Pawprints From Space

Nope I don't mean that the sun is going to go dark or the world come to an end. You can relax. But for the curious who were eagerly awaiting the DAWN mission there is some bad news. While checking in with newsgroups I belong to and otherwise cruising the Web I came across a story by Alicia Chang of the associated Press. She reports that NASA's unmanned spacecraft intended to study to of our solar system's largest asteroids will not launch in 2006. Once again we can thank the ever-popular problems of "cost overruns and technical issues". Apparently the project has been postponed indefinitely. Sheesh! We can't have manned missions to anywhere due to risks to the astronauts; we can't fix the Hubble telescope due to a) risks of a manned mission and b) cost of unmanned (plus the uncertainty that an unmanned mission would even work!); and now we can't even further science with unmanned missions of this source due to costs. I don't know about you but it m...

Yesterday NASA recognized a Day of Remembrance for those astronauts lost in service. When you think about all the risks these brave men and women take and consider how few over the years have been lost I have to wonder why anyone would question the value of space flight versus the risks. But hey, that's just me. The crews of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia (as President George W. Bush said of Columbia's crew) "knew the dangers and they faced them willingly knowing they had a high and noble purpose in life." For more info check out www.nasa.gov Stardust Update: "The Principal investigator, Deputy Principal Investigator and several subteam leads have worked 8:00 am until near midnight for the last two days. We have removed many aerogel fragments and found many particles in them; removed 7 pieces of aluminum foil and found very many small craters in them; removed several particles from the fragments and examined them by IR; microtomed several particles; remove two...

Good Grief! I just realized that my job has kept me so busy that I haven't been online for a week! Yipes! Sorry about that. Jobs. Can't live with 'em, can't pay the rent without them. Do we live to work or work to live? For me I am afraid that I live to work. The darned thing controls my life. There ought to be someone standing over me to physically stop me when I go over the 50 hours a week limit. Hell, I only get paid for 35 of them! If we are salaried, is that just another term for slavery? Think about it. They can work us as many hours as they want, state that it is necessary for the job and then not give you flex or comp time. In an "at will employment" state employers can pretty much do whatever they want if you are in a salardied position and your only recourse is to quit.

So, have you ever heard of Relay For Life? It's this cool event that the American Cancer Society has wherein teams of people raise money to fight cancer. This post is called "a word from our sponsor" because I work for the American Cancer Society and since they pay me they do, in effect, sponsor this site. In any case check out their web site www.cancer.org and see where there is a Relay near you. With more Relay events than there are Wal Marts in the U.S. odds are there is a Relay near you. Just put your zip code in the box on the home page and it'll tell you what's going on in your area. You should also get info on your nearest area office so you can get involved. Okay shameless plug over... we now resume regular blogging...

Pouncequick - Clark Gable fan, jazz lover and sky watcher 

After a seven year trek chasing comet Wild 2 the Stardust probe is back on Earth with about a million comet and interstellar dust particles inside a sealed canister. For those who don't follow such stuff the particles in question are thought to be leftovers from the birth of our solar system some 4.5 billion (that's "billion" with a 'b'!) years ago, some of them could even be older than the Sun! The folks at the Johnson Space Center in Houston will unlock the canister and a preliminary look-see send samples to labs all over the world for further study. "Night of the Living Dead" concerns aside (confused? go rent the movie - get the original not the remake), this is pretty cool stuff. Dust particles from 4.5 billion years ago! Okay there may be some nearly that old under my couch but these are interstellar dust bunnies! By the way the Stardust mother ship remains in orbit around the Sun and NASA is considering sending it off after another comet to sna...

Whether or not you think Pluto is really a planet, it is still pretty cool that on Tuesday NASA is scheduled to launch the New Horizons probe to explore the icy little thing. Of course there have been some delays and could still be more but the launch window doesn't close until February 14th so odds are pretty good that the Atlas 5 rocket will eventually fly. According to Mike Schnieder of the Associated Press in his story published today: "When the 7-foot-tall (2.1-meter-tall) New Horizons spacecraft reaches Pluto as early as 2015, the spacecraft will study the ninth planet's large moon, Charon, as well as two other moons just discovered last year. The $700 million mission should provide scientists with a better understanding of the Kuiper Belt, a mysterious region that lies beyond Neptune at the outer limits of the planetary system." As cool as this is I have to ask... if we can spend money to send a probe to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt why can't we fund manned s...

Can you believe that the Mars Rovers are still running? Must have "Energizer" Batteries in them! Spirit and Opportunity are two years old! Wow! And they've had a great time, giving us info on the Red Planet ("demystifying" Mars the NASA press reports call it) and finding evidence (gasp! really? yup, for real) of past water on the planet. Makes you wonder why people stuck here on the homeworld just don't seem to be interested. This is fascinating stuff! For details on the rovers and what they've been up to check out: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/mer_main.html .

Hey, if you are interested in the Moon there's a great email list you can subscribe to called Lunar Update. Just email Larry Kellogg at larry.kellogg@sbcglobal.net . Check out Larry's blog at http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com For a good read check out Return to the Moon by Harry Schmidt Space.com will send you an email newsletter, sign up on their website for news, cool space related merchandise etc. www.space.com

Interesting weekend. The Bengals didn't manage to pull it off and in my opinion if Palmer hadn't been sacked they would have, but enough about football. The "joys of home ownership" hit over the weekend with pieces falling off of the garage door, the furnace going out and problems with the main circuit breaker (will probably have to be replaced - if I'm lucky and it isn't anything more serious). Just keep telling myself "I love my house, I love my house".

Have you ever noticed that event though cars come with turn signals no one seems to remember how they work? We had driver's education classes, we were all told to start signaling well before the turn, then to slow down, then to make the turn (assuming it was safe to do so), right? So why is it that if someone uses a turn signal at all it goes like this: slow down, start the turn, click twice, complete the turn? Kinda makes you wonder.....