I connected to that so much as a kid, because I’m from Alberta.”