I'm back

Safe and sound, but with no little trauma to my posterior, I made it home from Orlando. I'll get to the pics and posts about the launch and drive once I take care of housesitting duties.

It's the final countdown!

Well, all is currently going well to facilitate the Shuttle launch this evening. We're probably going to watch from a park, since tickets for this particular launch (to see it from on-base at KSC) went on sale while I was still in SE Asia. If we get to see the launch then I'll probably get to bed fairly early and start the drive back to Kansas at a really early hour Monday morning. It has been a nice trip, but not much of a vacation. I've been working on my job hunt a lot, as some things just need to keep happening no matter where I might find myself. I should put this employment search down as full-time (albeit uncompensated) employment on my resume for as much work as it has required.

Anyhow, I'll keep updates coming this evening and from the road as I head home.

Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity; whoever would like to appear deep to the crowd, strives for obscurity. For the crowd considers anything deep if only it cannot see to the bottom: the crowd is so timid and afraid of going into the water.
~Friedrich Nietzsche

Ah, to be the superman...

Photographic evidence

OK, here are some photos from the last few days. First off is back home just after the hail storm that did its number to my car.

The Kennedy Space Center has a good number of vintage launch vehicles on display outdoors. I figure they must really take a pounding when hurricanes roll through.

That big ol' building in the distance is the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). That's where they originally put together the launch stack for the Saturn rockets in the Apollo days. For the last several decades it has been used for working with the Shuttle-External Tank-Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) combo. It's one of the largest buildings, by volume, in the world. I've read that clouds can form in its upper reaches when the right atmospheric conditions are present.

That stuff in the distant background is the launch pad that is being adapted to support the Constellation program's Ares rockets in the future. Yeah, that will be my future office or at least where I start my commute to work.

And, finally, that's yours truly with a Shuttle on the launch pad (obscured by the gantry) in the background. It definitely was thrilling to see the place so many folks have set off to do that which would make me so contented in life. Hopefully it will manage to get safely on its way this Sunday. I can't believe it took me this long, in life, to make it down here.

I am going to stay for the Sunday launch, provided the review scheduled for Saturday goes well. I'm not exactly sure what I'll do until then, but I may head out to the national seashore tomorrow. I spent a lot of time doing job hunting work online today. Call it a "working vacation".

"In my own view, the important achievement of Apollo was a demonstration that humanity is not forever chained to this planet, and our visions go rather further than that, and our opportunities are unlimited."
~Neil Armstrong, press conference, 1999

A good day, despite no flight

Well, the launch of STS-119 has been pushed back to at least the 15th. I did get to spend the day enjoying the facilities at Kennedy Space Center, and man was it stirring to see the launch pads and gigantic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). It was also interesting how amongst all this high technology were all sorts of birds and a good number of alligators lurking in the various canals and waterways at the Cape. I'll put up some photos eventually.

A 3D IMAX movie about the Space Station had all sorts of statements by astronauts that paralleled my experiences with going to the South Pole. One woman talked about coming to grips with leaving the world for (six) months to enter a wholly different environment. I definitely said some farewells prior to deploying in 2007. Other folks talked about supporting experiments in various scientific fields to generate data for researchers back on the ground, which sounded distinctly similar to the job description for my tech job at Pole. Astronauts just arriving on the Shuttle talked of how remarkable it was that the long-duration crew on the ISS felt so separate from the world after being in orbit for so long. I felt similarly while at Pole, which incidentally has less telecommunications with the rest of humanity. This all lends credence to my feelings about how practical polar experience, particularly over the winter, is for somebody contemplating spending time on a long-duration space mission. I now just need to bend the right ears about my experiences...

I have not decided what I will do now, whether I will stay here until Sunday to maybe see another launch attempt, but hopefully an inspired decision will present itself.

Some choices we live not only once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives.
~Richard Bach

Ad astra per aspera.

Safe in the Magic Kingdom

I am here in Orlando and in one piece. My drive today started off with three hours driving in fog after I left Montgomery. The scenery was nice when the fog did lift and I could enjoy all the forests along the way. Florida's panhandle was nice, and I even got to see a house (on a trailer) stuck underneath an overpass an hour or so east of Tallahassee. Tomorrow morning we're going to try and get tickets for the launch, though a lot of them are already sold out. We'll figure something out, though.

Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what he loves.
~Blaise Pascal

I hope to distinctly see something I love here oh-so soon.

Leg 1-complete

I got to my cousin's place in MO just fine yesterday, with only a bit of a detour due to some vague directions obtained from the miraculous oracle that is the internet. I had a nice visit and got to talk and share a lot about my previous year-plus' exploits, as well as meet their extremely energetic dog Shemp (sp?).

Today will be the big drive, so I better get to it.

To find your own way is to follow your bliss. This involves analysis, watching yourself and seeing where real deep bliss is -- not the quick little excitement, but the real deep, life-filling bliss.
~Joseph Campbell

On the Road

Well, I'm almost ready to strike out for points south and east of here. I'll be driving this afternoon, Monday, and Tuesday to get to Orlando. Wednesday night, all things working nominally, I'll get to see the Space Shuttle (STS-119) lift off sometime after 9:00 p.m. carrying its crew and cargo to the International Space Station. It will be my first time to see any sort of rocket launch, and with the era of the Shuttle coming to an end relatively soon it is going to be somewhat bittersweet. I'll be heading down via Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. I'm not sure what path I will take to get home.

My car's aerodynamics got slightly altered last night. We had a big storm system move through, and my venerable "94 Civic got a bit of hail damage. We had hail up to 1" in diameter, but my car was in the lee of our garage so it didn't get totally obliterated. I've never seen hail so bad here at home before. But, dimples are cute, right... Anyhow, it will be something to take care of when I get back from the trip.

There has been no positive progress on my job hunt, save that I can probably go back to Pole as a science tech again in October should I wish/need to. It's going on 9 months now since I started trying to find my next job. All the more reason to get out and away from that for a while and try to come at it anew when I return.

Here are a few words of wisdom from authors I've been reading as of late:

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
~John Steinbeck

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
~Mark Twain

There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

Not all those who wander are lost.
~J. R. R. Tolkien

The road awaits...