One Small Step

It's a great time to be a space geek. If you are not into space geekiness, you might want to skip this post. First, we have the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing today. I am one of the millions who remembers sitting in front of a black and white television watching those grainy pictures of the first step on the moon. Couldn't exactly make out what was on the screen, but it was exciting. There is a great web site that has been playing live audio from the Apollo 11 mission. It is real time, so there are long stretches of nothing but static and silence. It took three days to reach the moon. Try sitting in your bathtub for three days without moving around and see how you do! I would love to experience space travel, but they have to improve the mode of transportation a lot before that happens for me! Anyway, the site to listen in real time and see some great info is here.

There is currently an orbiter circling the moon, analyzing the surface. Some of the first pictures have focused on past moon landings to see if the lunar modules are still there (um...where else would they be?)... you can see those pictures here.

I have some of the 25th moonwalk anniversary stamps that have actually flow in space back in 1994. They flew aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, which coincidentally is at this very minute up in space again, this time docked to the International Space Station with a record number of people aboard the combined station/shuttle configuration. And now I see on the news that one of the space station toilets is stopped up. Doesn't that always happen when you have too much company that stays too long?

Any time there is a shuttle up, I will be watching. While I am busy on my work computer, I often have my home computer on the shuttle missions here. The shuttle goes through several day/night phases during a 24-hour period. But when they are in the daylight, I think there is nothing more beautiful than looking at the earth from space. It is my favorite real time screen saver!

Happy Moon Landing Anniversary!