LabVIEW developer Brian Turner was on the Conan O'Brien TV show on May 2 to talk about NASA's 2008 Space Elevator Competition. Brian's team, the Kansas City Space Pirates, will be using LabVIEW and NI CompactRIO to compete for a $2M dollar grand prize.

Here is Brian's response on the appearance:

Space Pirate news 5-9-08

The Conan Show was a big hit. I managed not to choke and remained rather articulate through the 5 min interview. We did not however get to cover the competition, the team or the sponsors. They were on the list but I had no idea how fast time would fly. I felt that I was on for only 30 seconds. We clearly managed to inform thousands of viewers about the space elevator and raise awareness. I saw a big jump in web site visitors but only received 1 small donation. The show will be re-run at least once so even more may come of it. I will keep you posted.

You can go watch the video on the NBC site if you missed it. We mechanically steered an beam! It was just a laser pointer and only in 1 dimension. Still it is a small but significant step in our mission. We are planning to go to the ISDC (International Space Development Conference) in Washington DC at the end of this month. I plan on meeting with potential supporters there and hopefully securing the

funds needed for the rest of this year.

Here is a photo from NBC.com. Check out the Powered by LabVIEW hard hat!! LabVIEW really is everywhere.

The VI Road Show has a cool video showing how CompactDAQ was used to measure how hard Tim Dehne, senior vice president of R&D and former member of the Rice University baseball team, could hit a baseball. Since it's opening day for the sport in the United States, we figured it would be a cool application to highlight.