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Pirate Legend
I ran across this article from the <a href="http://blogs.starnewsonline.com/default.asp?item=2347096" target="_blank">Wilmington North Carolina Star-News Online</a> while I was searching for some pirate booty and it got me thinking. When I was a kid there were one thing that I really wanted to be when I grew up, an astronaut. The earliest memory I have as a child is watching Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon July 21'st 1969. I was all of 2 years old, but I do remember seeing those grainy images scrolling across a TV screen. Although, at the time I had absolutely no comprehension of what was really going on, 40 years later those images are still in my head. My Dad realized the significance of that historic occasion and made sure that my whole family were all watching, thanks Dad! I never did get to fulfill that childhood dream for many reasons, but one thing I never lost was the sense of wonder and excitement for exploration those early fuzzy, grainy black and white images instilled in me.
While the space shuttle program never did fulfill all of it's potential, it has opened up space in a way that no other vehicle could. The shuttle program has accomplished many great things, and suffered more than it's fair share of tragedies along the way. There were a lot of things that could have been, and should have been, done differently from the beginning. Such is always the case when your funding and mission objectives are provided by politicians.
[rant]The shuttle program it's self has not been cheap by any means, but if you add up the staggering amount of science and technology to come from just this one NASA program alone, it has had a far better payback to investment ratio than any stock market or Las Vegas casino gamble you could ever take. There are people that argue that that money would have been better spent elsewhere, I for one, strongly disagree! As an example, the two recent "bail out" packages passed by the US government will cost American tax payers well over one TRILLION dollars. The entire space shuttle program, from inception in 1973 to it's current projected end date of 2010, has cost a grand total of less than two hundred billion dollars.[/rant]
Anyway, my whole point of writing all this is to point out the fast approaching end of an era. Whether you see it as a waste of time and money or not. I got extremely lucky last year and got to see the space shuttle and the International Space Station flying overhead one night as I was returning to work from my lunch break. I had been watching NASA TV earlier in the day as the shuttle undocked from the station. I happened to glance up at the horizon and saw a very bright object in the sky just above the horizon. I have always been a bit of an armature astronomer, so I am used to the way things both man-made and natural, move across the sky. I thought at first it was Venus, but then I realized it was way to bright, was in completely the wrong position in the sky, and it was moving straight at me! I then noticed following close behind it was a smaller, less bright object and it baffled me for a time as to what I was seeing. As both passed directly overhead and I got to watch them for a relatively long time, I suddenly realized what I was seeing. It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen in person.
For those of you that don't know, NASA has a space objects sighting opportunity web page set up at <a href="http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/sightings/" target="_blank">http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/sightings/</a>. Just tell it where you are in the world either by latitude and longitude, or nearest big city, and the object your looking for and it will give you a list of the best observation times for your area. It is really worth it to try and catch these two together in orbit if you can. Unless things change, you only have about 6 shuttle flights left.
While the space shuttle program never did fulfill all of it's potential, it has opened up space in a way that no other vehicle could. The shuttle program has accomplished many great things, and suffered more than it's fair share of tragedies along the way. There were a lot of things that could have been, and should have been, done differently from the beginning. Such is always the case when your funding and mission objectives are provided by politicians.
[rant]The shuttle program it's self has not been cheap by any means, but if you add up the staggering amount of science and technology to come from just this one NASA program alone, it has had a far better payback to investment ratio than any stock market or Las Vegas casino gamble you could ever take. There are people that argue that that money would have been better spent elsewhere, I for one, strongly disagree! As an example, the two recent "bail out" packages passed by the US government will cost American tax payers well over one TRILLION dollars. The entire space shuttle program, from inception in 1973 to it's current projected end date of 2010, has cost a grand total of less than two hundred billion dollars.[/rant]
Anyway, my whole point of writing all this is to point out the fast approaching end of an era. Whether you see it as a waste of time and money or not. I got extremely lucky last year and got to see the space shuttle and the International Space Station flying overhead one night as I was returning to work from my lunch break. I had been watching NASA TV earlier in the day as the shuttle undocked from the station. I happened to glance up at the horizon and saw a very bright object in the sky just above the horizon. I have always been a bit of an armature astronomer, so I am used to the way things both man-made and natural, move across the sky. I thought at first it was Venus, but then I realized it was way to bright, was in completely the wrong position in the sky, and it was moving straight at me! I then noticed following close behind it was a smaller, less bright object and it baffled me for a time as to what I was seeing. As both passed directly overhead and I got to watch them for a relatively long time, I suddenly realized what I was seeing. It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen in person.
For those of you that don't know, NASA has a space objects sighting opportunity web page set up at <a href="http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/sightings/" target="_blank">http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/sightings/</a>. Just tell it where you are in the world either by latitude and longitude, or nearest big city, and the object your looking for and it will give you a list of the best observation times for your area. It is really worth it to try and catch these two together in orbit if you can. Unless things change, you only have about 6 shuttle flights left.
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" border="0" alt="yes.gif" /> <a href="http://www.ufohowto.com/" target="_blank">http://www.ufohowto.com/</a> They're on the right track. Go for electrogravity. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/yes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="
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" border="0" alt="wink.gif" /> Your flying saucers stole that technology! If your UFO's are so great ...what were they doing crashing into the New Mexico desert in 1947?? Must have been a faulty hyperdrive!! You really need an Astromech droid to properly maintain a hyperdrive ...everybody knows that! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="