Garrett Comes Home. Oh, and Those Other Guys

Okay, a day late and a few dollars short. But Atlantis came home beautifully. Some interesting things I learned on my trip to Florida (I am going by what Mary told me, so if any of this is wrong, blame her. Although she does know her stuff):

The BIG (as my brother-in-law, Jon, calls the VAB or Vehicle Assembly Building, is so big that it has its own climate.

The path that the shuttle rides on from the BIG to the launch pad is paved with stones from some river in Tennessee. Why? Who knows? Mary says it may be one of those low-bid deals from the contractor who built it. I do know they are pretty stones, and it's a loooonnnnggg path, so I guess some river in Tennessee is a bit deeper than it used to be.

Cool stuff at KSC, including launch pads, is not very well marked. And KSC (or rather, Canaveral Air Force Station) is very big. So if you don't know where you are going, you can spend a bit of time trying to find what you are looking for. And they don't have maps. So you drive on ICBM Road and Titan Road and Saturn Lane and Moonwalk Court (I made up some of those), and hope you find what you are looking for. We did, eventually.

For you birders out there, the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge, right next to KSC, is a wonderful place to be; partly because there are driving paths and you don't really have to get out of your car to bird-watch, although, if you're like us, it's a constant "Oh! Stop the car! Stop the car! I think I just saw a (spoonbill, hawk, avocet, gator, willet, glossy ibis)!" You know you are jaded when you say, "Oh! Wait! Wait! Never mind, it's JUST a great blue heron." We did see a juvenile cottonmouth chow down on an unfortunate fish. Best thing (aside from the wildlife) is you can look in the distance and see KSC.

Some people are stupid. Mary and I stopped numerous times along the road out of the refuge to pick up plastic McDonald's cups, beer cans, etc. Who is insensitive enough to toss that kind of trash out in a wildlife refuge?

Watching the NASA channel during a mission is pretty cool. Mary and I were driven indoors because of a Biblical plague of lovebugs and turned on the teevee. Someone on the ISS was asking someone at Mission Control how to find the scissors. The question was not "Where are the scissors?" It was "What is the location of the scissors?" The answer was a good five minutes long and involved stuff like "the right compartment, the second node," etc. But it was clear that the guy answering knew exactly where the scissors were. Now, why they needed the scissors is beyond me. I know Garrett did not need a haircut.

Nothing we saw the entire time we were there made us think we had made a mistake in creating this blog. Garrett is just one awesome dude.

Just A Lot of Pictures

From my trip to Florida:

This is a photo of the launch taken by Sam Vega, who drove 18 hours to see the launch when he got bumped off a flight in Arkansas:



This is the launch pad from which all the Apollo astronauts left earth. It is also where Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chafee died tragically. This is what Grissom said, "If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life." Still, you cannot be there without thinking of the amazing courage of those men. They went into space at a time when few had done it before, never knowing whether they would come back. And I'd like to say a word about their wives, who didn't have all the scientific knowledge their husbands had but still supported men who were part of the space program, men who were doing things that had never been done with no assurance that they would live, let alone be successful.

If you look at the photo below, you can see a Delta rocket in the background being readied for a September launch. Also, you can see three of the saddest words I have ever seen on the concrete post in the foreground: Abandon in Place. Wow.



More of SLC (Space Launch Complex) 34, Mary at the site:



This is one of Mary and me and a lifesize cutout of Garrett. My husband says someone should make a bobblehead of Garrett:



And this is Mary and me in front of the shuttle launch pad:



The Mercury 7 memorial. It honors all seven original Mercury astronauts, four of whom took flight from the launch pad behind it. Buried here is a time capsule that is to be opened in 2464 (500 years after its burial) that has the flight plans of the Mercury missions. The phrase, "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice," is engraved here. The epitaph of Christopher Wren, the architect who built St. Paul's Cathedral in London, it means, "If you seek a monument, look around you."



The Vehicle Assembly Building, one of the largest buildings in the world, was originally built for assembly of Apollo/Saturn vehicles and later modified to support Space Shuttle operations. It is known as the VAB, but my brother-in-law calls it the BIG.

Garrett and Piers Sellers Install a Closet and Garrett Takes a Nice Picture

Well, Atlantis took off on schedule, and we were right there, waving goodbye. The launch was spectacular, as launches always are. Yesterday, Garrett and Piers Sellers completed the mission's first spacewalk, having installed Rassvet, the Russian-made module that will provide additional storage space (those Russians on the ISS just brought waaayyy too many shoes). Actually, Rassvet is also a docking station for future Russian spacecraft.

Above is a picture Garrett took of himself (more or less) during the EVA. Also, if you are not watching the NASA Channel during this mission, you are missing some fun stuff. For instance, we just heard a request for "the scissors," as in "What is the location of the scissors?" Not "Where are the scissors?" Anyway, the answer was five minutes long, but clearly the person answering knew exactly where the scissors were.

Garrett Leaves and Drew Arrives

It's beautiful here, and, if Atlantis doesn't go today, it shouldn't be because of the weather. Meanwhile, Drew made his appearance at 9:05 pm -- eight pounds and 21 inches long. He just had to make it in time to see the launch. Smart baby.

We Are Here!

So Mary and I have arrived at Club Veg, also known as Mary's backyard, to prepare for the launch, which we are doing by drinking copious amounts of vodka and lazing about in the pool. Looking forward to meeting the wonderful Simone and Garrett's family tonight. We are also awaiting word on Cathy's delivery, which is late but should happen today. We wish she were here, but we know she is happy trying to push a reluctant Drew out of her body.

Building the ISS

This is a cool little thing I came across today.

What the Cool People Will Be Wearing This Summer

Garrett's wife has designed some pretty great T-shirts to commemorate the Atlantis launch. If you want one (or two or 20), you can order it (them) here or here. Below are the hilarious images on the backs of the shirts.






I am personally outfitting the Ward sisters and Cathy's toddler and yet-to-be-born son, Drew. It's, after all, what the best children are wearing this year!

Meanwhile, if your remote finger tends to automatically stop on the NASA channel, as mine does, check the schedule to see when it is re-running the pre-flight interviews, which you can also read here.

He Seemed Surprised

So, dude stops by the house. Nice guy from AT&T. Wanted to offer me a great deal, wifi, tv, DVR receivers, phone service, the works. Asked him to show me the list of channels I would get. No NASA channel. Told him it was a deal-breaker.

Happy 20th Birthday, Hubble

Twenty years ago today, STS-31 launched, carrying a telescope that would revolutionize every branch of the planetary and astrophysical sciences. Named for Edwin Hubble, the American astronomer who discovered the importance of the Doppler Shift in determining the existence of galaxies other than the Milky Way, the Hubble Space Telescope carried the hopes of a generation of scientists who thought it had the potential to change everything we know about space.

They waited. When the first pictures came back, they rushed to their computers with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old rushing downstairs at Christmas, only to find that Santa had decided this year to exercise a heretofore unknown sadistic sense of humor by leaving under the tree a gaily wrapped toothbrush.

Turns out the primary mirror was too flat at the edges by an astonishing 2.2 microns. The period at the end of this sentence is almost 400 microns. We are dealing here in sizes that are almost too small to comprehend. Those 2.2 microns made Hubble the butt of jokes by late-night comedians and put the telescope in the company of such disasters as Titanic and the Edsel.



In December 1993, STS-61 came to the rescue. Over the course of five spacewalks, Endeavor's crew replaced mirrors, cameras, electronics and the telescope's solar array. The timing of the repairs was no accident. Astronomers knew that Comet Shoemaker-Levy was heading for a suicide mission to Jupiter, and, since scientists had never observed a collision between two space objects, they were understandably anxious to get Hubble working the way it was intended to. Seven months after the repair mission, the comet crashed into Jupiter. Hubble's pictures of the event were everything NASA had expected.

And then came the really pretty pictures. It is a measure of Hubble's contributions to, not just science, but popular culture, that people all over the world, even those with only a passing interest in space, use its photos as wallpaper on their Dells and Macs.



Hubble will stop transmitting sometime in 2014. Its successor, the James Webb telescope, is bigger and better and will be launched some time that year into an orbit 1.5 million miles from earth. I expect a few tears will be shed at NASA when transmissions from Hubble cease.



I am including some of my favorite Hubble photos here. In order from top to bottom, they are "Starry Night," a red supergiant near the edge of the Milky Way galaxy; "Eskimo," a nebula; the Carina Nebula, one of the newest Hubble photos; and a generic photo of stars that takes my breath away.



I also urge you to check out NASA's website for more photos and information on Hubble.

Finally, I would like to say this: It is estimated that Hubble has cost somewhere between $4 billion and $6 billion to date. In my opinion, it was money well spent.

T-524 (hours) and counting

Atlantis rolled up to the pad yesterday for what will be its last mission. This is the 39th time Atlantis has rolled onto the pad, though only its 32nd launch (technical issues and weather accounted for the others.) Atlantis is the only shuttle to have also had a "half roll," necessitated when a tropical storm weakened and the shuttle, which was rolling off the launch pad, got a "never mind" from NASA and rolled back on. Atlantis is the fourth of NASA's shuttles, younger than Columbia, Challenger and Discovery and older than Endeavor.

The shuttles, with their 2.5 million parts, have been called the most complex machines ever created by humans.

Atlantis's mission is to deliver a Russian-made research module to the ISS.

The crew of six is led by our man, Garrett (well, no it's not, but this blog isn't about Commander Ken Ham). Anyway, here are the guys who will make this thing go:

Ken Ham, a former Navy pilot; Dominic Antonelli, another former Navy pilot; Michael Good, an Air Force pilot; Piers Sellers, a British geophysicist; and Stephen Bowen, a Navy submariner. Then, there's ol' what's-his-name.

Among them, they have logged more time in space than I have logged at Manuel's Tavern, and, let me point out, that is no small amount of time.

Mary and I will be there, waving to Garrett, and asking plaintively, "Do you think he can see us?"