Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong poses in front of X-15 #1.  He was one of the test pilots who flew the X-15 to the edge of space.

Today we mark a sad day for the world.  Neil Alden Armstrong has passed away.  Many remember him because of a few words he said on July 20th, 1969.  "One small step for man, one giant leap for Mankind."  He was the first person to set foot on the Moon, so something was required.

How did Armstrong get where he was?  Start in Ohio where he was born and a mother who made sure her children would learn and be happy.  By the time Neil was in the 1st grade he had already read 90 books.  He skipped 2nd grade because he was reading on a 5th grade level.  In high school science and math were two of his passions.  He would tutor others in both areas.  He was an Eagle Scout.  He received his private pilot's license before his driver's license.  Starting at age seven he was working odd jobs like mowing grass.  To pay for his flight lessons, he worked as a mechanic at the airport.  During the Korean War he flew 78 combat missions off the deck of USS Essex.  On one mission a cable strung across a North Korean valley sheared part of a wing off, he nursed the plane back over friendly lines before bailing out.  After Korea he went to Purdue to earn his degree.  Then it was off to Edwards AFB and being a test pilot where he flew the X-15.  He spent seven years at Edwards.  He and his wife Janet restored an old ranger's cabin in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains to raise their three children.  This idyllic life was broken when his daughter Karen died of a brain tumor.  Next project for Armstrong was the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar project, a reusable space plane the USAF want to launch from Titan boosters.  Neil was accepted for astronaut training in 1962 and in 1963 the X-20 was cancelled.

Armstrong's first mission in space almost became his last.  Him and David Scott were launched in Gemini 8 in 1966.  Gemini 8 set a first when it docked with an Agena target, first in space docking.  And then all hell broke loose when an attitude control thruster started mis-firing.  The capsule spun and bucked like a thing possessed.  Only by shutting down the main RCS and then using the re-entry thrusters was Armstrong able to bring Gemini 8 under control.  Armstrong and Scott then executed a pin-point emergency splash down next to the recovery ship.

Gemini 8's nose can be seen in lower left corner.  Center of picture is the Agena target Armstrong and Scott will dock with.

For the Apollo missions, crews were assembled early on.  For Apollo 8, Aldrin and Armstrong were part of the back up crew with Fred Haise. 

Back-up crew for Apollo 8 suit up for egress training. Armstrong and Aldrin.

Apollo 8 was famous for many things.  Launched at Christmas time 1968.  First spacecraft to orbit another planetary body.  And of course for reading a passage from Genesis.  One less known first, LM pilot William Anders was the first man born in Hong Kong to orbit the Moon.  Frank Borman would later run Eastern Airlines.  While James Lovell would command Apollo 13 and lead his crew through a harrowing time when their Service Module was crippled by an explosion.

And then it came time to pick the crew for Apollo 11.  Armstrong and Aldrin were teamed with Collins.  Whether 11 would be the first landing mission depended upon the success of Apollos 9 and 10.  Apollo 9 would test in Earth orbit everything needed for a lunar landing including separating the LM from the CM, have the LM fire its rockets, and rendezvous with the CM.  Then splashing down.  This was a real make or break for the while program because Grumman had been battling so many issues with the LM.  But it came through and the stage was set for Apollo 10.  Apollo 10 should be called the most frustrating mission.  Apollo 10's Command Module was named Charlie Brown while the Lunar Module was named Snoopy. would go the Moon, orbit, two men would climb into the LM, fire the descent stage, and descend within 50,000ft of the lunar service.  Then they would detach the descent stage and fire the ascent motor to rendezvous Snoopy with Charlie Brown.  Reason why 50,000ft was selected is because the engine on the Service Module was powerful enough to to rescue them as low as 50,000ft.  Apollo 10 was a success in every way and the go ahead was given to make Apollo 11 the landing mission.

On July 20th, 1969 millions of people were treated to a grainy black&white image in prime-time coming from the surface of the Moon.  And they saw a gray suited figure set against a perfectly black sky and white lunar surface put his foot down.  And make history as the first human being to set foot on another planet.

Neil Armstrong[shadow in foreground] snaps a picture of Eagle on the surface of the Moon.

Thank yo sir for being such a good person and a trailblazer.  God speed and fair winds.

News for Friday

Egypt is progressing to a regressive state with all alacrity - American tourists taken hostage and then released.

Google's seven year battle with authors who want their royalties has taken another step to somewhere.  While having a corporate motto of 'Don't Be Evil' it seems Google is using the old lobbyist ways to influence the federal government to see things it's way.  

Meanwhile Amazon keeps going digital and redefining the concepts of bookstores and business models.

The Obama administration and its water-carriers better gird their ideological loins as Catholics and their organizations take their objections to the next level.  Get ready for June 14th.  It might be the thing to toss OWS onto the rubbish heap of failed socialist plans.

Special bath salts have entered the common lexicon after a man had to be killed by police in Miami as he tried to chew another man's face off.  It seems to be a serious problem where sedation does not work and no one is sure if people will be normal after taking a dose.

On the space front, there was a bit of good news.  The SpaceX Dragon capsule performed a flawless mission to the ISS and splashdown.  Bravo Zulu people, may you keep doing it.

Another Victim of Settled Science

It is sad to report that the cult of man-made climate change has claimed another victim. Dr. Ivar Giaever, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973, has tendered his resignation to the American Physical Society because they have adopted the position that the evidence of man caused temperature rise is 'incontrovertible.'

One hundred years ago in the field of astronomy the belief was all the violence evidenced on Earth's own Moon was long in the past. That something like the Music of the Spheres prevailed. Then our probes to other planets showed the violence was not limited to the past. And the final proof that violence still existed in the solar system was when the fragments of the Comet Shoemaker-Levy smashed into Jupiter and we observed it almost in real time with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Percival Lowell captivated many people with his observations of Mars. The fascination was with the canali or canals he saw in his telescope that prompted speculation of life being on Mars. And spawned many a science fiction story. Then our probes like Mariner and Viking showed how dead Mars is. Mars might have had life but it was millions of years in the past.

Forty years ago the concept of a meteor smashing into the Earth and wiping out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was thought a far fetched idea and was scoffed at in scientific circles. Then Dr. Richard Alvarez [ whoops should be Dr. Luis Alvarez] went and found worldwide a rare earth element Iridium at the boundary marking the extinction of dinosaurs. And then the actual impact crater was discovered at the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula. Now the argument is how much of an impact did that meteor have? Was it an outright kill or was just the final push of the dinosaurs to extinction.

We all grew up on the idea that all dinosaurs were cold-blooded reptiles. And all the cheesy movies with dinosaurs reinforced this notion. Due to the work of scientists like Dr. Robert Bakker that view has been tossed out. There is evidence now to suggest at least some dinosaurs were warm-blooded.

These are just four examples of 'incontrovertible settled science' being overturned by new discoveries and data. So for such an august scientific body as the American Physical Society to say man-made climate warming is incontrovertible is to fly in the face of traditional scientific inquiry and the quest for the truth. Those who say the science is settled are in fact anathema to the scientific method. For various reasons they have closed their minds to any other possible answer. They are akin to the Holy See and its treatment of Galileo and Copernicus by these actions. How else to explain their brutal attempts to ostracize anyone who disagrees with them? In fact when they call such skeptics 'deniers' they are venturing into an even more troublesome arena, that of the KGB calling dissenters mentally unstable and using medication to 'adjust' them. What a brave new world we are in.

No More A'Roving

She glided out of the styngian darkness this morning. A pale wraith wrapped in the intangible caress of lights. Her arrival was announced by twin messengers, thundering booms of sound that told the thousands of faithful she was coming. And then she was there for all to see. She wafted down to the long welcoming carpet silently. And as people held their breaths to savor the moment. It was also the final barrier that quiet between the dream they all held and the reality there would be no more such events for them to attend.

Farewell Atlantis.

Abandon in Place

So it is stenciled at Launch Pad 34A where the crew of Apollo One - Grissom, White, Chaffee - died training to meet President Kennedy's goal to reach the Moon and return safely be the end of the decade. Today July 20th, 2011 is the anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin being the first men to set foot on the Moon. Today July 20th, 2011 marks the last time a Shuttle will leave the ISS as Atlantis undocks and prepares to return on Thursday. And unlike NASA in the post Apollo era when they knew the space shuttle was coming, there is no immediate plans for more manned missions to space. By cancelling Constellation and Ares, President Obama has turned NASA into an agency in partial violation of its charter.

(9) The preservation of the United States preeminent position in aeronautics and space through research and technology development related to associated manufacturing processes.

Because once Atlantis lands, the United States will be dependent upon Russia for manned access to the ISS. Once Atlantis lands, the workforce at KSC will stabilize at 1,000 when it used to be 17,000. Without Ares or Constellation in the pipeline, the ripple effect of the shuttle phase out will be permanent in the loss of skilled technicians throughout the aerospace industry that SpaceX or Virgin or DoD launchers will not cover. So the United States position in regards to space will be in serious doubt.

So those words found at Pad 34A should apply to the United States. For we are surrendering that preeminent position to the Peoples Republic of China that wants to reach the Moon and to Russia.

Monday News

First some really cool news for one very lucky Marine in Afghanistan. Mila Kunis has agreed to attend the Marine Corps Ball with the Marine. Semper Fi Marine! And a big thank you to Ms. Kunis.

The family of murdered US agent Brian Terry are now pondering civil lawsuits against those invovled in Operation Fast and Furious. First my condolences go out to this family who lost a loved one in such a tragic way. Keep letting your representatives in Congress know that the truth about this operation needs to come out. Closure and healing can not happen as long as there is even a whiff of cover-up. The guilty must be punished.

And for all those who worry about the Mayan calendar signalling the end of the world. Your Armageddon may get pre-empted later this year by Nibiru crashing into the Earth. If you beleive any of the listed doomsday scares in the linked article, can I sell you some land and food for cash now? Last month an asteroid 55ft in size, 2011 MD, passed far closer than that comet ever will. Still no sign of the 12th planet... maybe the legendary 12th Iman is on Nibiru? Inquiring minds do not care.

Apollo Reflections

Apollo 11 sees the full Earth. Photo - NASA.

If you want a cool documentary about the Apollo Moon astronauts then find The Wonder of it All. They interview Gene Cernan, Alan Bean, Buzz Aldrin, Charlie Duke, Ed Mitchell, John Young, and Dr. Harrison Schmidt. These guys still amaze me and I still learn new things about the missions and especially the people.

Alan Bean talks of his space art and even discussing a Moon landing doubter. John Young relates how his wife told him he had 1 chance in 5 of coming home from the Moon but he did not remember her saying that before the mission; then he talks of his work on the Shuttle. Buzz Aldrin threw the curve ball in these interviews. He talks of the Apollo 11 astronauts receiving an award from Marquette just after returning from the Moon and anti-Vietnam protesters waving a North Vietnam flag threw eggs at them.

I will end this brief post with words from John Young, "Why do people explore? For the long term survival of people."

Endeavour Lands for Final Time

Reuters image of Endeavour final landing in the early hours of June 1, 2011.

This morning one more milestone on the path of no more NASA manned missions was achieved. After 16 days in orbit, the youngest shuttle made its 25th and final landing at Cape Canaveral this morning. Endeavour's next flight will be on the back of NASA's 747 and permanent display in Los Angeles, CA.

As Endeavour landed, sister ship Atlantis slowly crawled out to the launch pad. The launch of Atlantis on the 135th mission of the fleet will mark the end of the Shuttle era with NASA. The long and productive era began with STS-1 and Columbia lifting off Pad 39A on April 12, 1981.

The saddest part of this will be contemplating the future. Orion and Ares are in limbo, though work does proceed to make Ares a space taxi. Mission to return to the Moon has been cancelled. President Obama talks of going to Mars and asteroids, but the time frame is after 2012 and more like 2014 before NASA is supposed to be ready. Commercial space interests are expected to pick up the low-orbit slack, but Spaceship One is still in testing. Which leaves Russia and its 45 year old Soyuz design as the only way to get to the ISS and low-orbit.

An Ill Star'd Event?

2001: A Space Odyssey

I am waiting for someone to try and spin this as part of the breathtaking mythology that is springing up around the death of Osama bin Laden. It seems six of the eight planets in this solar system are roughly in a line that is visible from Earth right now, above the rising Sun. All we need now is for someone to have reported a comet above Islamabad this past weekend. Then we would have an astrological picture perfect event.

For those who are awaiting a similar grand alignment in 2012 to help usher in the much hyped Mayan end of the world in December, 2012. No such luck for you, there will be no such alignment at all in the year 2012.

Endeavour to Soar

News Update 11:35 am Central Time- NASA puts launch on hold until Sunday. Two heaters on an APU have failed, NASA is trying to solve the problem.

Endeavour [OV-105] being mated to the stack inside the VAB at Kennedy Space Center.
Image from NASA.

STS-134 is on Pad 39-A fully fueled. This is OV-105's last fight and 25th mission. Mission commander is Mark Kelly. Scheduled launch time is 3:47pm Eastern. Objective is to deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer[AMS] plus spare parts to the International Space Station[ISS].

Equipment trivia for this mission. The external fuel tank for STS-134 is the last tank produced at Michoud in Lousiana, this tank survived Hurricane Katrina, and has had a couple repairs since. An upper motor part of one of the SRBs first flew on STS-1 taking Columbia[OV-102] into orbit. That seems fitting, alpha and omega wrapped in one flight.

God speed Endeavour on your 14 day mission. Soar proudly and return in glory.

Live video can be viewed through this link.

Christmas 1968

Thoughts of the Moon or Luna have been recently re-awakened in me. With Bay's butchery of Apollo 11 to sell Transformers 3. Then the lunar eclipse some of us got to see. Plus looking through many of the Apollo mission images. All of this made me turn to one special Apollo mission, Apollo 8. It was a bold decision by the likes of Kraft at NASA to say we will orbit three men around the Moon. The deaths of Grissom, Chaffee, and White in the Apollo 1 fire at KSC still hung over the whole Apollo program, filling many in and out of NASA with doubts. Apollo 7 was still in orbit proving the newly redegined Apollo CSM would work when it was decided that Lovell, Anders, and Borman would take their ship CSM-103 around the Moon. And the Saturn V rocket that would carry Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins to the Moon in July, 1969 would have its first manned mission with Apollo 8. Nor was this the last of the firsts recorded by Apollo 8. Apollo 8 performed the first Trans-Lunar Injection and the first Trans-Earth Injection. First men to see an Earthrise while orbiting the Moon. First men to see the darkside of the Moon. And of course the first men in history to orbit another celestial body. And of all these firsts, Apollo 8 is most famous for one broadcast the astronauts did while orbiting the Moon. Here it is.



Merry Christmas everyone.

Apollo 11

The blue marble nestled in blackness, Earth, as seen from Apollo 11.

This image shows the Apollo 11 CSM has undocked from the Saturn V third stage, pivoted and is now moving into to pull Eagle out. The protective shroud around Eagle has also been jettisoned.

Eagle is now docked with the CSM. Note the wrinkles in the skin of Eagle. To save weight, Eagle's skin was as thin as aluminum foil. In the upper center is seen the LM rendevous window that would be used by Aldrin and Armstrong to re-dock with Collins aboard Columbia.

While working through some writer's block on a blog post, I decided to watch the Transformers 3 trailer which creates an alternate history Apollo 11 mission. By 00:12 of the trailer, Bay starts to deviate from reality. Or his CGI crew did not know. And no one bothered to do real research. Because they have the Apollo 11 CSM sporting an open Scientific Instrument Module[SIM], something that was not installed on a CSM until Apollo 15, the first J-series mission. At 00:32 we got a strange white object already on the lunar surface and the drop down panel with video camera that was aimed at the LM ladder to catch Neil's historic footstep is not deployed. And then it really goes into Bay's alternate fantasy land of a large crashed spaceship just beyond the LM. I am so not going to go see this movie.

More images from the various real Apollo missions can be found here.

Back To The Past

On 22 April, 2010 from Cape Canaveral FL, the United States Air Force launched the X-37B unmanned space plane atop an Atlas booster. The mission has been cloaked in secrecy even as the ship orbits the Earth with its cargo doors open. If you read all the possible uses for the X-37 in this article, one has to think of a previous USAF project that was cancelled. The X-37 is being lauded for possibly ushering in the era of quick response time launches. To surprise someone and gather intelligence before the target is aware. How strange this all sounds and how refreshing until one thinks on that previous USAF program. What is this program? It was called the X-20 Dynamic-Soaring program. It would be launched from atop a Titan booster or even a Saturn I into low earth orbit. And it would carry out reconnaissance missions or even hypersonic bombing missions from the edge of the atmosphere. Save omitting the bombing capability and the pilot, is the X-37 really all that removed from the X-20? It's as if Apollo and the Space Shuttle never happened and the USAF is back into building the MOL with the X-20 ferrying the astronauts to it. Or the USAF being able to strike from the edge of space anyone who threatens the security of the United States. Or giving NASA that rescue capability it so desperately needed for Columbia.

I will leave you with some videos, one of David Jensen and Gregory Peck in the Martin Caiden based movie Marooned in which the X-RV, a relative of the X-20, is launched to rescue Ironman One trapped in orbit. Caiden's novel was originally written in 1964 long before the Apollo One fire. Others gives one a behind the scenes look at building the X-20 and what a mission would have looked like if it had been built.

The X-RV launches in the eye of a hurricane from the movie Marooned.

The X-20 carries out a spy mission.

What is the X-20 Part 1 - Official USAF film.

Building the X-20 Part 1 - Official USAF film.

The Lost World

The United States is about to become the new Middle Kingdom it seems. Suffering a surfeit of conceit on how everything revolves around the president while closing its eyes to the world around it.

It is recorded in Chinese texts of a great fleet dispatched across the Pacific Ocean that spied North America long before the Vikings and Christopher Columbus crossed the puny Atlantic. And what did the Chinese do with this new discovery? They simply sailed back home and never ventured forth again. The land of China was all they wanted and needed. And that turning inward is what caused China to become a bit player upon the world stage until recent history.

Now we have a president who wants to turn America's gaze inwards. He believes that all of America's energy and capital must be spent creating a utopia. This week down at Kennedy Space Center the President talked a mediocre game of what he wants NASA to do. Instead of going back to the Moon for things like Helium-3 that can make fusion power a reality, he talked of Orion as a lifeboat, of going to an asteroid, and going to Mars. The last two do sound impressive, but when scrutinised they fall apart. An asteroid mission and a mission to Mars will require a large logistics outlay. By skipping going back to the Moon since we have been there, his own words on the matter, he has moved both these missions into the theatre of circus events. Of staged extravaganzas on par with what Khruschev did with the Soviet space program. And most telling of all, with dates like 2015 thrown in the mix it will absolve Obama of taking any responsibility for the failures that may come. Nixon cancelled the last three Apollo missions because they would happen beyond his term of office, he wanted the glory of Apollo as part of his legacy. Obama does not want any part of NASA success as part of his legacy it seems.

I am with Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, and Gene Cernan in calling President Obama out on this. What he proposes is foolhardy and surrenders the lead America has in space exploration for no observable gain. Alaska is called The Last Frontier. Space is the Great Frontier and President Obama seems to think exploring that frontier is too hard. That we should just stay home.

The First iPad

I'm afraid Dave, I can't play Flash animation.

Once again, Kubrick and Clarke saw the future more clearly than many others. We are still on the ultimate trip.

Throwing NASA Away

The rumored Obama budget for NASA calls for a future heavy lift rocket to get people and material into space. Once again Obama gets things wrong. NASA and the USAF have a heavy-lift rocket for getting material into orbit; it is called the Titan IV rocket which grew out of the Titan ICBM that was also used to launch the Gemini space capsules into Earth orbit. NASA has a new man-rated rocket currently in development, it is called the Ares rocket. They have already spent $9 billion in tax dollars to create Ares. How far has NASA gotten in building Ares? They had a successful test launch at Kennedy Space Center on October 28, 2009. That is how close Ares is to being mission capable.

But President Obama, in his proposed budget for NASA, does not call for the $3 billion a year extra NASA will need to finish Ares and to field the Orion capsule that will take human beings back to the Moon. Instead NASA will get about $1 billion extra, told to focus on near-Earth science missions to study the discredited hunch of global warming, hope Russia will rent Soyuz missions to the space station, and pray private industry will step up and build a space taxi.

Yet another example of how President Obama and his administration are good at squandering tax money. $787 billion stimulus. $40 billion to GM. $300 million sent to Hamas in Gaza. What is throwing away another $9 billion as Democrats raise the debt ceiling to a height that can only be reached by Orion? Obviously squat even as they put into the unemployment column thousands of highly skilled people who once worked at NASA and its contractors.



Ares test launch October 28, 2009. KSC, Cape Canaveral, FL.

And We Used To Control The Lightning!

In twenty years or less the words Rick Delanty screamed to the people huddling in the valley in Lucifer's Hammer will be true in the real world.

How can I say this? Because President Obama, in his faux populism mode, is going to eviscerate any chance of NASA returning to the Moon in his upcoming budget. He is trying to prove he is a fiscal conservative by slicing less than 3% from the current bloated budget. There will be no Ares rockets or Constellation program. Instead NASA will focus on monitoring climate change while pushing off to the future a new heavy-lift rocket and outsourcing to the private sector creating a space taxi to the International Space Station.

Meanwhile the Peoples Republic of China is still pushing forward with their space program. If President Obama's budget cuts stand, then we will see a red flag fly over the Moon. It will be China which will harvest the Helium-3 to create feasible fusion power. Along with materials to make orbital solar power satellites to beam energy down to China. Which will make China the OPEC of the future as they sell clean power to the rest of the world. Meanwhile the US piddles with wind power or the US will buy power from China in the future.

President Obama is going to sell our secure energy future for the the slim chance of improving his current popularity ratings. If this happens, then as Rick Delanty says, we will be peasants cowering at the sound of thunder because we have given away our future. Lets stop this right now. Burn up the Internet and phone lines to Congress. Tell them if they buy off on this, then they are politically dead. Think of your children and grandchildren. Or get used to them living a life not as rich or full as yours.

Melancholy

Almost forty years ago a guy named Buzz Aldrin commented on why we went to the Moon, "the insatiable curiosity of mankind to explore the unknown." Aldrin should know since he had just become the second man to ever set foot on another celestial body - that same Moon.

Now it seems people are too buried in their Twitter or E! Extra over Michael Jackson to even care. On July 20th, 1969 America left a plaque on the Moon that read - HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON. JULY 1969 A.D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND. Golda Meir said at the time that this event might "open the way to that era of universal peace presaged by the prophets of old." Forty years on NASA tries to stay in space with three shuttles while the successor program seems to move from one crisis to another. Is anyone paying attention as Endeavour carries out another mission to the International Space Station to add the Kibo module? Thirteen people are now in orbit setting a record. That in a very short while all three remaining shuttles will be grounded to never fly again? It does not seem like it.

Nor does it seem many are paying attention to what is going on in Iran or in Honduras as despotism tries to hold sway. People are dying in foreign lands even as the satellites spawned by the Space Age bring the information to every viewer. It just seems none are programmed to receive anymore. If it does not happen within one's social network, then its not important.

Not even when it happens in their own country. We have seen multiple pieces of legislation get shoved through the Democrat Congress in the name of national emergency. Six months on the first has failed to deliver any relief. Meanwhile our President genuflects to foreign countries in apologia while they kick dirt in this country's face and continues being despots. We will see someone put on the Supreme Court of this land not because of the content of her character, but because of her gender, political views, and her being Hispanic.

We as a nation seem to have lost our way. Instead of pursuing a just society that rewards being diligent and honest, it has become a game in which large segments of the population prostrate themselves to chivvy danes geld from the government. Unfortunately the pot of danes geld is finite and when it runs dry, may there still be a country left to rebuild when the golden calf is thrown down.

But right now as I think of President Kennedy sending our nation to the Moon not because it was easy, but because it was hard; I do not sense that sense of commitment as it seems to have been destroyed by too many playing one side against the other in an illusionary zero-sum game. In the end, all of humanity will lose because they traded long term prosperity for short term games peddled by politicians only concerned for staying elected.

Mission Hubble

This video is dedicated to the crews of Atlantis and Endeavour as both shuttles are readied for launch. Atlantis is scheduled to liftoff on October 10th to carry out another repair mission to the 18 year old Hubble Space Telescope. This mission is fraught with danger since if Atlantis is damaged the crew maybe stranded at Hubble and far away from the International Space Station. In case the seven crew of Atlantis need such a rescue, Endeavour has been rolled out to Launch Pad 39B where it will wait. If the rescue alarm is sounded, the earliest Endeavour will launch is six days after. Baring technical glitches or something as dramatic as Ironman One's rescue vehicle from Marooned - launching while in the eye of a hurricane; NASA will have as long as 25 days to effect such a rescue before air runs out aboard Atlantis.

To Altman and the crew of Atlantis, safe voyage and a successful mission to Hubble. To Leinbach and the crew of Endeavour, may your services not be needed. All of you have the Right Stuff.

Arthur C. Clarke - Dead at 90

What can I say, I enjoy his books and movie forays, he will be sorely missed.

I could prattle on, regurgitating stuff from Wikipedia or cut&paste from the New York Times, instead please read the obituary the New York Times has published to get an understanding on the impact this one man has had on the modern world. Perhaps Sir Clarke has rendezvoused with Rama.