There’s a lot going on this weekend over in the USA… far away from the depressing news cycle. There’s not only the long labor day holiday weekend, but also Dragon Con and everybody, and I mean really everybody seems to be there, including the whole CosmoQuest crowd! This had the curious result that the Weekly Space Hangout, which usually happens on Friday afternoon (or evening if you’re in Europe), was forgotten and not even properly cancelled, leaving everyone hanging – what a disappointment…

No, wait – of course not! There was no raging mob in the comments on the event page, just a little group of regular viewers wondering where our intrepid space journalists were – and when nobody showed up, we decided to make our own “hangout” in the comments. We just talked amongst ourselves about some space news topics and showed some photos – it was actually a lot of fun and there was no complaining, quite the contrary! We all know how hard everyone works on producing these hangouts and although Fraser Cain and his amazing group of journalists do not really have any obligations to the viewers other than those they choose themselves, they are always very keen on bringing up a show every week. So while it has become very rare that one of the hangouts is cancelled or in this case just doesn’t happen for some reason, it’s absolutely nothing to complain about. After all, they do all this for free – although donations are always greatly appreciated.

A couple of hours after the “hangout that didn’t happen”, some of the WSH and CosmoQuest folks – Amy Shira Teitel, Nicole Gugliucci and Richard Drumm – checked in and were so nice to apologize for forgetting the hangout – while this was really not necessary, it was a wonderful gesture to the crowd of viewers. So thank you everyone, again – I’ve written this before in the comments, but it can’t just be said often enough.

Also, there was something even more awesome going on in the night before that I had not even noticed: there were announcements all over the place for the Atlanta Star Party happening the night before Dragon Con, but I didn’t know that it was also broadcast as an ad-hoc Virtual Star Party Hangout with all the VSP regulars and even Nicole Gugliucci, Pamela Gay and Phil Plait as surprise guests! The Youtube recording of it is a wonderful substitute for the canceled Space Hangout, and I think there may also be the regular Virtual Star Party on Sunday night.