Follow Up

DO YOU WANT TO BUILD A SNOWMAN?: Yesterday afternoon the kids and I spent a couple of hours with a couple of dozen very enthusiast third graders at a local school. We went to the classroom to allow the kids an opportunity to create some edible art, in the form of melted snowman cookies. 

In order to get ready, we made 30 hand-cut cookies, 30 Rice Krispies heads, a bunch of gum paste carrot noses, and 15 pounds of marshmallow fondant. We rounded up sugary ribbons and all sorts of  colorful candies, plus pretzels and parchment paper.

While the kids were at lunch, CJ, Annabelle and I set up the room. We covered each student's desk with parchment paper, and put cookies, fondant, and edible decorations on it.

 At the front of the room, there was a 'buffet' of sorts, with other items for them to choose from.

We spent about 2 hours at the school, in all. It was a little bit of chaos and a lot of fun. The kids' snowpeople were all so different. The one below is holding Earth. 

The snowies at the top of the post were made today by CJ and Annabelle, with the leftovers from yesterday's festivities. Before we left the classroom yesterday, we also put together a cookie kit for the teacher to take home to her own daughter. 

ANOMALY: First thing this morning (which was actually pretty early, because I took Christian to the train at about 5:45), I checked news about the Boeing crew capsule test flight from the Florida Coast.

I was super happy to read that the liftoff seemed to go perfectly, and read that the capsule was inserted into orbit. Yay!

A couple of hours later, the news became less encouraging. It seems there was an anomaly - a rather significant one at that - and that the crew capsule would *not* be making its way to the International Space Station, as was the plan.

Unfortunately, crew capsule Starliner wound up having some technical difficulties shortly after liftoff. As a result, it was inserted into an orbit that's incompatible with an ISS rendezvous. Intial reports point to Starliner's onboard timing system as the point of failure. Apparently the craft's software seemed to think it was conducting an orbit-insertion burn when it actually was not. What happened next was the capsule performed a series of unnecessary orientation-maintaining firings of its small reaction-control thrusters. These maneuvers used up a bunch of propellant, and which means no space station trip for it. 

Darn it.

The kids and I watched part of a rather morose press NASA conference after the news broke. The bottom line is, right now it's too early to tell how big of a setback this is going to be for Boeing, NASA and the United States' return to manned space flight. 

Early reports suggest that if it had been a manned mission, that astronauts on board could likely have corrected the misfirings before they became a mission-breaker.  Also, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said during today's news conference that handlers tried to troubleshoot the issue in real time, but in a slightly different patch of sky, .

NASA Associate Administrator for Communications Bettina Inclán, NASA astronauts Michael Fincke and Nicole Mann, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, United Launch Alliance President and CEO Tory Bruno, Boeing Space and Launch Division Senior Vice President Jim Chilton, NASA Commercial Crew Program Deputy Manager Steve Stich, and NASA ISS Program Manager Kirk Shireman, participate in a press conference following the launch of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft onboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, Friday, Dec. 20, 2019, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

"By the time we were able to get signals up to actually command it to do the orbital insertion burn, it was a bit too late," he said. "And the reason it was too late is because it appears — and remember, all of this is very early and preliminary, and we're learning things moment by moment — but it appears as though we were between TDRS communication satellites, which meant we couldn't get the command signal to tell the spacecraft that it needed to do the orbital insertion burn soon enough."

The new OFT mission profile has been worked out in a broad sense, however. Starliner won't dock with the ISS now after all, and the mission will be significantly shorter than its originally planned eight days. The spacecraft team now aims to bring the capsule down on Sunday morning (Dec. 22) at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico (which was also the primary target site for the originally envisioned OFT).

Later, after the press conference, Bridestein issued a formal statement. You can read it here:
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-statement-on-boeing-orbital-flight-test

The news conference can be viewed here: https://go.nasa.gov/2Z6GbeG

SKYWALKER SAGA: Last night was the first opportunity to see the newest episode in the "Star Wars saga, "The Rise of Skywalker."

It was dumping buckets last night, so there wasn't going to be much outdoor posing going on. I got one misty shot of the kids under the marquee, across the street from me. 

We got to the theater about a half hour before show time. That gave us an opportunity to watch the cosplayers do their thing, and check out some Star Wars costumes on display. 

The late Paul Allen owned Cinerama, and Allen owns all sorts of cool sci-fi artifacts, including the original robe Alec Guiness wore in the first Star Wars movie.

Luke's flight suit from the first two episodes was also on display. Neat-o

I'm not going to say anything about the movie itself (no spoilers!!!), other than the fact that there were cheers and tears throughout the theater. I can't wait to see it again.

SPECIAL DELIVERY: So, yesterday I posted about us leaving a little 'comfort station'/treat box on the porch for delivery drivers.

While we were gone to Star Wars, we had two deliveries. At least one of the delivery people helped themselves to some snacks, which is great. What is less great is that BOTH delivery drivers left the boxes out in the pouring rain - they didn't put it in a plastic bag or in the enormous empty plastic tub I'd left out for packages. The boxes were both completely saturated when we got home. Which is a really not good thing if, say, one or both of them contained electronics. 

I really couldn't believe it. 

Sigh. I guess the saying is true: No good deed goes unpunished.