It really did snow in Houston this year, and I have video proof!
Monday, December 14, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
4th of July BBQ
I went from having no plans for the 4th, to hosting a party/BBQ at my house. And it was awsome. A party complete with Burgers, Brats, Beers, corn on the cob (on the grill!), and Rock Band. Then we headed to Pasadena fair grounds for fireworks. It was all pretty fun, good food, good company. Here is the album:
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Beach week, conclusion.
So, I guess I spent less time on the internet than I thought I would. That translated into significantly less updates over the course of beach week 2009. Anyways, I hope to give a good overview of the week here on the blog, complete with photo album and play by play. This may take a while to put together, due to all the house work I have neglected, but it will all be posted eventually. Here is an album to get you started.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Beach Week, Part 1
At the beach for a week with old High School buddies! Having a blast so far, so in the down time at the house we rented, I will be doing some blogging!
We got to Salvo, NC around 1pm Sunday, but couldn't get into the rental property until 2:30, so we spent a few hours that day on the beach and in the water. Then we did burgers and hot dogs on the grill for dinner.
Today was the first full day at the beach. The weather was great, and the waves were huge! Just got back in, showered, and am now helping Brian cook dinner. Tonight it is Chicken Breast on the grill, half with Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, half with a sweet mescuite dry rub, cooked over the grill. Gotta go help now, so here is today's Burn Update:
Monday, June 1, 2009
Pictures from my last trip home
Totally forgot I had uploaded these!
Pictures from my last trip home: Emily's graduation, night out with my cop and lawyer friend, and hanging out with the family and the entire neighborhood. Good times!
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| From 2009-05-23 Ems graduation |
Pictures from my last trip home: Emily's graduation, night out with my cop and lawyer friend, and hanging out with the family and the entire neighborhood. Good times!
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Six person ISS crew on it's way, and nomination of new NASA Admin
Just wanted to post a little something about a few things NASA related that you all might be interested in. The first is the news that the second half of the first 6 person Space Station Crew is on it's way! Soyuz TMA-15 launched today from Baiconure Cosmodrome, on it's way to a docking with ISS for the start of 6 person ops. This is big news for us, especially since we just started processing urine into potable water last week (my group was partially in charge of getting the toilet to work so it could ship urine to the processor). We did a lot of other work to prepare for six person ops, but this is probably the most visible of our contributions. Internationally, it has big implications because the crew will be made up of astronauts from all the space agencies participating in the ISS program. NASA, ESA (Europe), JAXA (Japan), Roscosmos, and CSA (Canada) will all now have astronauts on board, come Soyuz docking day.
The other thing worth mentioning is the nomination of Gen. Charles Bolden as NASA Administrator. Obama has made his pick, now it is up to Congress to confirm him. As a former Space Shuttle Astronaut, you would think he would be a great choice for the manned spaceflight crowd, but the fact is he is also very supportive of the additional goals of the space program. He has shown his support for manned exploration as well as the science programs of NASA, many of which were cut when NASA had to reorganize after budget cuts. He is also a big believer that the work NASA does today is what will influence the engineers and scientists of tomorrow. With Bolden at the helm, I can see him fighting for more funding for science programs, and maintaining current funding for exploration prgrams (which would all be a good thing).
The other thing worth mentioning is the nomination of Gen. Charles Bolden as NASA Administrator. Obama has made his pick, now it is up to Congress to confirm him. As a former Space Shuttle Astronaut, you would think he would be a great choice for the manned spaceflight crowd, but the fact is he is also very supportive of the additional goals of the space program. He has shown his support for manned exploration as well as the science programs of NASA, many of which were cut when NASA had to reorganize after budget cuts. He is also a big believer that the work NASA does today is what will influence the engineers and scientists of tomorrow. With Bolden at the helm, I can see him fighting for more funding for science programs, and maintaining current funding for exploration prgrams (which would all be a good thing).
Anyways, that is the big news from today for you.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
The Long Awaited New House Album...
I know, I know, this took me forever to put up. I have been really busy and only recently was able to upload the few pictures of the house that I have taken. I will try and add some more in the coming days, but for now this should be enough to get you started.
Stats:
House Square Footage: 1580
Yard: 8750
2 car garage
15 minutes from Johnson Space Center, no traffic ever.
Stats:
House Square Footage: 1580
Yard: 8750
2 car garage
15 minutes from Johnson Space Center, no traffic ever.
Enjoy:
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Coolest Pictures of the International Space Station You Will See [until STS-127 flies]
You can't Photoshop this sh*t...
With the STS-119 mission to ISS complete, the station is now symmetrical and a whole lot more capable. Not to mention how gorgeous it looks now, sailing over planet Earth.
In just a few short months, the International Space Station crew will grow to 6 long duration astronauts (up from 3), assuming we can get the potty to work! This is a big step for the world's space programs, and hopefully the work we do in the coming years will help open up that frontier to commercial entities. By having commercial companies develop Low Earth Orbit, NASA (and ESA and JAXA and Roscosmos) can get back to doing what they do best, exploring and pushing back our boundaries! Ad luna, ad ares, ad astra!On an interesting side note, Stephen Colbert recently won an online voting contest NASA held to name the last permanent habitable module the US is launching to the station at the end of the year. Colbert beat out Serenity for the new name of Node 3. I think it is tragic that he won, but I also can't deny the amount of good publicity Stephen has given the space program, and national science programs in general. I kind of hope they choose to at least name the toilet after him, if not the Cupola (the Colbert Bump). In reality, the names are just publicity pseudonyms anyways. Us engineering type folk, and all the operations people just call the modules by their engineering names: Node 1, Lab, Node 2, FGB, JEM, etc. It is still nice to see such a public figure showing interest.
Get the rest of this amazing photography taken from the Space Shuttle Discovery here.
Friday, March 13, 2009
ISS Lives On
I figured by now more people would have called or emailed to ask about the whole "ISS Evacuated" headlines that ran rampant yesterday. I guess people don't follow NASA news as much as I hoped...
So just to quell any curiosity, I figured I would make sure to post about the excitement of the past couple of days.
News sites worldwide were freaking out Thursday when the three residents of the International Space Station (of which I am a team member, being part of the training and operations organization, the Mission Operations Directorate) were told to board the Russian Soyuz (their ride home in case of an emergency). The media outlet sure made it seem like ISS was actually abandoned, with headlines like "Astronauts Evacuate Space Station" and the like. I will try to explain what actually happened and the general mood at JSC during the whole event.
Currently, we have 2 NASA Astronauts (Mike Finke and Sandy Magnus) and one cosmonaut (Yuri Lonchakov) living on the International Space Station. Sometime Wednesday night, STRATCOM notified JSC that they were tracking a piece of debris that would potentially violate the "zone of exclusion" (so to speak) at 11:39 am Central time Thursday. Usually, NASA is notified of these conjunctions much earlier, but STRATCOM apparently made some mistakes in their calculations due to the highly elliptical nature of the object's orbit, and only found out about it Wednesday. This was not enough time to conduct a Debris Avoidance Maneuver (DAM), which essentially consists of ISS raising it's orbit to avoid the piece of space junk. For history, since the first pieces of ISS were launched 10 years ago, we have only conducted something like 8 of these maneuvers.
So Thursday morning, as calculations and orbits were updated, Mission Control Center Houston (MCC-H) decided to go to an unmanned config and place crew in the Soyuz, as a precaution. What this consists of is turning off a lot of essential equipment on ISS and things that wouldn't be needed if ISS were unmanned, closing hatches so a debris hit on any one module would not mean we lose all the modules, then going to the Soyuz to ride out the event. If the habitable modules of the space station were to be punctured, atmosphere would leak until station was at vacuum, so by being in the Soyuz crew could just close that hatch and head home safely if there was not enough time to find and patch the hole.
Because of the nature of this particular piece of space junk (both its velocity and size) MCC-H was calculating that it could potentially cause of 2 inch hole in station if it hit. A hole this size would mean crew would have a reserve time (Tres) of about 10 minutes. This is enginerd-speak for "10 minutes until ISS is at vacuum". As some of you don't know, my job at NASA is to conduct training sessions for crew and flight controllers, simulating potential real-life scenarios. Typically, we simulate debris hits or atmosphere leaks with a Tres of about 4-10 hours. This is still an emergency, but it gives an adept crew plenty of time to locate and patch a leak before losing too much atmosphere. A Tres of 10 minutes gives crew just enough time to shut the Soyuz hatch before being in vacuum (IF they are already there in the first place, ready to slam the hatch shut). SOO this was kind of a big deal.
For those of us at JSC who hadn't heard about the conjunction until Thursday morning, this all came as kind of a shock. To find out that in a few hours, a piece of space junk may or may not render your livelihood nonexistent, not to mention potentially threaten the lives of 3 people you have helped train for their important mission. It was a tense few hours as we waited and listened to the Flight Control team coordinate the graceful transition to "unmanned". The crew closed all the US hatches in about 22 minutes (which is a lot faster than we typically budget for this activity), and patiently waited in the Soyuz for the closest approach to pass. It is interesting to note that the crew did not actually shut the Soyuz hatch at this time. I mention this because all the news outlets at the time were reporting that we had evacuated station, when in fact crew was still breathing ISS atmosphere and able to jump out in order to fight a leak if need be.
So there we were, waiting around for about 10 minutes monitoring data, waiting for any sign that ISS had been hit. About the only useful piece of data we had was a display showing us the pressures in each module of the space station. If any of those pressures started to decrease rapidly, we would know there had been a hit.
As is probably old news now, we know the debris did not strike the station, and a few minutes after the calculated time of closest approach passed, crew was told they could exit Soyuz, open hatches and resume their normal duties. And everyone went back to work, a little more sober and a little more in need of a drink.
So just to quell any curiosity, I figured I would make sure to post about the excitement of the past couple of days.
News sites worldwide were freaking out Thursday when the three residents of the International Space Station (of which I am a team member, being part of the training and operations organization, the Mission Operations Directorate) were told to board the Russian Soyuz (their ride home in case of an emergency). The media outlet sure made it seem like ISS was actually abandoned, with headlines like "Astronauts Evacuate Space Station" and the like. I will try to explain what actually happened and the general mood at JSC during the whole event.
Currently, we have 2 NASA Astronauts (Mike Finke and Sandy Magnus) and one cosmonaut (Yuri Lonchakov) living on the International Space Station. Sometime Wednesday night, STRATCOM notified JSC that they were tracking a piece of debris that would potentially violate the "zone of exclusion" (so to speak) at 11:39 am Central time Thursday. Usually, NASA is notified of these conjunctions much earlier, but STRATCOM apparently made some mistakes in their calculations due to the highly elliptical nature of the object's orbit, and only found out about it Wednesday. This was not enough time to conduct a Debris Avoidance Maneuver (DAM), which essentially consists of ISS raising it's orbit to avoid the piece of space junk. For history, since the first pieces of ISS were launched 10 years ago, we have only conducted something like 8 of these maneuvers.
So Thursday morning, as calculations and orbits were updated, Mission Control Center Houston (MCC-H) decided to go to an unmanned config and place crew in the Soyuz, as a precaution. What this consists of is turning off a lot of essential equipment on ISS and things that wouldn't be needed if ISS were unmanned, closing hatches so a debris hit on any one module would not mean we lose all the modules, then going to the Soyuz to ride out the event. If the habitable modules of the space station were to be punctured, atmosphere would leak until station was at vacuum, so by being in the Soyuz crew could just close that hatch and head home safely if there was not enough time to find and patch the hole.
Because of the nature of this particular piece of space junk (both its velocity and size) MCC-H was calculating that it could potentially cause of 2 inch hole in station if it hit. A hole this size would mean crew would have a reserve time (Tres) of about 10 minutes. This is enginerd-speak for "10 minutes until ISS is at vacuum". As some of you don't know, my job at NASA is to conduct training sessions for crew and flight controllers, simulating potential real-life scenarios. Typically, we simulate debris hits or atmosphere leaks with a Tres of about 4-10 hours. This is still an emergency, but it gives an adept crew plenty of time to locate and patch a leak before losing too much atmosphere. A Tres of 10 minutes gives crew just enough time to shut the Soyuz hatch before being in vacuum (IF they are already there in the first place, ready to slam the hatch shut). SOO this was kind of a big deal.
For those of us at JSC who hadn't heard about the conjunction until Thursday morning, this all came as kind of a shock. To find out that in a few hours, a piece of space junk may or may not render your livelihood nonexistent, not to mention potentially threaten the lives of 3 people you have helped train for their important mission. It was a tense few hours as we waited and listened to the Flight Control team coordinate the graceful transition to "unmanned". The crew closed all the US hatches in about 22 minutes (which is a lot faster than we typically budget for this activity), and patiently waited in the Soyuz for the closest approach to pass. It is interesting to note that the crew did not actually shut the Soyuz hatch at this time. I mention this because all the news outlets at the time were reporting that we had evacuated station, when in fact crew was still breathing ISS atmosphere and able to jump out in order to fight a leak if need be.
So there we were, waiting around for about 10 minutes monitoring data, waiting for any sign that ISS had been hit. About the only useful piece of data we had was a display showing us the pressures in each module of the space station. If any of those pressures started to decrease rapidly, we would know there had been a hit.
As is probably old news now, we know the debris did not strike the station, and a few minutes after the calculated time of closest approach passed, crew was told they could exit Soyuz, open hatches and resume their normal duties. And everyone went back to work, a little more sober and a little more in need of a drink.
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