Eyes in the Skies

SMILE FOR THE CAMERA: Little did we know, very recently we were featured in a super special photo opp. ...

Last night I was catching up on Twitter, and I saw the following Tweet from International Space Station commander Chris Hedfield. ...

Intrigued, I followed the link, expecting it to feature only the Market. Imagine our surprise when we could see our neighborhood!

Read on for more compelling news from the ISS ...

TO TELL THE TOOTH: Have  I mentioned lately that All. Day. Long. the kids ask me 1,001 or so questions, and I'm expected to just pull the answers out of my (insert body part here)? True confession time: I don't know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING.

Today, one of the bajillion things asked of me was "What's fluoride?"

And these kids won't take, "You know, It's that stuff in toothpaste that fights cavities " as an answer. Nooo. They want to know the fancy stuff, like where fluoride comes from - what it actually IS, and how it works to fight cavities.

And so, we spent a good part of each and every day researching. Which, of course, is not a bad thing. It's just bothersome and time consuming. ;) Just kidding. Mostly.

Turns out fluoride is derived from fluorite crystals, like these.

Fluorite is the 13th most common element in the Earth's crust, according to KidsHealth.org.  Further, KidsHealth.org says "Fluoride also allows teeth damaged by acid to repair, or remineralize, themselves. Fluoride cannot repair cavities, but it can reverse low levels of tooth decay and thus prevent new cavities from forming." Good stuff! 

SPACE TWEEPS: The Twitterverse has been all aTwitter over the last 48 hours over an exchange between the most famous starship captain of all time - none other than Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise - and Commander Chris Hedfield, a Canadian astronaut now on board the ISS.

William Shatner (a/k/a Kirk) Tweeted first, and the fact that a real life starship commander replied - from space!- captured the fancy of geeks the globe 'round.

Eep! Sci fi geek love overload!!!

And I guess it shouldn't be any surprise that none other than Buzz Aldrin weighed in today. ...

However, what we here at MPA find interesting is that Buzz's Tweet today goes 180 degrees against what he told CJ at The Museum of Flight's "The Wings of Heroes" panel back in September. That's right, boys and girls, just 4 months ago, none other than our lil' CJ specifically asked America's most famous astronaut if he would like to be part of a Mars mission. Buzz replied without hesitation  unequivocally saying he would absolutely NOT want to go to Mars. Here are my notes from that exchange. ...

CJ was one of a handful of people who got to ask a question of the panel after the presentation. He asked Buzz Aldrin if he'd like to go on a mission to Mars.
Earlier, Aldrin had shared that he and Neil Armstrong disagreed about what NASA's next big mission should be. Armstrong favored a return to the moon, while Aldrin is advocating for Mars. (Buzz did later say he wouldn't be against "mining the moon ... and selling the water to the Chinese to drink." Yowza.)
Despite recommending NASA have the Red Planet in their sites, Aldrin told CJ and the crowd that in college he was a sprinter and a pole vaulter and duration events weren't his gig. Interesting. 

Be what it may, it's fun to follow the musings of astronauts real and sci-fi revered.