Spaceflight

OK, I spent *way* too much time playing this game last night: Orbitrunner. And because I'm the kind of guy that I am, I wanted to inflict it on you.

It's actually a very interesting bit of gaming, for as simple as seems at first glance. Here's the description from the site:

Control the Sun with your mouse. Use it to manipulate the planets' paths. The Sun's pull gets stronger as planets get closer. If the gravity is at a right angle to the direction of travel, an orbit can form. Make sure planets don't leave the screen or collide!

Do you recognize these words?

"HOUSTON, TRANQUILITY BASE HERE.
THE EAGLE HAS LANDED."

Of course you do. That's the transmission sent to NASA Mission Control from the Moon on this date in 1969.

I was at a Boy Scout camp outside of St. Louis when it happened. That night, we all sat around a big firepit, and tried to watch a small black and white portable television with bad reception as Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin (Buzz) E. Aldrin, Jr. made the first human steps onto the Lunar surface and spoke these words (links to audio file on Wikipedia):

"That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind."

And the world was changed forever.

So, where were you?

Jim Downey

(Cross posted to my blog.)

The toilet on the International Space Station is broken.

It's interesting to me that a system like that was not engineered to be redundant. Where is the backup plan? The spare parts at least?

On a slightly different note, I own an RV. It would be awful to deal with a broken toilet in the RV - and we could just go outside and find a public restroom - or a tree - if we had to.

This is a classic "we need to learn from this" moment. I mean, it's not like we are going to stop flying into space. It is only going to become more commonplace. A little thought and re-engineering of the freakin' toilet facilities seems to be in order.

Just remember, astronauts: If it's yellow, let it mellow. if it's brown, flush it down.

In spaaaaace!