A Dragon and a Dream Chaser

SWIMMINGLY: A little after 5 a.m. I checked in on the whereabouts of Dragon. I knew that it was set to be de-berthed from the International Space Station just before 3 a.m. our time, and so I was wondering if a) that happened and b) if so, where Dragon was now.

After nine days away, Dragon was making its way back to the Big Blue Marble.

We listened and watched Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center monitor Dragon's actions. The spacecraft made a few maneuvers, including a series of de-orbit burns. It also jettisoned its "trunk" - a module that will be used to carry cargo back to Earth on subsequent missions.

And then, at 8:42 a.m. our time, the capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, a few hundred miles west of Baja California, Mexico. It landed two minutes ahead of the projected time, and extremely close to its target.

The live footage of the watery landing was primitive - pixelated and grainy, like a very early video game. Apparently the feed was from a NASA  jet in the vicinity. We did get to see its chutes deployed and we could track its movements.

Finally, this evening, some good footage of the event was made available. It was taken

ALWAYS AMUSING: We also had to hit Archie McPhee today, which is an errand we look FORWARD to running!

There's never a shortage of amusing items to check out or try on ... 

That said, you can probably tell by the look on his face, CJ wasn't too thrilled with how the umbrella hat fit. Guess it's practical, just not comfortable.


PINATA PROJECT: We've been working on a couple of pinatas for the past couple of days. This morning was the fun part - stuffing them with Dollar Store treasures!

We cut into the Death Star and Meowth (a bad guy, er, cat, in the Pokemon series) and then the kids filled them. Believe it or not, it turned into a good math exercise, because they had packets with X amount of party favors in them, and I asked them to split the items equally between the two pinatas, so there was a whole lot of dividing going on. Cool!

MEANWHILE, IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS: While SpaceX has been getting all the press lately, they're hardly alone in the commercial space game. In fact, SEVEN companies are working to develop commercial crew transportation capabilities to transport cargo and U.S. astronauts to and from low Earth orbit and the International Space Station.

Just two days ago, Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) Space Systems' Dream Chaser design passed one of its most complex tests to date.  An Erickson Air-Crane helicopter lifted SNC's full-scale orbital crew vehicle to verify proper aerodynamic flight performance. The captive-carry test was conducted near the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Jefferson County, Colo.

The test was just one of many that Dream Chaser will go through to prove its wings will work. Naturally, in a future test, the flight vehicle will be released to evaluate the design's handling during the landing phase of a mission.

The Dream Chaser is designed to carry as many as seven astronauts to space, and is the only spacecraft currently under development by the commercial carrier competitors that incorporates wings and is designed to land on a conventional runway. NASA has video of the test flight here:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=145064741

WORKING ON THE CARWASH: Annabelle finished a big build in LEGO class today - a super cute car wash kit.

Naturally, that prompted me to have the "Carwash" theme song stuck in my head all afternoon.

THE DAY AFTER: This afternoon, we had an errand to run, taking us to the Ravenna neighborhood, just north of the U-District. There's a fair trade store, Ten Thousand Villages, there, and we thought it would be a great place to find an end of year gift for Bee's Bollywood teacher. We had planned on going there yesterday, but a terrible, tragic event kept us away and the area was cordoned off by the police.

Yesterday, a well armed madman shot five people at a neighborhood hub, Cafe Racer. Four of the cafe shooting victims (two men, two women) have died; the fifth is in critical condition.  It's been on the news nonstop here, so the kids were aware of what happened. After (a successful!) stop at the store, our route to the freeway took us right by Cafe Racer. We passed satellite trucks, a sprawling memorial of flowers and cards, and a throng of mourners gathered on its sidewalk.

Naturally, that sad sight led to a long, wide-ranging discussion about mental illness, gun control, the criminal mind, and suicide (the gunman wound up killing himself when confronted later in the day by police in West Seattle). In between Cafe Racer and West Seattle, he carjacked a woman on First Hill and murdered her in the process.

All in all, May 30 was an awful day in Seattle, and I can't, at the moment, think of any "good" explanations for the kids. Or myself.