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a true American hero – RIP.

From the Seattle Times – NASA: Legendary astronaut, moonwalker John Young has died

“….NASA called Young one of its pioneers – the only agency astronaut to go into space as part of the Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle programs, and the first to fly into space six times. He was the ninth man to walk on the moon.”

“…His NASA career lasted 42 years, longer than any other astronaut’s, and he was revered among his peers for his dogged dedication to keeping crews safe — and his outspokenness in challenging the space agency’s status quo.

Chastened by the 1967 Apollo launch pad fire that killed three astronauts, Young spoke up after the 1986 shuttle Challenger launch accident. His hard scrutiny continued well past shuttle Columbia’s disintegration during re-entry in 2003.

“Whenever and wherever I found a potential safety issue, I always did my utmost to make some noise about it, by memo or whatever means might best bring attention to it,” Young wrote in his 2012 memoir, “Forever Young.”

He said he wrote a “mountain of memos” between the two shuttle accidents to “hit people over the head.” Such practice bordered on heresy at NASA.”

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I have had an AmigaOne gathering dust next to my desk for several years now, and the last time I tried to fire it up, nothing happened – I suspect the power supply is bad. But after reading this, I may have to try again…..while I usually use Fedora most days, it’s certainly not by choice. Linux’s saving grace is that it isn’t Windows, although Win7 is light-years ahead of all the abuse in the past, despite now being two versions behind itself?! 🙂 MacOS I tolerate as always but am also several versions back on that one too – and that’s just fine by me…

The A-EON Amiga X5000: An alternate universe where the Amiga platform never died

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amazing tribute from earlier this summer following KE’s passing…..

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At 40, Voyager spacecrafts still zooming toward galactic achievement

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Oscar-winning actor Martin Landau dies at 89

We too, argued constantly as kids whether Space:1999 was better than Star Trek too – and never came to a consistent conclusion. RIP.

Space 1999 @ IMDB

episodes on YT

hard to believe we were watching that in 1975(!)

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So for a bday thing, a friend and I went to the Museum of Flight yesterday and specifically to check out the Space Shuttle Trainer they have. When NASA’s Shuttle program ended, there was of course a mad dash by all the museums everywhere to ‘get’ a Shuttle. Boeing’s Museum of Flight naturally wanted one too, but ended up getting something arguably better – the full-on Space Shuttle Trainer mockup that was actually used in Johnson Space Center for hands-on training by the Shuttle crews.

It’s important to note – this is not a flight simulator – rather, this was meant to simulate and train on nearly everything else (equipment, evac, procedures, operations, etc.) – the thing is huge and has a fully-accurate, replica cockpit and crew module underneath, built to full scale.

So regular visitors can go in the main cargo bay and in the tail section, but only special tours (yes, costs extra) can go in the pilot section and the crew module. Naturally we did that!

What follows are pics from the tour. I’ll post all the ‘plane photos’ tomorrow from the other parts of the museum we went to, but the Shuttle tour was our first priority yesterday. Definitely very cool and the tour guide was well-informed. The main take-away for me is simply how impressive a technical achievement this thing is – in one of the movies you can watch (sadly about the Challenger and later Columbia disasters) they note at one point that at re-entry to the atmosphere, the heat outside is hotter than the surface of the sun – boggles the mind. In many ways the Shuttle is a tougher and more impressive achievement than even Apollo was, despite the program not ending up near as ‘affordable’ as they predicted nor as long-lived in the end.

here’s to you, NASA!

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Click on a gallery pic, then click it again to get the high-res version….

I *totally* want to take this class!

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Lightning strikes the Space Needle

and if you just needed to know more about Seattle’s most important building, watch on…

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