Terry Hancock (Terry)

Terry Hancock is originally from Ft. Worth, Texas, and has a bachelor's degree in Astronomy from the University of Texas (despite having started as an Engineering major and passing through Film). He was a working astronomer from about 1985 when he graduated, to 1993 when he finally gave up on grad school and then again in 1998-1999. During this time, his biggest acheivement was writing and adapting the "Radial" software used at McDonald Observatory for their radial velocity planet search program, though maybe the most fun was the involvement with Extrasolar Research Corporation in 1998. Currently he and his wife Rosalyn have three children ages seven, five, and three months, who are also anime fans.

His research interests have included: extrasolar planets, brown dwarfs, star formation, space development and colonization, mechanical and space engineering, biospherics and open/closed system life-support, self-sufficiency, solar system resources, bioastronomy, exobiology, non-human language studies, linguistics and foreign languages, artificial intelligence and life, electromechanics and robotics, film directing and cinematography, animation, programming and software engineering, image processing, open-source web-collaboration processes, and the economics of open-source-friendly business. Not necessarily in that order.

He is a big supporter of private space development and colonization, having been a member of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) and the National Space Society (NSS). In 2001, he and his wife Rosalyn founded what must be one of the world's first "Mom and Pop" space businesses, called Anansi Spaceworks (http://www.anansispaceworks.com), with the goal of applying open-source methodology to break through existing economic and political road blocks to space development. After being a "virtual" company for two years, Terry and Rosalyn are finally going full time, and purchasing a permanent location in North Texas.

Terry is also a long-time science fiction fan and a fan of animation in general, and when he started to run out of good English language shows, he turned to anime and Japanese sources -- having found Japan to be one of the few cultures with a really strong SF interest in popular culture. However, he's come to be interested in Anime both for SF themes and for the Japanese cultural insights it affords. He's been a serious fan of Anime and Manga since about 2000 when he discovered where he could rent the videos and find the books, and has been working hard to catch up on what he's missed.

A general interest in linguistics also led him to want to learn Japanese largely for the challenge, but also because there is much material in his interest areas written in Japanese. So far, well, he's still learning, during his copious free time!