Enter the Dragon

Courtesy: SpaceX

DRAGON ATTACK: Our day began with NASA TV's coverage. We tuned into coverage of events leading up to the historic SpaceX launch, starting with a Tweetup (called a "social" now) centered largely on the Really Big Deal going down this weekend - launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket propelling the Dragon capsule to the ISS for a robotic resupply mission.

Or, as SpaceX describes it in their press kit, "For the first time in history, a private corporation is set to prove it can deliver cargo to the International Space Station. At the Cape Canaveral AirForce Station, Fla., a Falcon 9 rocket belonging to Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), is being prepared to place its Dragon spacecraft into orbit on a test mission to the orbital outpost."

We spent time today all over the Internet, reading up on the SpaceX launch. From SpaceX's press kit, we learned lots about the cargo manifest that the Dragon capsule would be carrying. It includes 674 pounds of food and crew provision, crew clothing, "pantry" items (batteries, etc), NanoRacks Module 9 for the U.S. National Laboratory (apparently it includes a box for student competition investigations, and its scientific goals range from microbial growth to water purification in microgravity), ice bricks for cooling and transfer of experiment samples, cargo bags, and 22 pounds of computers and supplies. The total cargo mass was listed as 1,146 pounds (520 kilograms), including packaging.

However,given the really detailed list above, imagine my surprise today when I saw a headline about the "secret" cargo aboard the launch - including Star Trek's Scotty's ashes (along with 306 other souls)!!! Welcome to commercial space flight. :) To help pay the bills, they are taking on "passengers."

TEST FLIGHT: Months and months ago, we bought a model SpaceX model rocket. We carefully assembled the kit, and have been holding on to it, waiting for this official SpaceX launch day to arrive.

True confession time- I made the mistake of doing some online research and found our that it's illegal to launch model rockets from Seattle parks. Yes, we could drive to the wonderful 60 acre park in Redmond,  But in rush hour traffic on a Friday? No thank you.
So we decided to keep it local and, er, illegal. To quote Seattle son Jimi Hendrix: "Excuse me while I kiss the sky."  :)

We headed over to sprawling Discover Park, found a wide open space, and set up.

Here's CJ attaching one of the electronic ignition's clamps to one of the engine's lead wires. The parachute and recovery wadding in place, we were ready for lift off!

 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

 We have liftoff! Liftoff of the SpaceX Falcon 9 with its Dragon capsule.

 Here's some launch footage Annabelle filmed with my cell phone.

And I'm happy to report the post-launch recovery mission was a complete success. Both capsule and rocket were recovered and are ready to go again!

 We came home, had dinner and watched the clock until 1:55 a.m., the official launch time. (Christian and I stayed up, and we got CJ and Annabelle up at the appointed time.)

We watched the countdown excitedly and the announcer even SAID "Liftoff!" and well ... nuthin'. Falcon 9 didn't move an inch. The launch was aborted due to a high pressure reading in engine number 5.

Scrubbed! Drat! So back to sleep the kids went, and this morning, SpaceX's site says they'll be trying again on Tuesday early morning - 12:44 Pacific time.

We'll be watching.

 

Ants and Dance

FOOD CRITIC: At the kids sat down and prepared to tackle their math this morning, I suggested a snack. After I served it up, what do I hear but, "Is it just me, or are these the ugliest Ants on a Log ever?" CJ asked.

Apparently the look on my face was a clear indication I was, shall we say, NONPLUSSED at his comment.

He quickly assured me, "I'm not trying to be insulting, or anything."

Oh, OK. That makes EVERYTHING better. ;) Needless to say, he'll be making his own gol darn Ants on a Log next time.

TUT TUT: Just a couple short miles from our house, ancient Egyptian treasures are being installed for what's sure to be an eye-popping exhibition: Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs at the Pacific Science Center.

We checked out some photos and video from the Seattle Times showing preparations for the exhibit. You can check out the video here: http://bcove.me/2725io5x

The show opens on May 24. We'll be seeing it on the 28th. Can't wait!

AROUND MARS IN 80 DAYS: Thanks to a Facebook post from a soon-to-be Martian rover, we were reminded that 80 days from today, Curiosity will be touching down on the Red Planet.

Thanks to NASA's fantastic Eyes on the Solar System software, we can follow Curiosity's journey in real time. Here's a still shot from this morning. You can see how far the spacecraft has traveled since leaving Earth late last November, and how it's closing in on the target.

We spent a fair amount of time poking around on Eyes on the Solar System. You have to download some software to be able to use it, but it's SO worth the two minutes or less it takes to install. You'll be zipping around our solar system in no time!

MOON UNIT:  Today I had the kids complete a workbook all about the moon. We got it from a CD a friend was kind enough to pick up for us at NASA Headquarters when she was there last month for the Tweetup in conjunction with orbiter Discovery being transferred to the Smithsonian.

CJ and Annabelle worked their ways through moon-related word-find and crossword puzzles, they read a short article about the Apollo missions, and they had to use the article and a mission log to answer some fill-in-the-blank questions about the Apollo program. They learned lots in the process, including that EVA is an acronym for Extravehicular Activity, which describes any activity for which a crew member must go outside the protected "shirtsleeve" environment of the orbiter's crew cabin, that 843 total pounds of moon samples were brought back over the course of Apollo, the names of all of the Apollo astronauts, from the Apollo 1 souls who never made it off the launch pad (Chaffee, White and Grissom), to Eugene Cernan, the last human to set foot on our moon, via Apollo 17.

Later this afternoon, I 'hosted' a game show type quiz about the Apollo missions. I was impressed with how much of the info they retained. CJ, especially, shined during this activity.

DANCE PRACTICE: After several days of technical difficulties, we are now finally able to access Bee's Bollywood dance practice routine online, so we/she did a few run throughs today.

The routine is for a flash mob that will be taking place somewhere in Seattle a week from this Saturday. Ought to be interesting when it goes down ...  

Construction Zombies

Drill, Baby, drill!!

ROUGH ONE: Last night was one of those nights that really never ended. I went to bed and before I even feel asleep, at about 11 p.m., Annabelle came upstairs to report that she was feeling craptacular. I was feeling cruddy myself, and figured the bed wasn't big enough for the both of us, so I left her in my spot and went downstairs to bunk with CJ and Kirby. (And let me tell you, Kirby was THRILLED by this development and had a puppy party for the next hour or so, mostly on my chest.)

At about 3:30 I hear noise from upstairs and then in the blink of an eye Christian appears with Annabelle to report she's Super Duper sick and that she wanted so sleep with me. So then it's sick me, sick Annabelle and party rockin' Kirby all in one twin bed. That obviously spells "SLEEP," right? Yeah, notsomuch. ...

Annabelle's breathing was so labored, I listened to her every breath for a 'good' hour before I decided that we didn't need to go to the hospital, that we'd probably make it until morning (just a couple hours away at this point).

And then, at 6:30 a.m., me having been asleep for a whopping 90 minutes, what's the first thing I hear? Why, it's this ...

"Mom. Are you EVER going to get up?" chastized Annabelle (apparently breathing just fine now, thankyouverymuch). "I haven't even had my yogurt yet!" she pointed out, well, pointedly.

Glad to hear she was feeling a bit better. ...

And so, I dragged my tired, sick a$$ out of bed and got her computer fired up, cartoons on, and yogurt in hand. And so began my day.

So what does a sick family do to recover? Well, CONSTRUCTION of course!!! Cause that's how we roll here at MPA. Today, we got THREE, count 'em, THREE sill plates installed. That must be some sort of record for a framing crew of four sick, underslept workers, two of whom are under the age of 10.

In the interest of education, CJ and Annabelle learned what a sill plate is, where it goes, and about the bolts, washers and nuts used to affix them. They each got to do some drilling.

Annabelle took a keen interest in installing the washers and bolts.

She said it's because someday she wants to be able to say she helped build her own bedroom. :)

TANKED: With warmer weather upon us, CJ (a/k/a Mr. Timeline) has asked multiple times in the past couple of days about the genesis of the words "tank top." I told him that my guess was that it related to the olden times tank suits that both men and women wore. Of course my "mom guesses" weren't enough for his inquiring mind, so today we had to do some research.

Per Wikipedia, I was kinda right. It says that "tank top" is "derived from its resemblance to a tank suit, a style of one-piece women's swimsuit with shoulder straps," and that the name "derives from the 1920s term swimming tank, which is an obsolete term for what is now called a swimming pool."

Interesting! Before today, I'd never heard the term "swimming tank."

REWIND THE MOVIE: This morning CJ was asking about the history of motion pictures. Christian and I started uttering things about Edison, but we couldn't give Mr. Timeline enough specific dates and details, so we had to do some research. We wound up on a Web site called "Have Fun with History" and its "movies" section. There, we found info and a video about a  film was a test for Thomas Edison's "Kinetophone" project. It was reportedly the first attempt in history to record sound and moving image in synchronization.

The site said the video we were going to watch was an experiment by William Dickson to put sound and film together in either 1894 or 1895. As it turned out, Edison and Dickson didn't succeed in the attempt. However, the film was preserved and catalogued, and in 1964, a broken wax cylinder labeled "Violin by WKL Dickson with Kineto" was noted in the inventory at the Edison National Historic Site. But it wasn't until 1998 when  Patrick Loughney, curator of Film and Television at the Library of Congress, retrieved the cylinder and had it repaired and re-recorded. Meanwhile, the 17 seconds of corresponding file mere sent to an Oscar winning editor. Working together, expers were able to syncrohize the audio and video - more than 105 years after it was recorded.

You can see and hear the result here: http://havefunwithhistory.com/movies/dickson.html . The kids requested we watch it at least six times over.

MAGICALLY MAGNETIC: This morning, the kids re-discovered a vintage board game I keep on a shelf in my bedroom, just cause I like the looks of it.

I liked it for its retro-robot styling. I can honestly say that before today I never played with it. Turns out the darn thing is pretty cool and works like a charm. On one half of the board you put the robot in and have it point to a question.

Then you pick it up, move it to the other side and he spins around a bit and eventually settles down and winds up pointing at the correct answer to the question.

Pretty progressive for 1953, when the game was made!

Caterpillars, Clouds & a Confused Chameleon

PLAY TIME: The biggest event on today's docket was attending a production of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar & Other Eric Carle Favorites" at the Seattle Children's Theatre. Their big brother Kennedy took them. I figure if he's going to be an elementary school teacher, the more stuff he does like this now, the better.

In preparation for the play, I reminded the kids about the plot of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by cuing up an animation of the story someone had posted to YouTube.
 
I dropped them at the theater early, so they could get good seats. Good plan, but apparently when they entered the theater, they found that the first three or so rows were cordoned off, reserved for a school group. Bummer. So, they got the best seats they could and while they waited for the show to start, they whiled away the time by filling out some Mad Libs sheets for fun.

In case you're not familiar with them, Mad Libs pages are stories with blanks, where the reader/writer gets to fill in nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs to complete a story. For instance, Annabelle filled in a story titled "Chat Emoticons" that started,  "When writing an email to your best friend _______ (person in room female) or your favorite aunt _______ (first name female) in _____ (foreign country), you can use the most ______ (adjective) symbols instead of words!" Annabelle's fill ins, in case you were wondering were, 
"When writing an email to your best friend Annabelle or your favorite aunt Patty in France, you can use the most silly symbols instead of words!  

Mad Libs are great, because the kids have so much fun filling them out, little do they realize they're actually learning about the parts of speech in the process. :)

The play itself was pretty short - about 60 minutes, but that's probably not a terrible thing, given that its audience is largely preschoolers. There was a Q&A portion afterward, and Annabelle got to ask a question. (I have to think the fact she was wearing an Eric Carle shirt had to help her chances of getting called on!)

After the play, I met the three of them at the International Fountain. It wasn't quite warm enough for any splashing action today, but those times can't be too far off!

When we got home, I asked the kids to write a review of the production. Here's what they came up with.

CJ:

"Annabelle and I went to see a play. That play we went to see was called The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Instead of going with mom, we went with our older brother, Ken.

Actually, it wasn't just the Very Hungry Caterpillar. There was also Little Cloud and The Mixed-Up Chameleon. It was very unusual to see a 3-in-1 play.

At the end, we go tto ask our questions. Annabelle's question was how the clouds moved in the Little Cloud part. The Answer(er) said that there were people dressed in complete black moving the clouds."

Annabelle:

"I went to see the The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Little Cloud and the Mixed-Up Chameleon. They were all really good. I will now tell you more about the stories.

Little Cloud was first. It was about a Little Cloud who likes to turn into different shapes and is left behind by other clouds. In the end, the clouds come back, join together and make it rain.

Next was The Mixed-Up Chameleon. This was about a chameleon who wants to be like every animal in the zoo, but ends up wanting to be himself again. I think the moral might be "be careful what you wish for."

Last but not least is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Most should be farmilier with this one. It is about a caterpillar who eats and eats until it turns pupa, then it turns into a butterfly."

After that, I let them explore the official Eric Carle Web site: www.eric-carle.com . There, they found Carle's blog and biographical information, photos and videos, printables, product info, and more.

We also found and watched a charming animated version of The Mixed Up Chameleon on YouTube.

As I was writing this post, I recalled many moons ago that either Rick or Kennedy or both of them got to meet Carle once at a young author's conference.

CLASS ACT: CJ's eyes still look droopy to me and I would have liked to have him skip his acting class this afternoon, but they only have a couple practices left before their performance, so we went anyway. I figured he'd just have to tough it out for the 75 minute session.

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER ROCKET: Yesterday, we watched a rocket blast off from Russia. Today, our attention was on the Guina Space Center in Kourou French Guiana, where a European Ariane 5 rocket blasted off at about 3:13 this afternoon, our time.

The 16-story tall rocket had two payloads had been mounted atop the vehicle - a pair of mirror-like "sister" satellites built in the U.S. by Lockheed Martin for telecommunications operators in Japan and Vietnam.
Per Spaceflight Now, Tuesday's liftoff involved "unleashing 2.6 million pounds of thrust from its hydrogen-fueled main stage and twin solid rocket boosters." How I do love rocket fire. :)

As we watched, we saw the pair of solid rocket boosters jettison, and then the faring fell away. Amazing that within three minutes of launch, the craft had already left our atmosphere and reached space.

Since the technicians were speaking French, we couldn't understand hardly anything they were saying, but I told the kids when I heard one of them repeatedly saying "nominal" that it was a good thing. You definitely want to hear "nominal" during and post-launch.

After the launch, we checked out the Arianspace Web site for the first time. From the site we learned the company was founded in 1980 as the world’s first satellite launch company and that since then, it has launched around 300 payloads, "accounting for more than half of the commercial satellites now in service worldwide." Impressive.



BTW, yesterday marked the two-year anniversary of us watching shuttle Atlantis blast off from Kennedy Space Center. That's a day I'll remember forever.

Short Report

STRUNG OUT: It was a gloriously sunny weekend and while usually that would mean we would be all over this map, this weekend, well notsomuch. :(

CJ was still ailing big time. We had an event on our calendar Saturday we've been looking forward to for weeks. It was the annual Family Day presented by the Earth & Space Sciences folks at the University of Washington.

We got there early - a little after the 10 a.m. opening. Walking around, the campus seemed like a ghost town compared to when we were there a couple weeks back for Husky Fest. Back then, Red Square, just west of the Salluzzo Library, was teeming with people.

And we had George all to ourselves.

The event we were attending was held inside Johnson Hall. I wonder what these words above the north entrance to the hall say.

The four of us went inside, but when I found the rooms to be crowded and things to be slow-going, I figured taking sickly CJ out of there to be a good idea.

And so, while CJ stretched out on a sunny spot, Annabelle was inside, learning about soils of the Pacific Northwest, temperature extremes, the temperature on Mars (as compared to Earth and our moon), how to make ice cream using liquid nitrogen, rocketry, using microscopes to look at rocks and minerals, lightning and measuring earthquakes. For her efforts she got a cool canvas UW Earth & Space sciences bag and a Junior Scientist diploma. :)

At least the Johnson building courtyard had some cool architecture to check out while they were gone.

OSMOSIS: Today, CJ was still puny and Annabelle's cold is coming on strong. That being the case, I didn't feel like foisting any true school work on them. Instead, I let them spend a good portion of the day poking around the Internet on their laptops, with NASA TV running in the background. I could only hope they'd learn something by osmosis with NASA TV on, and I think they did!

Fortunately, today was a launch day, so NASA TV was extra engaging. Of course these days a "NASA" launch means watching one of our astronauts go up on a paid-for seat on a Soyuz rocket ... but a launch is a launch and it's exciting nonetheless.

We learned about the astro- and cosmonauts that would be headed for the International Space Station today, and about some of the scientific experiments they'd be conducting.

Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

This evening, the Soyuz TMA-04M rocket successfully launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying Expedition 31 Soyuz Commander Gennady Padalka, NASA Flight Engineer Joseph Acaba and Flight Engineer Sergei Revin to the International Space Station.

That is one cool looking rocket, I must say.

STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT: Tonight, as we were coming home from the store around 9 p.m., I asked the kids if they saw any lights in the sky. They both spotted just one bright one, to our north and west.

I asked them if they knew the poem that goes along with seeing the first light in the night sky. They hadn't heard it before so Christian recited it for them: "Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight."

I was sitting there thinking how sweet that little poem is when Annabelle groused from the back seat: "That's no STAR. That's VENUS."

LOL. OK, fine, Annabelle. So Venus is not technically "a self-luminous celestial body consisting of a mass of gas held together by its own gravity in which the energy generated by nuclear reactions in the interior is balanced by the outflow of energy to the surface, and the inward-directed gravitational forces are balanced by the outward-directed gas and radiation pressures." (per Houghton Mifflin)