Stalls and Stops

PLEASANT PAUSE: Sometimes getting stopped by a raised bridge is OK. Case in point: On our way to Shoreline this afternoon, a lift of the Fremont Bridge froze us in our tracks. We were near the front of the queue, and I told the kids they should pop out and check out what the hold up was. And so rather than grousing in the car, they got to enjoy some sunshine, a view of a majestic sailboat, and the picturesque Aurora Bridge. What a nice delay. :)

LIGHT READING: We're working through our Einstein class. Not easy material. We watched a couple of video lectures today with professor Larry Lagerstrom of Stanford, and we started reading one of Einstein's papers from his 'miracle year.'

My goodness Mr. Einstein uses big words. We have to stop a time or two every sentence to touch base and make sure everyone is understanding it.

STARRY, STARRY NIGHT: Last night we got a break from the blanket of clouds, and at 9:19 we were able to see a nice, long flyover of the ISS.  It was spectacular - the kids were jumping up and down on our roofdeck, waving at Cmdr. Chris Hadfield and crew.

While we waited for the ISS to appear, we found the Big Dipper and the North Star, and wondered what the three extra bright stars by the moon were. From EarthSky.org, today we learned they were Castor and Pollux, the Gemini Twins, above the moon.

Castor is actually SIX stars! It's comprised of three pair of binary stars, all revolving in an amazing dance around a common center of mass. How cool is that?!

    Graphic via EarthSky.org
The brightest star we could see was just below the moon. Turns out that is/was Procyon. Today, we learned it's a star in the Lesser Dog (Canis Minor). It's sometimes called the Little Dog Star.

But it's not so little. Turns out Procyon, 'only' 11.4 light years away, is 1.4 times larger than our sun, and its diameter is roughly two times that of our star. So very interesting.

SCRUBBED: We've had this date circled on our spaceflight calendar for awhile now, as it was supposed to be the launch date of Antares, a prototype rocket of Orbital Sciences Corp. Sometimes things don't go as scheduled. ...

Orbital is a competitor of SpaceX, looking to run ISS resupply missions for NASA. Today was supposed to be a demonstration mission - no ISS berthing and a simulated cargo.

      Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls
One of the elements that made today's launch attempt super intriguing is that the engines strapped to the rocket are recycled. As in 40-years old from a defunct moon mission (N1) for the Soviet Union. Seriously. AeroJet dusted 'em off, brought 'em over, and strapped 'em on. (OK, so I'm sure it was a little more complicated than that but still, wild, no?)

Also making this launch different, it was from NASA's Wallops facility, on the east coast of Virginia, with waves from the Atlantic Ocean lapping right up alongside the pad. That was different! Launch time was supposed to be 2 p.m. our time, which is right between the kids' science and math classes in Shoreline today.

So, while the kids were working in teams in science, I quietly booted up the laptop and hopped on NASA TV in the back of the room. I wanted to have it good to go, so CeeJ and Bee could quickly watch the launch between classes. However, when I shared with the the science teacher that there was a live launch schedule for this afternoon, she immediately (bless her heart) pulled it up on her classroom computer and projected the pre-launch footage to the large screen.

The kids (not just mine!) immediately responded, asking, "Is that LIVE?!?!" :)
Nothing like a live rocket launch to capture the attention and imagination of a room full of kids!

The pre-launch shots scrolled in the background while the kids worked. At about 1:48, the teacher brought the audio on the broadcast up. At that very instant, three words came crackling out of the speakers. "Abort! Abort! Abort!"

The teacher and I looked at each other, and I said, "That's not what you want to hear. You want to hear 'nominal!' "  I also told the class that in rocket launch speak  'abort' means something went wrong, and no rocket would be launched today. BUMMER!

It quickly became apparent that the scrub was due to an umbilical connection prematurely separating from Antares' upper stage. That's not good. The next attempt will be no earlier than Friday at 2 p.m. Pacific time. Stay tuned.

FRESH AIR: When we got home, the kids asked to play outside. The answer to that is ALWAYS "Yes."

I love eavesdropping on their elaborate, fantastical games. Today's involved something about city crushing robots and such. Time well spent.