Friday Fun & Games

O CAP'N!  MY CAP'N!: If you're an 8-10 year old Internet meme hunter like CJ and Annabelle, the last couple of days you have been all agog about the 'fact' that Cap'N Crunch was exposed for not being a captain at all. That's right. As (I think) first reported on Foodbeast.com, a real Navy captain has four stripes, but if you look at ol' Horation Magellan Crunch (yes, that's his 'real' name), he only has (gasp!) THREE stripes.  Controversy of epic proportions ensued. 

As you might imagine, the nasty little detail asploded across the Twitterverse. 

The crazy accusations forced none other than the Cap'N himself to address the topic in his weekly YouTube message. You can hear his explanations for yourself here ... 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqMFV-QbxSE&list=PLnYFbIC2Jog7kiQUuG8KHJq4qd3GkKzI6
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100848870?__source=xfinity|mod&par=xfinity

So there you have it, the Cap'N's explanation. Are you buying it?

GONE MISSING: At 9 a.m. sharp, we tried to find the NASA Digital Learning Network special broadcast regarding the unveiling of Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center's Visitor Complex.

It was a go no. First, I was told my software was out of date, which I knew wasn't correct - I have the latest WIndows Media Player and QuickTime. We double checked all that, and I poked around the Intertubes and saw there were two different start times for the broadcast publicized - 9 a.m. or 10 a.m.  So, got the live DLN feed, but it was hardly live - stock footage, no Atlantis in sigh. Boo! :(

No idea if/where/when it ever aired. But let's not let that get us down! :)   Hail Atlantis!!!

By logging into the media portal of Kennedy  Space Center last night, I suddenly regained access to all sorts of fabulous photos. Yay for us! :) I was emailed high resolution beauty shots of all of Atlantis' good sides (not that she has a bad side) overnight.  

Like this ...

                                                   Photo courtesy: Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex - Space Shuttle Atlantis^SM
I love it!!!

And this, the entrance to the Atlantis exhibit ...

                                      Photo courtesy: Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex - Space Shuttle Atlantis^SM
And this ...

                        Photo courtesy: Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex - Space Shuttle Atlantis^SM
Makes me want to buy a ticket down to KSC, pronto!

The last (and only previous) time we saw Atlantis, it looked like this ...

the liftoff of STS-132!

BEFORE & AFTER: It came to my attention yesterday that CJ had forgotten what the words prefix and suffix mean.

So, to freshen the memories, we spent about an hour yesterday doing some online drills on the topics.

I found these three teaching games for them to play: First up was a FunEnglishGames.com challenge designed to help players learn how to add letters to the beginning or end of a word to modify its meaning. http://www.funenglishgames.com/grammargames/prefixsuffix.html

They also played a dynamic, loud-ish Scholastic.com game called Short Circuit, where they had to match prefixes and suffixes and their meanings:  

http://www.missmaggie.org/scholastic/shortcircuit_eng_launcher.html

The Sadlier-Oxford game Crystal Castle made them play attention to spelling while they were adding prefixes and suffixes. http://www.sadlier-oxford.com/phonics/crstcast/crstcastle.htm

GAME ON: This afternoon we headed out to Lowe's to pick up some very not exciting or compelling items. Afterward, we stopped by a nearby St. Vincent De Paul thrift store. One of the fabulous finds we scored there was a never-been-opened board game, Robot Explorers. 

It was less than $2, so we took a chance on it. I figured it couldn't be too old, as it said our solar system has 8 planets (sorry, Pluto).

In the game, you have to collect specimens from each planet. The sun ins in the center of the board, and the planets are in orbit around it. You have to land on a space with a shuttle so you can switch orbits to go collect the various specimens.

CJ and Annabelle found it HYSTERICAL that they had to collect a gas specimen from Uranus, by the way.

Annabelle's was the day's big winner.

After we played, I looked the game up on Amazon. Wow, the reviews were mostly scathing! I was surprised. We thought it was fun..

EXTRA INNINGS: Last night, the Mariners had a fireworks show after the game. They also had some fireworks during the game, actually winning (for a change) in extra innings.

We didn't go to the game, but we did go to the top of the hill to see if we could see the fireworks. They were nowhere near as big as we hoped/expected them to be.   Most of them (at least from our angle!) looked like they barely cleared the top of the stadium height-wise.

It was a beautiful night, though, and the kids had fun playing in the park until nearly 11 p.m.!
I wish I'd had a tripod for my camera.

To the left of the frame you can see the Great Wheel, and you can also see the roof of CenturyLink field lit up like a rainbow for Pride Week.  The fireworks are to the right of the rainbow. It looked like they were igniting them from two different launch pads.

NASA Mania

                                                               Artist's image courtesy NASA

ON THE CUSP. OR NOT.: Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 keeps on chugging along. Now more than 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from our sun, the data it's sending back strongly suggests the spacecraft is closer to becoming the first human-made object to reach interstellar space. 

Three recently published papers in the journal Science detail Voyager 1's entry into the magnetic highway, where it has made observations of the highest rate so far of charged particles from outside the heliosphere, the magnetic bubble containing our solar system, solar wind, and entire solar magnetic field. Voyager 1 has also detected the waning of charged particles from inside the heliosphere.

Per a NASA press release today, to date scientists have seen two of the three signs of interstellar arrival they expected to see (charged particles disappearing as they zoom out along the solar magnetic field, and cosmic rays from far outside zooming in). However, scientists have yet to see the third sign, which is an abrupt change in the direction of the magnetic field. That change would indicate the presence of the interstellar magnetic field.

It is unknown exactly how much further Voyager 1 has to go to reach interstellar space. Scientists estimate it could take several more months - or even years - to get there. It's uncharted territory, after all. What is (supposedly) known is that the heliosphere extends at least 8 billion miles (13 billion kilometers) beyond all the planets in our solar system. That's a loooong way. The press release today explained that the 'environment' within this heliosphere is dominated by our sun's magnetic field and an ionized wind expanding outward from the sun, while outside the heliosphere, interstellar space is filled with matter from other stars and the magnetic field present in the nearby region of the Milky Way.

There's lots more to be learned about Voyagers 1 and 2 here: http://www.nasa.gov/voyager andhttp://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov .

ATLANTIS UNVEILING: Just a quick 'heads up,' on Friday, June 28, the new Space Shuttle Atlantis exhibit at Kennedy Space Center will be officially unveiled. There will be a special webcast on NASA's Digital Learning Network Event for the celebration. It begins at 10 a.m. Pacific time - http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/programs/national/dln/webcast/webcast.html. (UPDATE - some spots on the Internet it says/said the broadcast began at 9 a.m. Pacific time - that turned out not to be the case, based on the definitely NOT Atlantis-centric broadcast on DLN at the time).  UPDATE TO UPDATE: We're having ZERO luck watching the broadcast - we can't get it on any of our computers on any of the DLN Channels. Very disappointing. 

You know we'll be watching, especially since Atlantis was the one and only shuttle was saw launch in person. 

I've seen some photos from media friends who have been given advance looks at Atlantis' new display. They are spectacular!  Guests visiting the new Space Shuttle AtlantisSM attraction will see something only astronauts in space have witnessed - the orbiter, tilted at a 43.21-degree angle with its payload bay doors open.  It's a very dynamic display and one that took careful planning, because the 60-foot long, 2,500 pound, graphite epoxy composite doors were designed to be operated in zero gravity.  

             Photo credit: Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex - http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/

For more information and to view the webcast, visit http://dln.nasa.gov.

All this said, I sure wish the shuttles weren't all museum pieces now. Sigh. 

MARS, REVISITED: We here at MPA have our name on Mars already, thanks to NASA's opportunity to send them along with Mars Science Laboratory a couple years ago.  BTW, 1.2 million names were on board that mission! And look - ours are right here, on these (red circled) microchips, on the Red Planet right now!

            Photo credit: NASA/JPL

This go 'round we have the chance to, well, go 'round Mars on the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN) spacecraft, which is set to launch in November of this year. MAVEN will orbit Mars, exploring the planet’s upper atmosphere, ionosphere and interactions with the sun and solar wind.

MAVEN will carry names on a DVD. Also on board will be a trio of haukis, because a haiku contest is part of the promo. The public will vote on which haikus (in the 5-7-5 style) to send.  We submitted ours today, and will publish them here once the contest deadline closes. 

After our submissions, we each got a nifty certificate of participation. Sweet!

To get your name on board and your haiku submitted, visit http://lasp.colorado.edu/maven/goingtomars/send-your-name/ BY JULY 1, 2013. 

UP AND AWAY: At dinnertime we watched a rocket-bearing airplane lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Underneath the body of the plane was an Oribal Sciences Pegasus XL rocket, and on board that rocket was NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft.  At 7:27, the rocket separated from the plane, and at the appointed time, IRIS separated from the rocket, and the command center at NASA Ames had communicated with the craft.  Cool stuff!

Check out this 1-minute video of the launch yourself, especially if you've never seen a mid-air rocket launch: http://www.floridatoday.com/videonetwork/2514419157001/NASA-IRIS-mission-launches-from-Orbital-aircraft

Over the Rainbow

                                                 Source: George Takei via who knows where
MORE EQUAL RIGHTS: The big news this morning on Twitter, Facebook and even (gasp) mainstream news feeds was the Supreme Court striking down the Defense of Marriage Act, and California's Proposition 8 being rejected.
In our household, and no doubt tens of thousands of others, this led to extended conversations about marriage, civil rights, state vs. federal laws and more.

I told the kids that they're watching a civil rights tide turning, as has happened throughout history. For instance, slavery was abolished, women won the right to vote, Jim Crow laws were struck down and civil rights for minorities were supported. And now sexual orientation and identity rights are being recognized.

As has been the case with seemingly every other civil rights campaign, it's a long and winding road, often painful, sometimes even violent. But as Martin Luther King Jr. observed, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."

Today was one of those days.  This short video does a nice job of capturing some of the highlights - and lowlights - of the LGBT civil rights march. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZAhLbC9CVoM


And if you haven't seen or heard it, this song, "One Love," by one of the kids' favorite singers, Macklemore,  of Seattle, does a beautiful job of summing it all up. ...


KING'S COURT: When will we learn that the Mariners this year = heartbreak, disgust and/or some combination thereof? Apparently not any time soon, as we were back at Safeco Field this afternoon for a Wednesday matinee.

But how could we stay away? King Felix was pitching. That had to turn out well, right?

Um, no ... Apparently he can't win a game if the Mariners don't score runs. Sigh.

But we had fun nonetheless. We always do.  We were dressed like kings, and ate like kings ...

The ballpark is beautiful, and the action, good or bad, is compelling.

The views are awesome. I loved how this building was framed by the roof's steel trusses.

Heck, even these people had fun, though they seemed to have ZERO interest in the ball game. Seriously, what's with sitting at the tables on the concourse eating while the game's going on?

Science Centered

IMAGINATE: Yesterday, we headed to Pacific Science Center. The top of our 'to do' list was seeing the movie Air Racers 3D. It was a 40-minute movie mostly about the annual Reno Air Show and its National Championship Air Races. There was also vintage footage of the evolution of airplanes, old military recruiting videos, some info about the plane's innards, some bios of race pilots ... I could go on. Overall, Christian and I thought the movie could have used some more or different editing. 

The exit from the theater ended up putting us right into the Destination Station exhibit, about the ISS (the one we got to preview a couple weeks ago).  We looked at a few things we missed during our first visit, including this glove used during extra vehicular activity (space walking!). 

It looked like the glove would be a pretty good fit for CJ?

The kids also answered some ISS trivia on a touch screen. (They scored 100 percent!)

From there, we went to another new exhibit at PSC, "Imaginate," which is a multi-activity exhibit designed to introduce visitors to skills and attitudes it takes to innovate. It tests people's observation and questioning skills and risk taking mettle.

One of the things the kids did was play with touch screens that let them swap out face parts. At the top of the post, you see Annabelle's 'before' photo. Here's her after.

Yowza. I think I like her before MUCH better.

CJ gave it a go, too. Here's his 'before' ...

His after is downright frightening!

He was quite pleased with it. :)

There were a couple of displays about flight, including one where a computer predicted your wingspan.

The kids also experimented with paper airplanes, gears, friction, sound, illusions and more. One exhibit was all about innovations, including ferrofluid, which was invented by Stephen Papell of NASA in 1965. It was an innovative way to move fluids in space, using magnets to manipulate the iron-oxide enriched liquid.

The kids had lots of fun trying to get the ferrofluid to make the porcupine shape above. 

 And, of course, we can't have a trip to Seattle Center without the obligatory Space Needle shot.

HISTORY LESSON: Today the kids test drove a new-to-them history-oriented game, "Mission US." It's an in-depth, interactive multimedia game, with animation, narration, sound effects, text and more.
 
There are two missions to choose from. The kids both opted for Mission 1: “For Crown or Colony?” It put them in the role of Nat Wheeler, a printer’s apprentice in Boston in 1770. During their adventure, they encounter Patriots and Loyalists, and when conflict escalates to the point of the Boston Massacre, players are faced with choosing where their loyalties lie.

The second mission is “Flight to Freedom,” where they player is a 14-year-old slave in Kentucky who is navigating her way to freedom in the North. 

CJ and Annabelle each spent well over an hour playing their roles and learning about revolutionary times in America. CJ, especially, loved the game, and wasn't going to be satisfied until he saw his mission through to the end.

MEANWHILE, AT NASA: We'll be on launch alert Thursday, when NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft-and-science instrument is set to launch.

                      Image Credit: NASA/Lockheed Martin 
Pictured here in a clean room at the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Sunnyvale, Calif. Per NASA, "IRIS is designed to provide significant new information to increase our understanding of energy transport into the corona and solar wind and provide an archetype for all stellar atmospheres." Using spectrometry and imaging, it will trace the flow of energy and plasma through the chromosphere and transition region into the corona.

Here's a short video about the IRIS mission ...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvZ8EQKtSWQ


While we'll be following the launch's progress, it's definitely not a typical fired-from-the-pad endeavour. Rather, it's a mid-air launch!  IRIS will get a lift into Earth orbit on an Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket. The relatively petite Pegasus is NASA's only winged launcher in NASA's inventory, and has launched 18 successful missions to date.

                                       Photo credit: NASA, via Wikipedia
The Pegasus, with IRIS on board, will be carried to about 39,000 feet under a modified L-1011 airliner taking off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Once at the designated spot over the Pacific Ocean off the California coast, the plane will drop the Pegasus to begin the launch.

More on IRIS here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/iris/index.html

NASA also recently released a new photo of the Orion crew module.

                                                  Image Credit: NASA
In the photo, NASA astronauts Cady Coleman and Ricky Arnold step into the module hatch during a series of spacesuit check tests conducted on June 13, 2013, at the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Hopefully sooner rather than later, the Orion crew module will serve as both transport and a home to astronauts during future long-duration missions to an asteroid, Mars and other destinations throughout our solar system.

On Monday, we watched long stretches of a 6-plus hour spacewalk by cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin . The two installed cable clamps, attached handrails and tested rendezvous equipment to help ready the International Space Station for installation of a new Russian laboratory module later this year.

It was interesting trying to read about the spacewalk on the Roscosmos Web site. We could understand a lot more after Google translated it into English for us. ;)

Dry Side and Cloud Cover

PONY PILGRIMAGE: Saturday, we were on the road at 8 a.m., destination Wenatchee. Why would we drive 2.5 plus hours to see a movie? Because our kids are Pony CrAzY and the new My Little Ponies' movie "Equestria Girls" had a ridiculously limited release, and that was our closest/best option.

Our morning started off fine, but about 20 minutes east of Issaquah it took a terrible turn for the worse. A portable sign along the freeway let us know that I-90, our route to Wenatchee, was closed due to frickin' ROCK BLASTING. Really?! Thank you, WSDOT, for letting us know that when we got ON I-90 in Seattle (she says sarcastically). EGAD.

Pony panic set in immediately. What to do, what to do? We checked a map on our Nook and decided to head up to Highway 2 at Snoqualmie. It would add an hour to our trip, but at least they (hopefully) weren't blowing the freeway up further north.

So we got to see waaaay more countryside than we cared to, and the stress meter was spiked, but the bottom line was we made it to Wenatchee in plenty of time. Phew.

Frankly, being forced to go up to 2 meant for a prettier drive. ... While the Leavenworth area still had lots of evergreens, the hills started getting steeper and craggier (is that a word?).

Soon, green started giving way to yellow and brown. And rocks. :)

 
Of course, once inside the theater, our world was awash in pony colors. I'm happy to report the movie wasn't awful. The kids LOVED it, as did the theater full of bronies. We spoke with a number of them, including a family behind us. They were a man and woman my age and their 17-ish year old son, from Woodinville, WA, who made a weekend out of traveling to see the movie. "It's the first vacation we've had in years," the dad, in a Derpy t-shirt, shared with me.

There was a large group of 20-somethings, men, women, white, black and tan, also in attendance. They, too, had made the trek from Seattle. Bronies are hardcore, man. That's how we roll. ;)

CJ and Annabelle were in fully pony regalia. Bee wore her Pinkie Pie costume from Halloween, and CJ had on his Brony outfit (Rainbow Dash shirt, socks and MLP hat). Before they got out of the car at the theater, I warned them, "You're not in Seattle any more." In the Emerald City, you can dress like that and either a) not get a second glance or b) have admiring folks want to know where they can get your outfit. The other movie goers and the theater workers loved the kids get ups, though. Photos were taken and no doubt they're all over Facebook by now.

After the movie, we went to Confluence Park, which is where the Wenatchee and Columbia Rivers converge. It's what's pictured atop this post, and here are the kids dipping their hooves into the waters. It was c-c-c-old, per their report.

We came home via I-90. That afforded us a nice view of the Pinnacles.

However, in the windy mountains, the kids were begging for a rest stop. There were none to be found. However, after awhile, we saw a sign for a state campground named Swauk and figured there'd be at least an outhouse there. And there was. ...

However, the joy was short lived. Oh, how I wish I had a photo of the kids' faces as they emerged from said outhouse. Priceless! To add to the ambiance, the place was surrounded by biting ants (Christian got some blood sucked), and roaring highway noise. I had to laugh when I read the campground's description on its Web site as "A beautiful campground nestled in a grove of large Ponderosa Pine and western Larch trees."

I'll give them their trees, but perhaps the Web site noting the campground's usage is "light" is a giveaway. It's really primarily a rest stop without flush toilets. Enuf said.

SUPER MOON: Saturday, after the movie and a quick linner (combo of lunch and dinner), we didn't dally on the east side because we wanted to make sure we were back to Seattle in time for the "Super Moon," or the moon reaching its perigree - the closest it gets to Earth during the course of its orbit.

This year's Super Moon  is up to 13.5 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than a typical full moon. During perigree in the early morning hours of June 23, the moon was about 221,824 miles away. That's 30,757 miles closer than when it's at its furthest distance from Earth (its apogee). No wonder the moon looks so big this weekend!

Around 8 p.m., we headed up to the hilltop park in our 'hood. There were a number of photographers already there, their big-lensed cameras on tripods, ready to shoot.

Unfortunately, right where the moon would be rising at 8:24, there was a big-and-growing bank of clouds. Bummer.

But we waited for a 'good' 45 minutes, hoping they'd break up. Meanwhile, we enjoyed Seattle's picturesque nature.

The Mariners were playing and I could actually see the images moving around on the big screen inside Safeco Field! In the photo below, you can barely see the screen - a whiteish box below the gray roofline, just to the left of the orange crane.

This is about the clearest shot we got of the moon Saturday night. Oh well. There's always next year's perigree.

Here's a photo of the Super Moon in another Washington - D.C., that is. Looks like they had some cloud cover, too.

                                                  Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls