APOLLO ARTIFACT: Today we made a quick run through of the very awesome Museum of Flight to see a special, temporary display of an artifact retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean floor. It's an injector plate from Apollo 12's F-1 rocket engines. It helped boost the 40-story Saturn V rocket from liftoff until the edge of space, then separated with the first stage of the rocket and fell 40 miles through the atmosphere and into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean where it rested for 44 years.
Bezos Expeditions recovered the engines off the ocean floor, deeper than the wreck of the Titanic, in 2013. You can (and should) watch a great video of the recovery operations here:
Apologies, my photo of the injector plate (up top) is a pretty awful one, taken with my old, not-so-awesome cell phone. I'll do better next time, and can't wait until the Museum of Flight has the wh
ole engine on display!!! Here's a darn good photo from The Museum of Flight of the artifact alongside Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, who underwrote the recovery of the Apollo artifacts.
BEFORE ROSA: A couple of nights ago, we watched a new-to-us show called "What History Forgot." We landed upon it as I was flipping through channel choices. I know CJ, especially, is a huge history buff and so we checked it out.
The episode featured a segment about civil rights activist Elizabeth Jennings. A full hundred years before Rosa Parks became famous for her protest on public transport, African American New Yorker Jennings became famous for refusing to follow the orders of a bigoted street car driver. She was literally thrown off a streetcar in 1854, but reboarded and refused to be denied service.
Her brave actions led to the eventual desegregation of all New York City transit systems by 1865. Awesome.
http://www.ahctv.com/elizabeth-jennings-fights-segregation-100-years-before-rosa-parks-2/
THE CANDY MAN: During that same hour of "What History Forgot," we learned about Gail “Hal” Halvorsen, a C-54 pilot who became known worldwide as the “Candy Bomber” during the Berlin Airlift in 1948.
Halvorsen felt compassion for children blockaded in West Berlin, and so he began tying gum and candy tied to handkerchief parachutes which were dropped during bombing runs. Children came to recognize his 'bomber' as he'd wiggle the plane's wings back and forth to wave at the kids. Halvorsen's actions became known as "Operation Little Vittles."
https://youtu.be/OmanS-4nc4Y
WITHERING HEIGHTS?: It's winter here in Seattle, and plants are withering big time, which is to be expected. But up on the International Space Station, it's always winter. Or summer. Or spring. Or fall. Or none of the above - there are no seasons (or there are many seasons?) when you circle Earth 16 times a day. So why are the plants up there struggling right now?
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly shared this post yesterday on social media: "Our plants aren't looking too good. Would be a problem on Mars. I'm going to have to channel my inner Mark Watney. #YearInSpace"
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