We’ve been watching the sky lately, gazing into the night with our eyes angled upward. It’s been a pretty good show. Venus shining brightly in the western sky just after the sun goes down. Saturn and Mars in conjunction above her to the right and left, respectively. And for a while even Mercury lower on […]
Tag Archives: space
A Different Line of Work
Thu, 10 Jun 2010, 01:26 PM (-06:00)
He is a rocket scientist. He works in Florida at The Cape beside the green-blue waters of the Atlantic where waves wash up on a sandy shore. He watched the Falcon 9 launch the other day. Here’s what he said. It’s a beautiful rocket. It looked like something out of the 60s. It was beautiful. […]
Rebooting
Mon, 19 Apr 2010, 05:39 PM (-06:00)
1989 On the twentieth anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing, speaking at the National Air and Space Museum, President George H. W. Bush said: Today we don’t have a crisis; we have an opportunity. … I’m proposing a long-range, continuing commitment. … Back to the Moon; back to the future … And then a […]
Skyward
Wed, 7 Apr 2010, 08:39 AM (-06:00)
1. At the campground We were celebrating my birthday. Camping at Pedernales Falls. The days were warm and sunny. The evenings were cool. And there was no burn ban, so we were able to sit late into the night staring into the glowing embers of a campfire. One night as we were watching Orion and […]
Sunrise on Titan
Mon, 5 Apr 2010, 10:12 PM (-06:00)
I’ve been to see the class this year three times, now. The last two times, I talked about rockets and planets and moons. I showed them movies and pictures. We talked about science and engineering and space. This time I started with Earth’s mid-ocean ridges. They already knew about plate tectonics, and some of them […]