In April 12, 1981 was a Sunday.  On that day, about a 100 miles away from my central Florida home, at 7:03 in the morning, the shuttle Columbia lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, a fiery ball of wonder lit the morning sky and new era was born. Even as a 14-year old girl, seeing that distant light, I knew the world had just changed. For the next four years, every time a shuttle launched, my rural high school would pause classes long enough for the students and faculty to watch that single line of smoke blaze a trail into our imaginations.

After graduating from FSU, I moved to Orlando, FL, and in all the following years, whenever I could I would stop what I was doing on launch days (or even better, nights!) and look toward the east, just to see it rise again and again. The Shuttle Program has been part of my life for the past 3 decades. Who’d have thought, all those years ago, that today I’d be working with Kennedy Space Center and the NASA team to honor this extraordinary achievement: NASA’s Space Shuttle Program and Atlantis, the last shuttle to fly in space. I am beyond giddy with joy!

Jeff Stuckey (DNC Content Specialist), Stasha Boyd (Q Media Writer/Producer) and Eric Stiles (NASA Content and Exhibitions Specialist) standing beneath Atlantis while she was still wrapped in protective plastic.

Last year, Q Media developed, wrote, and produced Audacious Vision: The Kennedy Space Center Audio Tour covering the history of KSC from Atlas through the Apollo programs and beyond. Soon we’ll complete the expansion to include the unprecedented Shuttle Program and Atlantis Exhibit. The tour is offered in English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, and Mandarin. It will also be available in American Sign Language and Audio Description. In addition, we’re providing synchronized foreign language translations of four of the exhibit’s film components as well as adding a foreign language option, via the audio guides, to the videos which play on the tour buses that shuttle guests from the main Visitor Complex, around the secure launch facilities, to the Apollo / Saturn V Visitor Center.

By the time all is said and done the Q Media production team will include dozens of dedicated professionals — translators, directors, coordinators, voice talent, and engineers — all working towards a common goal: telling the KSC/NASA story. And while we’re not so lofty as to think our contribution is on the scale of the great space missions, we’re thrilled to do our small part to honor the men and women who moved us light-years forward in scientific knowledge and understanding.

The Command Capsule of the Apollo 14 Mission. Named 'The Kittyhawk'.

We hinted about a big project in our last blog and here’s the news:  Q Media is working with NASA and Kennedy Space Center to produce a new audio tour for the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

Readers of this blog may remember a few years ago when we announced we were entering into a revenue share partnership with Kennedy Space Center by providing new Orpheo audio guides to allow them to provide their tour again to the public. The JVC audio guides they had were originally installed in the 1990′s, were broken down and worn, and no longer supported by the manufacturer.  We took that content and loaded it onto Orpheo Classic audio guides and the tour was again a viable money-making aspect to their operations.  Although the content was originally produced in 1998 at the time when we installed the Orpheo guides there wasn’t a focus to update it so we moved forward hoping that we could some day produce new tour content.

Forward in time to 2012. NASA finally felt it was important to update the content of the tour since so much of it was geared towards the Space Shuttle program and many exhibits had changed since the tour was originally produced.  Q Media President and Executive Producer Stasha Boyd has been writing the script and the challenge for her this time is thus:  In many of our past tours she wrote about what was – many tours are in facilities that have historic artifacts and information and much of the focus is on the history and the items/location and how it may relate to today.  The challenge with KSC is that NASA wanted the artifacts chosen to be significant for just what it is, but why it is important enough to be chosen and most importantly how it relates to the future.  Eric Stiles, Communications director for NASA stated ‘… the ending of the Shuttle program wasn’t the end of space exploration for both KSC and NASA.  Space exploration will continue and it will continue from here.  We want to stress how the need to discover is a human trait and we as human beings will never stop trying to explore what the next thing is.  Yesterday the Moon.  Today possibly Mars, tomorrow Jupiter and beyond.  We will go beyond because with each step achieved there is always a new frontier to discover and reach for’.  Well said, Mr. Stiles.

Walk though of the rough draft of the KSC audio tour. From left to right: Mike Lutz of Q Media, Eric Stiles and Layla Dowdy of NASA, Stasha Boyd of Q Media and VO Narrator Chris Hurt.

The review of her rough draft has been very positive from all involved so far and Mr. Stiles has said that this project has ‘been the best process of a creative project he has been involved with’.

The tour will be produced into eight languages:  English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Japanese and Mandarin.  There will also be a visually described tour and a sign language tour available on Orpheo Neos.  Q Media is also working with Orpheo to produce the tour as an iPhone and Android App using their new MyOrpheo service and the tour is slated to go live on July 1, 2012.

So we’ll be busy here at Q Media for the next few months helping to get KSC’s message into the present and into the future.  Please check back again to see more updates from us about this very exciting project.

Till then!

Mike and Stasha