On a Voyage

FAR FROM HOME: A new PBS program, "The Farthest," aired last night. We gathered 'round the telly to watch. It was a captivating documentary about humanity's greatest expedition, the Voyager mission.

Two amazing spacecrafts, which had memory 240,000 times less than today's average smart phone, but they are boldly going where no man has gone before. 

Here's a trailer for the show: https://youtu.be/znTdk_de_K8

Following is CJ's review of the program.

Last night, KCTS9, our local PBS station, aired "The Farthest", a documentary about the Voyager mission, a NASA project to send information about humans to potential extraterrestrial life. According to its page on PBS' website, The Farthest tells the captivating tales of the people and events behind one of humanity’s greatest achievements in exploration: NASA’s Voyager mission, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this August. The twin spacecraft—each with less computing power than a cell phone—used slingshot trajectories to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. They sent back unprecedented images and data that revolutionized our understanding of the spectacular outer planets and their many peculiar moons.

The most well known (not necessarily the most important) aspect of both of the Voyagers is the "Golden record". The Golden Record contains pictures and sound (in particular music and speech clips) designed to give an idea to aliens as to what our planet is like. The sources used in the Golden Record came from many different places and periods (from ancient Greek greetings to modern English, and classical music to Johnny B. Goode, for example).

In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first man-made object to exit the solar system.

PBS has many video clips - and the entire program - on its website. Check it out here: http://www.pbs.org/the-farthest/video/

T

Stars, Moons and Flying Machines

STAR GAZERS: I love this photo of MPA's intrepid totality eclipse seekers. CJ, Annabelle, Christian and our great friend Glenn traveled down to Madras, Oregon, to be in the blackout zone of the Great American Eclipse of 2017.

A fellow eclipse hunter took the shot for the gang. 

Following is CJ's (too brief) recap of his eclipse experience. 

On 21 August 2017, people all over the contiguous United States watched a total solar eclipse happen, in which the moon briefly entirely covered the sun (it was less than three minutes, but I don't remember the exact time).

In preparation for the eclipse, two days prior, I went down (along with my dad and my sister) to see my paternal grandparents in Bend, Oregon. Bend is the county seat of Deschutes County, and the largest city in central Oregon.

On the 20th, Nonnie, my sister, dad, and Glenn (a family friend) went on a hike to a nearby hill. I stayed in bed for that portion of the morning, due to being sleepy. Later that day, my dad, sister, and I went to the Juniper Swim & Fitness Center, where we spent a couple hours swimming in the pools and going down a slide.

On the 21st, the three of us and Glenn got up early in the morning to head further down south, to park our car close to a camp full of people who were also eager to see the eclipse. After over an hour of waiting, for just a little over two minutes, the moon was completely blocking the sun. It was very cold, as well as very dark.

PLANE SPOTTING: One of the reasons we love the new MPA campus is that we're right between Boeing Field (to the west) and the Renton Municipal Airport (to the east). Flying machines everywhere!

Today, we drove east, and pulled off into a parking lot on the west side of the Renton airport for the first time ever. What an interesting 10 minutes it was!

Straight off, I took a photo of this brand new Southwest airlines plane, because I have a friend who just loves Southwest planes.

One of the things the kids and I noticed was the plane's interesting split wing tips. We'd never seen that before!

My mind immediately went to another friend, James. An aviation junkie. James was my go-to guy for anything aviation. I could take the worst photo and send it to him and ask, "What the heck is this?" and he'd know.

Sadly, James died last year. My aviation Google is gone. :( But today, I posted the photo above to his Facebook page for old time's sake, saying I missed him and his knowledge.

Within moments, one of his aviation geek friends chimed right in, letting me know what we were looking at. He wrote, "The split winglets are a standard piece of equipment on the new 737MAX, the one you saw is probably one of the first 5 ever built and should be delivered in the next couple months."

So neat-o. We saw a relatively rare bird, one of the first of its kind!

The Southwest painted plane wasn't the only split-winged specimen we spied.

There was also this one, below.

Our new aviation friend noted, "That's another 737 MAX8 that's in a test livery, however it's testing life is done and it'll be repainted and delivered to southwest soon."

I love planes, but know so little about them. I asked if 'livery' was the word for the structure around the plane. From that we learned " livery is a fancy word for paint scheme on the plane, so notice it doesn't have an airline livery on it, it's what's called Boeing "house colors".....the Steel cage I think you're referring to is the jet blast wall to prevent any damage behind it during engine runs and reduce noise for the community."

I also shared a photo of this eye-popping plane. It actually made our new aviation friend flip out a little.

"Oh wow!!!! Just saw the Japan transocean picture Now that is a hell of a catch," he said, adding that he was thinking about driving 3+ hours from where he lives just to see it. 

The paint job is an homage to a whale shark. Annabelle loved the eye and nose of the plane.

A real whale shark looks like this, in case you're wondering.

Turns out the plane we saw is the only one of its kind in the world, painted in the blue Jinbei livery (look at me throwing around aviation terms). This article fills in all the details: 
https://www.knaviation.net/jta-announces-jinbei-737-800

The place we saw today is expected to enter into service around November of this year, per the article on KN Aviation we saw today. 

Watery Grave Discovered

     USS Indianapolis, 1945 - US Navy photo

DAY OF DISCOVERY: With all of the eclipse hubbub yesterday, I held off on posting about the *amazing* recent discovery by Paul Allen and his team. They found the wreckage of the USS Indianapolis. It was lost on 30 July 1945, the greatest single loss of life at sea in the history of the U.S. Navy. 

The 35 on the hull was their sure indication it was the long-sought after battleship. The Indianapolis was found 5,500 meters below the surface, resting on the floor of the North Pacific Ocean.

When I saw the exciting news from a post on Paul Allen's personal Facebook page on Sunday, one of the first comments I saw was, "Why were they looking for it?"

Dude, do the Google! Or at least watch "Jaws"!

The first time I heard about the Indianapolis tragedy was in a movie theater at Jantzen Beach, Ore., in the summer of 1975. The movie was "Jaws" and there is an EPIC scene in the movie when Captain Quint (as portrayed by a reportedly intoxicated Robert Shaw).

Captain Quint talked about his fear of sharks and how it dated back to his experience being on the Indianapolis back in 1945, when it was sunk by being torpedoed by the Japanese.

The Indianapolis had made a high-speed trip to deliver parts for Little Boy, the first atomic bomb used in combat. It was a highest level, super secret mission. During this mission, the Indianapolis was carrying parts and enriched uranium, about half of the world's supply of Uranium-235 at the time, or the atomic bomb Little Boy, which would later be dropped on Hiroshima.[

Here's the Indianapolis in 1939 ...

And here it is a few years later, with a "dazzle camouflage" paint job. 

After delivering its super secret cargo, the Indianapolis was torpedoed by the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-58 while on her way to the Philippines.

The ship reportedly sunk rapidly, in 12 minutes. There were 1,196 crewmen aboard, approximately 300 went down with the ship.  The remaining 900 or so faced exposure, dehydration, saltwater poisoning, and shark attacks. The ship went down so fast there were few life boats deployed, and almost no food or water. 

Crew men bobbed in the Atlantic as the sharks circled. And because the mission was so secret, no one knew. A routine patrol passing overhead four days later spied some of the surviving crew. There were heroic efforts to save the remaining, including strapping soldiers to the wings of the aircraft and flying them to safety.

Of the 1,196 sailors and Marines on board, only 317 survived.

This passage from Wikipedia gives just a glimpse of the situation:

Lieutenant R. Adrian Marks was dispatched to lend assistance and report.[16] En route to the scene, Marks overflew USS Cecil J. Doyle and alerted her captain, future U.S. Secretary of the Navy W. Graham Claytor, Jr., of the emergency. On his own authority, Claytor decided to divert to the scene.
Arriving hours ahead of Cecil J. Doyle, Marks' crew began dropping rubber rafts and supplies. Having seen men being attacked by sharks, Marks disobeyed standing orders and landed on the open sea.[17] He began taxiing to pick up the stragglers and lone swimmers who were at the greatest risk of shark attack.[16] Learning the men were the crew of Indianapolis, he radioed the news, requesting immediate assistance. Doyle responded while en route. When Marks' plane was full, survivors were tied to the wings with parachute cord, damaging the wings so that the plane would never fly again and had to be sunk.[16] Marks and his crew rescued 56 men that day, more than one-sixth of the 317 survivors.[16]

Can you imagine? Survivors strapped to the airplane's wings?! Amazing.

Back to the present: Paul Allen and his team recently acquired and retrofitted the 250-foot R/V Petrel with state-of-the-art sub-sea equipment capable of diving to 6,000 meters (or three and a half miles). These are some of the photos they have shared so far. 

Read more at https://www.paulallen.com/wreckage-from-uss-indianapolis-located-in-philippine-sea/#tAAJUvQdJIkcXL39.99

BASEBALL CONNECTION: Wouldn't you know, yesterday's eclipse had a baseball tie in? I was watching NASA-TV and learned that two minor league baseball stadiums, Volcanoes Stadium in Keizer, Ore., and the Charleston River Dog Stadium, were both in the path of totality. 

Each park had a special eclipse ballgame, and halted play during the eclipse. The Salem-Keizer game was the first professional baseball game ever delayed by a solar eclipse, and the ball that will be used for the ceremonial first pitch will be sent to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

I sure wish I had been in Salem for the Volcanoes' game! :/  The team had awesome uniforms for the occasion!

Black Hole Sun

The last glimmer of the sun is seen as the moon makes its final move over the sun during the total solar eclipse on Monday, August 21, 2017 above Madras, Oregon. A total solar eclipse swept across a narrow portion of the contiguous United States from Lincoln Beach, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina. A partial solar eclipse was visible across the entire North American continent along with parts of South America, Africa, and Europe. Photo Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

LIGHT'S OUT: Today was the day. The day we'd been waiting for for years now. The Great American Eclipse. 

Christian and the kids were down south, in the totality zone (lucky dogs). Meanwhile I was home with the dogs. :/ (Me = unlucky dog.)

The southern contingent rose before the sun, and headed from Bend to Madras, 'ground zero' of the eclipse in Oregon.

Christian and I spent a lot of time strategizing about where they should go try to go view the eclipse. We had a short list of public properties, and Christian decided upon the water department as their target.

As wonderful luck would have it, they were the only ones there. Score!

Meanwhile, back here at MPA. I cued up the Science Channel and NASA TV coverage of the event.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=130&v=g0dz8TpV9RY


I'm without a good camera right now, so I had to bust out the 15 year old point and shoot/fixed lens camera for the event. This was the best I could do.

CJ and Annabelle will be home tomorrow, so stay tuned for first person reports from them about experiencing totality!

Getting Ready

PROVISIONAL: The Great Eclipse is closer and closer, and we spent today getting ready. Packing, and laying in supplies, which included everything from gasoline and flat tire fixer to Moon Pies and Sunny Delite. You know, all of the essentials!

Christian and the kids will strike out for points south at the crack o' dawn tomorrow, while I hold down the fort here with three dogs. Not sure whose assignment will be more challenging. 

We have been reading traffic reports all week and they are ugly, at best. Fingers crossed and hoping for some sort of miracle. The forecast is promising at this point, for the 10:21 a.m totality event! 

This cool video does a great job of explaining the phenomenon and getting us amped up for Monday!

IT'S A SIGN: Yesterday, we went to Wal-Mart and scored a couple of treasures. We had gone there to pick up a cute little billboard that I know we'll use lots for our many events.

 Cute, isn't it? (And, apparently, effective. The Seahawks won last night.)

An impulse buy was this ...

because everyone needs a panda mask.

When Annabelle and I saw the bin of them in the store, I knew we were going home with one. They had a rabbit (kind of scary, its ears were too short), a yellow bear, some kind of dog, and some cute sloth masks. We came home with the one and only panda one left.

Turns out these "Maskimals" are kind of a thing - nearly sold out nationwide. The one we scored was only $19, but they're being resold online for $70. Yowza. I should have bought them ALL!!

Movie and More

FLY-IN MOVIE: This evening, we headed to The Museum of Flight for a movie. The show was outdoors, in the museum's huge Aviation Pavilion. 

The screen was huge - nearly as tall as the tail of the 787 it was next to!

We went in and set up our chairs ...

and then we walked around the pavilion a bit.

The kids had fun with the statues on site.

Below they're imitating "the shooter," who helps aircraft launch from ships.

 And here's CJ doing his best D.B. Cooper impersonation. 

They explored the new kids' play area, complete with an Alaska Airlines plane. 

 CJ tried to refuel the aircraft.

 And they learned they're a bit too big for the TSA station.

The time we were there made for some pretty lighting on the planes.

Have I mentioned how much I miss having a real camera? I was stuck with just my cell phone tonight.

But back to the movie. ... 

Spare Parts is a 2015 film directed by Sean McNamara,  based on the Wired Magazine article "La Vida Robot" by Joshua Davis, about the true story of a group of students from a mainly Latino high school, who won the first place over M.I.T. in the 2004 MATE ROV competition.

Here's a trailer for the movie: https://youtu.be/aozTwsSQ_sI

UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER:  Unsettling encounter this morning. The kids and I were checking out a park near our new house for the very first time - Skyway Park. 

Skyway Park is located in an unincorporated urban area west of Lake Washington that is bordered by Seattle to the north, Tukwila to the west and south, and Renton to the east. 

If you drive through the area, your first impression of the park's immediate surrounding neighborhood might be that it looks a little 'rough.' Litter, run down homes and run down autos were decidedly not few or far between.

The park, itself, however, is inviting. Skyway Park has 23 acres and has three baseball fields, an informal football/soccer field, a nice big playground, a cool looking picnic shelter, basketball and tennis courts, and a restroom. 

The park has wetlands (they were pretty dry at the present, given this summer's drought). The wetlands function as the headwaters of Taylor Creek, a salmon-bearing stream that passes through Seattle’s Deadhorse Canyon and enters Lake Washington, per a King County report. 

Today, the park was a tad eerie when we arrived; There was not a single other soul in the 23-acres. That gave me a bit of a pause ("Why is no one here enjoying the park?"), but we persisted with our visit.

We walked around checking out the ballfields and picnic area, and a nice playground. At one point, I noticed a young African American man in the distance enter the park on foot. He kept to himself, causally ambling through the parking lot. Meanwhile, the kids were playing and I was walking the dogs in circles. It came time for us to leave and as we walked back to our car, we were surprised to see two squad cars,(we hadn't seen or heard them enter the park), and two officers and the young man being questioned/detained. This is where things got weird for me. My first thought - and what I said aloud to the kids - is, "We need to stay here and make sure he's OK."

We stood within eye and earshot - closer than where I took this photo - until the young man was put in the squad car.

True confession: I was taken aback at my own reaction to the situation. I think once upon a time, I might have thought, "Oh good! Glad to see police get a 'bad guy' off the street," or "This is none of our business, we need to go." But today, my overriding though was fear for the young man's safety, given there were two armed Caucasian-appearing officers, one young man of color, and no one (except for us) around as witnesses. These are the times we live in. 

I could see the female officer watching us intently, and got the impression she wished we'd move along. Instead, we stayed and watched and listened as they asked him his name, the male officer mentioned something about a warrant. I told the kids I was so glad the young man was not resisting arrest, and also noted that that, alone, wasn't necessarily enough to ensure one's safety in that situation, based on way too many videos we've all seen.
My reaction really surprised me. I wonder at what point along the way my mind flipped to the thought that the officers were the ones to potentially fear in that situation. The thought was unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and disconcerting.

I know there are LOTS of good cops out there. The vast majority I'd like to think. But thanks to the proliferation of cameras everywhere, we've seen, graphically, that there are a whole lot of ones to fear, as well.

Not our normal trip to a park.

In happier news, following are a few park shots. 

There were some neat metal signs telling about wild- and plant-life one was likely to see in the area. 

And the kids mostly enjoyed the playground ...

Except, when she attempted to go down the slide, Annabelle called out, "This slide has a fatal design flaw." 

I kid you not, at that very moment, I was standing reading this sign.

Annabelle explained that the tightness of the corkscrew and shape of the metal made it hurt when she went down.

IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T HEARD: There's going to be a Really Big Deal Total Solar Eclipse next Monday (8/21). Here's a link to the official NASA Website all about it: https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/

Forty

LONG LIVE THE KING: Yesterday and this morning, our art curriculum consisted of paying tribute to The King in confectionery form. Specifically, sugar cookies with fondant, with Elvis-related images carefully painted atop. 

A friend of mine was born on the day Elvis died. She turned 40 this year, which means Elvis Aron Presley has been gone for four decades. 

Wow.

I'll never forget hearing the news. 

It was a sweltering hot day in Southwest Washington. My sister and I were playing ping pong in the semi-basement garage of our home when we got the devastating news.

Today, I was thinking about that day and that year, and really, '77 was seminal in my life.

A humble peanut farmer became president of the United States.

And 1977 was the year the first Star Wars movie came out. Talk about a game changer. 

That year, David Bowie's album "Low" was released. 

Tracks on it included the haunting "Heroes."


And then, come August, Elvis Presley died. 

Devastation.

Forty years. Gone in the blink of an eye.

But enough of me reminiscing. Back to the cookies. ;)

SMART DREAM HOME: This afternoon, the kids attended a workshop at Living Computers: Museum + Labs. 

The challenge was to take a dollhouse and turn it into a 'smart home.'  

I'll let CJ tell you a bit more about it. 

At the Living Computer Museum today, we participated in a 2-hour workshop, titled the Barbie Smart Home workshop. As described on the Living Computer Museums + Labs' official website, "In this 2-hour workshop, student teams wire-up a doll-sized smart home to come alive at night. Learn what it takes to merge good interior design with predictive sensors, circuits, and Javascript programming in this program for 10-16 year old students."

Annabelle and I were the only 2 students in the class, thus essentially making it a private tutoring session. Using a device known as the micro:bit [sic], I managed to hook up multiple devices to a dollhouse to turn it into what is known as a "smart home".

For example, I was able to program an LED to turn on when its sensors (located on the micro:bit) were in the dark. I was also (with trial and error) able to get a speaker to play a ditty upon the front door being opened.

And here's what Annabelle had to say. ...

Today at the Living Computers: Museum + Labs, my brother and I took a workshop called “Barbie Smart House”, which involved programming multiple functions for a toy house. We used a Micro-Bit Brand Micro Controller to program things like switches, motors, speakers, and lights. In my toy house, I included a speaker doorbell, a servo motor ceiling fan, and a light-sensing LED that would turn on when it was dark.

The actual programming was a lot like another programming language me and my brother have used called Scratch. The system allows you to easily program by putting blocks of code together like a puzzle. The Micro-Bit was set up in a way where we could simply download the program and it would almost immediately work. The only bad part was that CJ and I were the only two people to sign up! That did, however, give us a chance to go at our own pace and get lots of help from our teacher. It was really interesting to learn more about smart homes and how to make one on our own!