The ups & downs of progress.

Posted in entertainment, Family, History, Humor, NASA by Shelley Sackier

Last week I wrote about my daughter and her camp which was not Space Camp, “and not even camp.” After the closing ceremonies, which consisted of a few politicians lecturing parents about the importance of maintaining the space program (might you be preaching to the choir??), a former astronaut reminiscing about the good ol’ days of freedom when he could pee without having to unzip anything, and a snack table full of freeze dried ice cream and cups of Tang, we decided the next day would be spent in as brainless a fashion as is possible for Americans.

We would visit …The Amusement Park.
Historically, the village fair birthed our modern day theme parks, providing everything from a celebration of a seasonable crop to a tranquil stroll about purposefully grown pleasure gardens. Games, food and freak-show attractions found homes in many of these fairs with the eventual addition of music, exhibits, and the ever-increasing playground of rides.

The world’s fair was a step closer to our current experience, where the human imagination was catapulted forward from the introduction to the newest advances in industry and economic innovation. For a well-worded, artfully painted picture into the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, Illinois, I highly recommend Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City. You won’t be disappointed.

And where would this growing world of entertainment have ended up if Walter Elias Disney had not thrown his mouse-eared hat into the ring? Granted, there were other theme parks in operation before Disneyland, but Walt had a way of taking a kernel of an idea, heating it up and allowing it to explode into a bucketful of fluffy success.

Somewhere along the way from searching for a brief respite among the well-placed garden benches to opening a park filled with amusements meant to stimulate imagination and foresee the awe-inspiring future, someone announced that life was too safe, our days too dull, and our pulses to slow. What the world truly needed was an experience that you may or may not come away from still fully intact.

Cue the roller coaster.

The first of their kind were “ice slides” constructed in Russia during the 15th century. And since there wasn’t nearly enough excitement or danger involved in free falling wagons that had no directional control, folks went to work upping the ante. How far to the edge could engineering go before engineering failed? Well, only death would tell us.

And death has been known to shout its accomplishments from a great height and with amplification. The number of folks killed on roller coasters is less than a million, but more than one. Still, that’s a number I don’t like to fool around with. It just seems to me that if a theme park’s ride is reported to have let loose one of its passengers from somewhere around 75 feet above the earth, the response from said theme park CEOs should probably not include words like, “Well, it was a thirty second spot on the local news and only page four in the paper. We can do better. Shut her down so we can speed things up and add on fifty feet. Aim to reopen with a big splash next month.”

In my opinion, the swivel chair facing my computer has tougher federal regulations than some of the coasters out there today.

But this doesn’t stop the diehard fan of fun. Roller coasters–made of either wooden rails or tubular steel, advertising engineering feats of vertical loops, whirling corkscrews and plunging nose dives–dot world maps entitled ‘Where to get Whiplash’ like the skin of a kid with chickenpox. It’s universal. People want sixty seconds of living life at fevered pitch with the added attraction of a brain so addled afterward you may need to repeat elementary school.

Traveling in the park with the family is tricky in that you’ll likely need to split up. Not everyone is going to want to wait in line for forty-five minutes for a heart-stopping brain scramble. Especially if you’ve passed the age of, “Hell yes, I’ll try it!”

This means three out of the four of us go in a clump, and I find the Birds of Prey exhibit, where most of the large vulture-esque creatures on the inside of the cages are eyeing the hoary-haired, age-ridden mortals on the outside of said cages, viewing the scene as if it were soon to be a lunch buffet.

Knowing my daughter has never been tempted by roller coasters gave me comfort in that usually I had a companion on the non thrill seekers rides: the decrepit train that circled the outside of the park, the sky ride gondola that limps along a wire just at tree top level, and the tram that takes you from one parking lot to the other. All rides meant to show you how much fun everyone else is having and how much you’re missing.

And then her “Hell yes, I’ll try it!” gene kicked in.

I was on my own while the rest of the family rode the coasters.

I waited worriedly, keeping myself busy watching vendors fill waffle cones, and finally got a text from my daughter.

“I am most definitely a roller coaster person.”

“How much of a roller coaster person?” I texted back.

“All of the roller coasters person. And some twice person.”

Ugh. I was worried. All that time spent developing her mental capacity, and organizing her brain cells to respond specifically to requests for untangling formulas and equations: was it damaged?

I asked her, “Can you still add and subtract?”

Her response? “1 + 1 = 4GS.”

Well, at least her snark gene is still intact. Relieved, I got back on the smoke-belching, ancient railroad trolley and inched my way through the pleasure gardens. This was the level of death by amusement I could handle.

Choo choo!

~Shelley

Don’t forget to check out what we’re cookin’ in the Scullery (here) and what we all talked about down in the pub (here). And to see more of Robin Gott‘s humor–all from the only pen carved from a human funny bone–click here.

Man loves roller coasters so much he spent $43K riding them (newsfixnow.com)
Happy Roller Coaster Day 2013! (rollercoasterriderblog.wordpress.com)
Be a Thrill Seeker… // Roller Coasters, Life, and Love (sageandsparkle.com)

11Aug2013

Mission Impossible

Posted in Education, Humor, Math, NASA, Science, Teens by Shelley Sackier

It seems one of my kids has crossed over a great divide: the span that bridges the gap between child and adult.

Well … sort of.

Maybe she hasn’t made it entirely to the other side. Maybe she’s over the apex and is now rifling through her handbag, foraging for her passport. But she’s close. And it’s a little scary.

Last week I sent her off to her last “summer camp.” I thought it would be fun, a good distraction, and even engaging.

I was wrong.

It was demanding and arduous, requiring a Herculean effort on all participants. This was not a camp; it was a gathering of overgrown grey matter.

She did not make fast friends, she met her future colleagues. There was no braiding of hair or singing Kumbaya around the campfire. There was no macramé class, no hiking and no canoeing toward the sunset.

Instead, there was, “Houston? We’ve got a problem,” and all the panic that goes with it.

To make things even more adult like, there was very, very, very little sleep.

You don’t often hear kids remark that one of the highlights of their experience was the mind-blowing hallucinations that came as a result of sleep deprivation. And not the kind of sleep deprivation that comes from watching just one more Netflix movie while you’re all crammed into a dorm room trying to sneak past curfew.

There was no curfew.

No one encouraged you to catch forty winks. Blinking in general meant you took your eye off the ball.

And the ball was basically a mission to Mars.

Now let me be clear—and I have to do this because in the past I have been über criticized for calling this chunk of time a SPACE CAMP. It wasn’t.

Space camp is like this:

“Trainees will experience walking on the moon in our 1/6th gravity chair to feel what it’s like to work in a frictionless environment. Trainees will climb the tallest mountain on Mars on our Mars Climbing Wall and experience 4Gs of liftoff force on the Space Shot™ simulator. They’ll get an astronaut’s view of the earth while watching amazing films in our IMAX® Spacedome Theater and Digital 3D Theater.”

Space camp is interchangeable with a fabulous day at Disneyland.

This sector of summer was more about calculating payloads, computing appropriate radiation levels and evaluating various chemical propellants. Yeah, hard to imagine any of them snapping a quick “selfie” to post on Facebook as they’re standing proudly in front of a white board covered in nothing but mathematical equations. Woot woot!

In fact, when hearing the ‘Welcome to Langley’ opening words from the program director, the first phrase was actually, “I hope you all came prepared to cry.”

I suppose the experience could be likened to Vegas Week from American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance, where you are put to the most strenuous physical tests of your mind and body, surpassing your limitations, and finding each participant sliced away from the competition and sent limping home. Except that at the end, if you survive, there is no golden mic, rainfall of confetti or monetary prize to announce your accomplishment. What you do find, however, is a pale-faced, red-eyed, polyester-suited man, slogging under the weight of way too many lanyard-strung ID tags who hands each survivor a coffee-stained card with a quiet remark of, “I think we may have a folding chair and a small cubicle for you in Houston. Let’s keep in touch.”

In fact, the whole Let’s keep in touch business is pretty laughable, as once these folks realize they’ve found a fresh resource, ripe for stripping and renewable simply by topping up with Red Bull, I’m guessing one ubiquitous camera, belonging to a small satellite in space, will then be assigned to do nothing but track this collective pack of brain cells.

Maybe I’m growing delusional and paranoid, but just yesterday when I was sorting through a basket of clothes to be laundered, my daughter rushed down from her bedroom and frantically searched for a NASA pin that had been secured to her shirt for the entirety of her time at the institute.

“We’re not supposed to take these off. They’re our new good luck charms.”

Okay, she didn’t exactly say that, and that didn’t exactly happen, but I need something to explain last night, when I was preparing dinner, and my daughter was in the kitchen sorting through colorful college brochures, narrowing down her choices, when the phone rang, and after answering it, I hear an unrecognizable voice on the other end say, “Tell her to go with the blue one.”

Generally speaking, I do believe the experience of participating in a high stress, nerve racking simulated mission, coached by engineers, astronauts and former prison guards was a success for both parties involved. My daughter discovered the joy of being surrounded by teenagers who had close to a mirror image of her brain and was finally free to speak without someone interrupting her every five seconds with a, “Wait … huh?” And NASA, after ransacking the brains of these young minds in an effort to possibly cull together any information that their home teams had yet to think of, now finds themselves with an improved launch date for a manned mission to Mars. Instead of May, 2046, they have proudly announced: May (maybe April) 2046.

All in all it was an eye-opening experience, especially for her, because remember … the difference between success and failure of a mission may all come down to the batting of an eyelid.

“Houston? … Uh, Houston?”

“Zzzzz …”

~Shelley

NASA Planning Manned Mission To Mars (designntrend.com)
More than 100,000 want to go to Mars and not return (fox6now.com)
NASA gets serious about asteroid mining in new mission (mining.com)

21Jul2013

Hashtag – Teen Talk

Posted in Astronomy, Humor, NASA, Parenting, Teens by Shelley Sackier

Sometimes it’s incredibly hard to connect with my teenagers.

Alright, let’s be honest. Just strip off the first word of the last sentence and give it a reread.

Even so, there are times where the sun and the moon and the stars align, and for a small window of time, conversation flows, laughter bubbles and no one ends up sporting a flesh wound.

And lest you think I’m using the astronomical expression in jest, I assure you I am not. This rare event of ‘togetherness’ occurred on the night of the “Supermoon.”

This is a name that was coined by astrologer Richard Nolle in 1979. Loosely defined, it’s a full (or new) moon that’s as close to the Earth as it will get without bumping into us. If the moon had arms and fingers, it could practically touch us at that point in its elliptical orbit.

And just for a second, I’m requesting all science and space-minded folks to please work with me here. The rest of us will surely struggle if I’m required to use correct terminology like perigee and apogee and syzygee. Maybe we can all agree that once every eighteen years the earth’s horizon births the largest chunk of lunar disk we can likely remember ever seeing. It’s like watching a cheese-colored growth sprout from the ground way off in the distance.

On this particular night, the three of us sat on the porch and ate a dinner none of us were particularly interested in. But we all agreed it might be nice to watch the sun set and listen to the transition of day sounds to night sounds. Day sounds around here are birds, tractors, cows and bees. Night sounds are whippoorwills, frogs, crickets and shotguns. For years, I’ve attempted to alter my mental interpretation of that last sound. I now simply classify them as … angry birds.

I have to admit that about fifty percent of the time, when in my kids’ company, I cannot understand what they are talking about. They’re mostly trendy topics I only begin to clue into after hearing about them on NPR—way after they’ve become moth-eaten and someone has written a book about them—or I Google them myself and realize that I’m so outdated, even my browser acts judgmentally and flashes me a quick subliminal message of, That was so yesterday.

There’s also a small percentage of the time when I find I cannot understand what my kids are talking about even to the extent that I cannot understand their words. Period.

But this usually happens when we’re all together, I’ve just finished speaking, and the two of them turn to one another and start talking–then laughing. It takes me a minute to grasp that they’ve switched to Spanish. Solely for the purpose of making fun of me.

Every time scenario number one happened on the night of the Supermoon, I excused myself and dashed to the other side of the house to check on the progress of the moonrise . I didn’t want to miss it, plus it gave me a little privacy to quickly Google whatever it was they were talking about.

Every time scenario number two happened, I excused myself to “check on the progress of the moonrise” but actually went into their bedrooms and programmed their alarm clocks to go off every hour from 3 am onward, and then next secured a piece of duct tape over their bathroom faucets with just a tiny gap at the front.

¡Yo soy la madre de la venganza!

Eventually, on one of my return trips, I saw the moon begin to surface. I raced to get the kids, telling them to come to my bedroom balcony. Of course we made such a ruckus the dog insisted on joining us, and his added enthusiasm woke the sheep, who then wandered out the barn and into the meadow to add their bellowing two cents worth. And as is natural for farm animals, once one is awake and bawling, all animals on surrounding farms and within earshot join in the uproar, which then sends every local hound dogs in a tailspin and the only thing that can quiet the whole tumultuous pandemonium is a couple of rounds from the angry birds.

Once everyone had given the thumbs up indicating they were clear of gushing bullet holes, we were back to admiring the Supermoon. And it was super.

Massive and luminous, this sallow-colored ball rose through wisps of clouds, illuminating the hazy sky to glow with shades of cream, biscuits and buttermilk.

Moon gazing is hungry work.

Binoculars opened a vast new window of detail, leaving me amazed at the similarity between this orbiting satellite and an unpeeled orange. (Yes, dinner was totally unsatisfying.)

I’d never seen such clarity and true splendor. It was magnificent.

I could have stayed there all night, but a storm was brewing outside. Of course, it wouldn’t be long until lashing bolts of deafening thunder were unleashed inside as well.

But I could live with that. It made a nice change of pace from the unsettling hashtag lingo and the growing flock of angry birds.

Shine on you crazy pearl.

~Shelley

Don’t forget to check out what we’re cookin’ in the Scullery (here) and what we all talked about down in the pub (here). And to see more of Robin Gott’s humor–all from the only pen carved from a human funny bone–click here.

NASA Hubble Finds New Neptune Moon (spacedaily.com)
PHOTOS: Goodnight Super Moon (kfor.com)
Super Detailed WebGL Moon (creativejs.com)

9Jun2013

I just can’t hack it.

Posted in Education, Humor, NASA, Parenting, Technology by Shelley Sackier

My computer is possessed.

I’m nearly certain of it. I say nearly because this is strictly a gut instinct based on years of a Catholic upbringing, recalling bloodcurdling, spine-chilling words whispered by the nuns who taught our catechism classes and warned us of the imminent dangers when messing with the dark side. They listed all the classic signs of demonic domination:

Flickering lights? Check.

Erratic movement and activity—not by your hand? Check.

Bizarre and spasmodic sounds impossible to locate or predict? Check.

The ability to levitate of its own accord? … Not yet, but I’m totally prepared for this to happen and won’t be caught off guard when it does. Seeing that will explain absolutely everything else.

Most folk, in this modern day and age of tech talk, gadgetry and regularly giving birth to children who can reprogram satellites by the age of six, have grown accustomed to the idea that they either keep up or bite the dust. It’s like running alongside a train that’s picking up speed and every time you brush the fingers of the guy who’s reaching to pull you in, someone slams the door shut and slides open the entry to the box car in front of it. And instead of just somebody new reaching for you, they’re now also offering you a cool drink—which at this point you’re desperate for, but still can’t quite reach. And so it goes.

Somewhere within the time frame of barely grasping word processing (plus a couple of DOS code commands) and grappling with the concept that someplace in the air above me floats everything on my hard drive, smart phone and tablet, there is another sector of computer practice that befuddles me to the core. Other people are using it. Let me make this clearer:

Other people—people I don’t know, have never met, and haven’t given permission—are using my computer.

I first recall seeing “remote” usage of my computer when, years ago, after unsuccessfully thumbing through the eight manuals that accompanied that dinosaur and holding on the phone for approximately the same amount of time it takes to make cheese, a pricey technician was granted access to fix some niggling problem. Seeing the arrow my mouse used to have control over being manipulated by a faceless operator proved fascinating. Sadly, it always moved to quickly for me to register what to click or unclick should my problem reoccur.

Shortly thereafter, I remember thinking the world was full of hackers. The news raged over them, spy novels were rife with them, Hollywood made blockbusters about them and I sat staring at the index to my “help” files wondering how in the world folks could overcome the quirks of their own computers and then manage to have leftover time to mess about with somebody else’s.

The whole hacking culture is a bit of a head-scratcher to me, and what defines this group is heatedly debated. There are classifications and subgroups that depend upon the attitude, the aim and ambition of each individual. Do you hope to breach security, make money, send a message or befuddle the Luddites? Then you might be a white or a black hat, maybe a script kiddie, a neophyte or a hacktivist, or even simply a cracker. If you’re going to be one of these, you will need a cutting-edge education of computers and their networks. There is no technical help line that will walk you through the steps of ‘How to hack into Twitter accounts.’

In addition, there is another brand of hacker I came to admire simply from having enjoyed the college tour at MIT. Here, our guide told stories about the much loved school tradition of demonstrating technical prowess and jaw-dropping ingenuity in the form of institutional pranks. These are not your typical ‘Animal House’ fraternity shenanigans, but rather, “We’re going to need a crane and a squadron from the National Guard to fix this,” type of tomfoolery.

The one thing both of these groups have in common is what baffles me most.

Time.

Knowing how long it takes me to defrag my computer and run a simple disc cleanup, I’m wondering when these people have an opportunity to do laundry. It’s not surprising to find out that a sizeable chunk of these tech-savvy cool cats are young enough to still occupy a room down the hall from their parents—which explains my query regarding their dirty clothes.

Recently, I walked passed my daughter’s laptop and stopped to watch what I thought was a pretty nifty screensaver. When I asked her about it, she informed me that, no, this was not some downloaded piece of fluff, but that she had actually loaned her computer to science. Apparently, when she’s not using it herself, she lends her computing power—along with multitudes of others—to analyze data while it scours the universe for intelligent life. Hers is part of a virtual supercomputer for SETI@home. Those pretty squiggles were simply an indication that her laptop was actively reading radio bandwidth.

And now I look askew at my own PC, wondering if she has rigged my computer to service science, if a huckster has hacked my doohickey, or if indeed a demon has bedeviled my data processor.

I’m just waiting on the floating keyboard. Call it an old Catholic stirring, but I’m pretty sure a phantom has floored my firewall.

~Shelley

Companies Attend International Conference For Computer Hackers (fox2now.com)
4 Reason’s Why Twitter is the Easiest Social Media System to Crack (moderndignity.com)
Letting Companies Hack the Hackers: What Could Go Wrong? (businessweek.com)

31Mar2013

Dancing in the Hydrochloric Acid Rain

Posted in Astronomy, College, Education, NASA, Teens by Shelley Sackier

* Today, I bring back my guest blogger/editor/teenage daughter/biggest critic and share with you an essay she wrote as entry for a competition. She assures me it isn’t poetry, but the words sing sweetly in my ears no matter the genre. And although she long ago gave up her dream of becoming a ballerina, and decided pop star, zoo keeper, veterinarian and Laura Ingles Wilder were all professions unworthy of further pursuit, she has never, for one moment, taken her eyes from the skies.

This kid still wants to be an astronaut.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I first saw the space shuttle Atlantis lift off into an oppressively warm Florida sky from Banana Creek, I felt the most resounding reassurance echo inside of me. The sky popped, the loyal thousands cheered on their space program, and my voice was lost. The ground beneath me trembled with the roar of powerful combustion engines, but I felt immovable, unshakable. The culmination of thirty years of a nation’s laborious efforts rose on a burning orange ladder into a space unencumbered by the debris of humanity. The higher the Orbiter flew, the surer I felt. This was my passion.

I wanted, so badly, to stay for the hydrochloric acid rain. But my mindful parent had other plans.

I have known, ever since I was the size of a lima bean, that I wanted to study science and work in aerospace. I love space, with every bone in my body, with every atom in me that fell, eons ago, from shining stars. I cherish the moon, the planets, and the stars, carefully plotting their slippery dance across the sky. I have spent countless nights, heavily caffeinated and wrapped in blankets, waiting for the streak of silver as the International Space Station zips by, counting the green and white flashes of icy meteors and marveling at the silent power of rockets launched from Wallops Flight Facility. I envision myself in the aerospace industry one day, working with people I cannot wait to meet, dedicating my life to an engineering pursuit I know can change how we live here on earth.

physics (Photo credit: Hash Milhan)

I am happiest in school when in a science or math class, intrigued, propelled and amazed by the laws of the universe, humbly revealing themselves on a chalkboard. I fell in love with physics, the hardest and most all-encompassing class I had ever come head to head with, in my freshman year of high school. From that point on, I knew I would never be truly happy with my work unless I was pushing myself to the envelope of my ability. For me, that rewarding challenge lies in studying science. I have always been one of those students who has to understand an issue from all perspectives, an approach that holds an incredible payoff in scientific pursuits, such that understanding the governing principles behind electromagnetism makes a lightning show that much more spectacular. I cannot wait to get to university and find other people who cover their bedroom walls with mission patches and find NASA TV infinitely better than MTV.

Self Portrait and So Much More (Photo credit: Fragile Oasis)

I am a firm believer in the necessity of the continuation of space exploration. Space holds so many potential benefits, from spinoff technologies to border-crossing human relations, and I believe that to abandon it as a settled frontier would be a terrible mistake. Armed with a degree in aerospace engineering/astrophysics and an insatiable love for midnight launches and ocean splashdowns, I want to be part of the next generation that cooperates with engineers all over the world to return to the Moon, land humans on Mars, mine asteroids, design rovers and determine the inner workings of our beautiful universe. I bridge the gap now with lab internships, where chemistry classes come to life on whiteboard walls, in dry boxes and in centrifuges. But it isn’t enough.

Amazing opportunities like the Virginia Aerospace Science and Technology Scholars and Johns Hopkins summer classes allow me to reach beyond the academic requirements of my high school and delve into what truly inspires me, be it rendezvous/docking procedures or the origins of Einstein’s theory of special relativity. I can say, quite honestly, that the summer I spent filling hypothetical telescopes with water and understanding the nuances of the Michelson-Morley experiment while wearing glowsticks in my hair was the best three weeks of my life. The glowsticks were related—I was supposed to be a photon.

I have one of the luckiest passions in the world—all I need to do for inspiration is look up. When I see a spread of glimmering stars, practice a radio call or a turn around a point in my parents’ little four-seater plane,

NASA “Mohawk Guy” To Host Show On Third Rock Radio (Photo credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video)

or watch NASA’s esteemed “Mohawk Guy” cut another star-shaped swath in his hair, I am reminded of the wonderful science that I cannot wait to be a part of. I know that for as long as I live, I will pursue my passion of space, wherever it takes me.

~Chloe