Monday, July 21, 2008

Let's get pedagogical!

Well, Sunday night was a busy one for me. In addition to running my Sunday Select Cinema (showing The Last Samurai), I first had to give my much-belabored science lecture titled Three Remarkable Spacecraft: SOHO, Mercury MESSENGER, and Mars Phoenix Lander. It went pretty well, despite the video not working on one of the computers I was using with a projector, but the other computer worked and folks could see everything on the big flat-screen TVs in the galley. The length actually came out to be just right, with plenty of time left at the end for the few questions people had to pose. It's a bit of a relief having that behind me, but I'm glad I did it. It was interesting getting to research some missions I didn't know a whole lot about, as well as present information about the spacecraft I have worked on for the longest period of time (SOHO).

Last night the band practice The Doors' "L.A. Woman" in earnest for the first time, and boy is it a fun one to play. I think our sets for the band (soon to be formerly) known as Re-Tardis and the Irish band (yet to be formally named) are going to be a whole lot of fun. I'm now just a bit worried about getting all my parts memorized and polished up, as well as simply being able to carry the key in which I have to sing Prince's song "Kiss". Talk about reaching for the stars...

1 comment:

Mark Ewing said...

Ethan-

I've got a technical question for you: does the atmospheric pressure ever get greater than 15 psi in the Antarctic? I'm sure there are other sources for this info, but I thought this might be on the top of your head.

I just read thru a bit of your blog--it seems you have enough diversions to avoid stir-craziness!

Is there an e-mail address I can use?

-Dr. Ewing