The Japanese moon probe Kaguya is busy working to send back some videos of the moon. The one linked here is a composite of two: the first is the Earth rising on the lunar horizon, and the second is the Earth setting. If you don’t have eight minutes to watch the whole thing, I recommend sliding up to the half-way point to see the Earth set: very cool!
The New York Times’ David Pogue wrote up a great review of noise canceling headphones. I’ve got a pair of the Bose 2 QuietComfort 2 headphones, and I don’t fly long distances without them. The difference in sound between whatever device you might listen with and the Bose (either with something playing or just the noise canceling feature) is amazing! I enjoyed reading about David’s three-leg trial where he actually put all ten models on and compared them. Read the article, and make your own choice; I’m very happy to see that there are alternatives to the very pricey Bose models.
Here’s the scenario: after keeping a careful eye on the schedule for the second launch of Discovery in 2006, and after several weather delays, it looked like the evening of the 9th of December, 2006 was a go. We turned on CNN and watched the live coverage of the launch. When we watched the launch go off without a hitch, we ran out the front door, down the stairs and looked to the north. As soon as we got outside, there was a bright orange fireball (the light you see in the middle of the photo). That bright fireball stopped before I could set the zoom on my camera, as the external thrusters fell off. It’s not much to look at in the photo, but you should have seen the big ol’ grin on my face…
In June, 2006 we were able to take a quick trip up to central Florida. We first headed to the Kennedy Space Center where there are several places to explore. The tours take you to more places, and we decided on the Maximum Access (or something like that) tour and got to head out to where the shuttles are launched. We were lucky because the shuttle Discovery was set to launch in a couple of weeks. Since we took the better tour, we were able to get within 1 km. of the pad (and much closer to the shuttle-less other pad.) This was much closer than I was able to go when I went in 1985, and we were able to get out of the bus this time and take in the awesome view.
There are huge tunnels under the pad into which several thousand liters of water are dumped just before ignition. This water helps to both dampen the sound and vibration, and keep things at a manageable temperature. This shuttle turned out to be a bit delayed and launched on the 4th of July, 2006.
I highly recommend a trip to the Space Center out at Merritt Island. You will not be disappointed! 