Brain Freeze

SLURP: Once a year, just like clockwork, the calendar flips over to July 11, and that means FREE SLURPEE DAY!!!

Right after picking the kids up from ground school, we piloted the Honda to a nearby 7-Eleven. The place was packed - cars everywhere and hordes of kids arriving on foot. Despite that, mercifully, it took only minutes for CJ and Annabelle to score their sugary concoction. 

PILOT PROBLEMS: The kids are continuing private pilot ground school. Some of the info they learned yesterday had to do with airport rules and regs, weather's impacts on flying, and pilots' fitness for flight.

They both came home yesterday talking about a video they had to watch about the effects of hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, on a pilot. Though it's a super unfunny thing in real life, this training video they watched is a bit of a crack up!

RELIVING APOLLO 11: The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing is coming up on July 20. That milestone has been getting lots of press as the golden anniversary approaches. There are articles, photos, reminiscences, and more. But if you want a full-blown Apollo 11 experience, you should check out this website: apolloinrealtime.org/11

There, you fill find ALL of the voices on Mission Control audio and ALL of the mission’s historical media, including footage of Mission Control, film shot by the astronauts, as well as television broadcasts transmitted from space and the surface of the Moon. It's all been painstakingly synced by Ben Feist of Toronto, and archivist Stephen Slater.

The site lest you jump in at any point. For instance, during the mission anniversary (July 16th – 24th), by clicking the ‘Now’ button on the site, you will be dropped in to that moment of the mission exactly 50 years ago, to the second. Here's what the site's front page looks like. 

What a treasure trove of one of humankind's most memorable milestones!

Plugging Away

SCHOOL VIEWS:  CJ and Annabelle's adventure in private pilot ground school continues. Every weekday morning we take them to Aviation High, where they spend seven some hours mostly in classroom settings.

The photo above is their view of the King County International Airport/Boeing Field runway from the third floor, across the street to the west. 

Once in awhile classroom lectures are interrupted with flight simulation training, by a visiting guest speaker, or a mini field trip to see something at The Museum of Flight. On one recent trip, they got to see the upper level lounge on a vintage 747.

 It's absolutely groovy, isn't it?

I wish I could get my hands on some of the orange upholstery pictured above!

LONG DISTANCE CALL:  An interesting article popped up in my feed today. It was titled, "If aliens call, what should we do? Scientists want your opinion."

How could I *not* click on that?

The story, on the website Vox, talked about the pros and cons of communicating with extra terrestrials, and made note of a couple of programs to that end underway right now. 

One of the questions posed was how, if it all, humanity should respond if we receive a message from an alien civilization?

Some, including physicist Stephen Hawking and SpaceX's Elon Musk have warned that communicating with extraterrestrials could pose a catastrophic risk to humankind. Right now, scientists at the UK SETI Research Network (UKSRN) are mulling over the topic, and one thing they seem to agree on is that Earthings are "woefully unprepared to handle an alien message if we receive one," per the Vox article. 

Some of the issues at hand are who should get to decide what is communicated and when. The UKSRN has posted a survey online. Some of the questions posed include: 

• Some people think we should send messages into space even if we don’t receive a message first. What is your opinion?
• If we receive a message, do you think we should reply/make contact or not? Why?
• What would you consider a "credible source"?

You can read (or respond to) the "Message from Afar" questions here: https://www.fromafar.world/opinion

Another 'message-to-space' project underway involves the Arecibo Observatory, in Puerto Rico. A little back story: In 1974, scientists used the enormous Arecibo telescope to send a radio broadcast into outer space. It was a message of zeros and ones, designed to alert aliens who intercepted it to our existence here on Earth. To commemorate the 45th anniversary of that transmission, researchers at the observatory asked teams of students from kindergarten to age 16  to create the New Arecibo Message.

While there's no monetary prize for the contest winner, it would be a bit of a feather in one's cap to  have your message broadcast into space and to potentially become the first human ever to communicate with extra terrestrials. 

The deadline for entries has passed, unfortunately. The winning team will actually get to travel to Puerto Rico to be part of the special celebration of the 45th anniversary of the original Arecibo Message, November 16-17, 2019. in  Pretty cool! I'm looking forward to learning what the winning message is!

Downtown

BUMPER TO BUMPER: Most of our days have been consumed with the kids private pilot ground school studying, but Sunday morning, we took an hour or so to stroll downtown Renton.

It was some sort of community celebration. For us, the draw was the city's allegedly largest food truck rodeo of the summer, and a zipline "over downtown Renton," or so the ad said.

What we found upon parking and walking into the old part of downtown was actually blocks and blocks of a really big car show.

Now, we're not normally 'car show people,' meaning we don't go out of our way to attend auto shows. However, if we happen into one, like we did on Sunday, we're happy to check out the autos. 

It was an impressive collection on display. Dozens upon dozens of cars, from stock sedans to wild hot rods.

I think most would agree that this highly stylized, flashy orange 1939 Lincoln Zephyr was one of the more eye catching cars on display.

 Its interior was as snazzy as the exterior.

Speaking of snazzy interiors, we encountered a Chrysler Imperial Crown that actually has a working record player in its dash. And check out its fancy swivel front seats!

According to a poster next to this beauty, the car is so rare, there are less than 5 show-quality cars of its type in existence these days.

When we spied the car with 'wings,' we knew it was a Delorean, of course. 

And one can't say "Delorean" without thinking about "Back to the Future" shortly thereafter. 

And sure enough, in the back seat of the car, there was a flux capacitor, just like in the movie.

This was actually not our first time seeing this car. I spied it near the Mariners' stadium a couple of months ago, parking in the garage south of the stadium. I figured it belonged to a player, because someone with an MLB salary seemed likely to have the money to drop on a ride like this. I snapped a quick pick back then.

Some of the cars we saw had been 'slammed,' or lowered substantially. I can't fathom how this old Chevy even drives!

While there were certainly fancier, more rare and much more valuable cars in the show, I will always have a soft spot for the Volkswagen Beetle.

Perhaps you head the news that Volkswagen announced it was ending Beetle production (again). In fact, the very last one rolled off an assembly line in Mexico today.

While we were wandering, we kept looking for the "zipline over downtown Renton." 

Imagine how underwhelmed we were upon finding out the attraction was really only a short run over part of a non-descript parking lot. Sigh.

However, CJ still wanted to give it a go, so he and Christian strapped in for about 8 seconds of fun (which cost $25, BTW). 

Go Fourth

BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS: Sunday morning, I made sure to be up early so that we were set to watch the final match in the women's FIFA World Cup Championship. The U.S. was taking on Belgium. I decided the day before that having U.S. inspired toppings on a Belgian waffle would be the way to go for breakfast. So simple, and a fun way to start the day.

It was a great game, and the U.S. came out on top, so hooray for that. I'd like to think my waffles helped the cause. ;)

UP ON THE ROOF: Our Fourth of July was pretty low key.We didn't light off a single celebratory explosive device ourselves, but did climb up onto our roof to watch other people's money go up in smoke.  We have a 180-degree view to the south, and could see fireworks in Renton, Issaquah, Federal Way, Auburn, Kent, Burien, SeaTac, Tukwila, White Center, and likely even as far south as Tacoma. The photo below shows about  a third of the slice of sky we were watching, right before things got crazy.

FLIPPED A DISC: We spent a couple of hours playing disc golf for the first time. Turns out there's a big ol' course not too far from our house! We headed out in the morning and played 15 of the course's 27 'holes.'

As an added bonus, the course is under the flight path for SeaTac Airport, so we got to do tons of plane spotting while playing.

Some of those planes were pretty darn low when they flew over!

Each 'hole' (they're baskets, really) on the course had some sort of sponsor or dedication. This one cracked me up.

We really enjoyed the outing, so much so that we went back on Saturday morning to finish the balance of the course. We've now ordered official disc golf discs (there are drivers and putters, just like 'real' golf), and are looking forward to hitting the course again soon.

Third of July

DAISY DEW: Summer weather seems to be on hiatus the past couple of days. The dozens of daisies all along our driveway were covered with dew this morning.

The good news is, our waterways and forests can use the rain, and it might even help keep some Fourth of July fireworks fires at bay.

GRAND DESIGN: Here and there, I see stories about Detective Cookie's Chess Park, and I'm still blown away seeing so many people wear shirts with Annabelle's design on them. They look great (said the unbiased mother)!
https://southseattleemerald.com/2019/06/24/kids-take-home-the-win-at-chess-competition-against-seattle-police/?fbclid=IwAR1xqCm_5wpgJXlvmFVBF65nNKA6efyOF7jxspiqa0OHcNj9Yns1jku5NCU

NASA NEARBY: News from NASA - our nation's space agency has launched a new website where you can find NASA connections close to home.

Called NASA in the 50 States, the site allows you to click on any state on a map of the U.S. to see how that state is important to the study of space and Earth science.

From it, we learned that at least seven NASA astronauts have been born in the state of Washington. They are: Michael Barratt, Bonnie Dunbar, Richard Gordon, Gregory Johnson, Anne McClain, Stephen Oswald and Dick Scobee.

You can check out the site here: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/nasainthe50states/

HOLEY MOLEY: There's trouble on Mars. Specifically, with the "mole," or digging instrument on  NASA's InSight lander. 

(Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech)n Mars.

The "mole" started digging back in late February of this year. However, it soon appeared to be stuck, which forced the mission team to command the mole to sit idly by while engineers worked toward a solution. 

To that goal, on June 28, InSight's robotic arm was used to remove the mole's surrounding support structure, giving the team a look at the mole, which they hope will help them figure out what the technical difficulties are. 

To date, the "mole" has only been able to dig down about 12 inches (30 centimeters), nowhere near the depth it was designed to dig.

Meanwhile, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has speculated that the Martian soil may be posing problems. Specifically, the material where the lander is may not be giving the necessary kind of friction that would allow it to balance the recoil from the mole's self-hammering motion. Instead, it might be bouncing in place rather than digging, said a NASA expert.  If that's the case, that could be a formidable challenge to overcome.

Winging It

FLIGHTY: Yesterday morning we headed to Raisbeck Aviation High School, a next door neighbor of The Museum of Flight.

It was our first time in the school, so we had big eyes checking everything out. Our purpose for being there was for the orientation for the private pilot ground school program CJ and Annabelle started yesterday. Monday through Friday through June 22, they'll be attending class from 8:30 to 3:30.  

It was a packed house in the small school gym. There are 104 students in the program this year, twice the number that there used to be when it started four years ago. Yesterday, they spent some time in The Museum of Flight's flight simulator. CJ and Annabelle both happily reported that they did not crash their computerized planes. 

One of the cool things about being at The Museum of Flight so often, is that we often see unusual (to us) aircraft during our visits. Case in point: We caught the take off of a Brazilian Air Force jet on Sunday afternoon.

ORION: Early Tuesday morning, NASA successfully conducted a test of the Orion spacecraft’s launch abort system at Space Launch Complex 46 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Fortunately, the demonstration showed that the system can outrun a speeding rocket and shuttle astronauts to safety during an emergency during launch. (Unfortunately, the retired space shuttles had no such system, resulting in disaster for the entire crew of the Challenger back in 1986.)

Called Ascent Abort-2,the test lasted about three minutes. The test vehicle was atop a modified Peacekeeper missile procured through the U.S. Air Force and built by Northrop Grumman. The  Orion test spacecraft traveled about six miles high, which meant it was under high-stress aerodynamic conditions expected during ascent. When the abort sequence triggered, within milliseconds, the abort motor fired, which caused the crew module to pull away from the rocket, and a jettison motor fired, which released the crew module and sent in on a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.

You can see video of the test below.


RARE SIGHTING: Have I mentioned we have a gecko living with us for a bit? Stevie is a low maintenance pet. You hardly ever see her. She mostly just hides out in the hollowed out log or UFO in her enclosure, but last night she was totally out and about.

Not sure what got her going, but I'm guessing it was food (she's standing right over it in the photo), or maybe she was thirsty.

Mission to Mars

LIFT OFF: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, CJ has spent all day (from 8:30 to 5:30 p.m.) at The Museum of Flight for his Western Aerospace Scholars summer experience.

Below is a schedule of events for those three days.

In a couple of hours, we'll be headed to the closing presentation and awards ceremony. We're eager to see how his Mars mission stacks up! He wasn't feeling super confident when he left this morning, but hopefully today he and his team got some real progress made. Time will tell. ... 

COMPLETE: CJ has completed his first ever Perler Bead art project.

He carefully followed the pattern, placing each little bead just so, and in the end he produced this colorful Boston Terrier.

Once all the pieces were in place, it was time to melt them together with an iron. Once that was complete, the piece was mounted to a canvas using spray adhesive, and it now hangs in CJ's room.

I think he really enjoyed doing this, and hope that he tries another project again soon.

IN BLOOM: Yesterday we spent a couple of hours out in the yard, mowing, and weed 'eating,' and such.

I stopped several times to admire the blooms around this place.

And where there were blooms, there were bees!

Little bumble bees seemed to love this lavender.

And I spied our honeybees out and about, as well! I love the detail of the wings in the photo below.

I caught the bee below in flight.

And check out the eyes on this guy (below)!