Year of the Movie

I've already deemed 2007 as "The Year of the Movie." Well, at least for geeks like me. See if you can follow me around the room:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
March 30th, 2007
Trailer
Why it will rock: It's all in CG. That pretty much makes it better than that abomination known as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III.

Spider-Man 3
May 4th, 2007
TrailerWhy it will rock: the appearance of Venom in the storyline, as well as Sandman and the Green Goblin(2). Can you say "awesome battle sequences"?

Transformers
July 4th, 2007
Trailer
Why it will rock: just announced mere minutes ago that Peter Cullen will be reprising his role as the voice of series mainstay Optimus Prime. BADASS.

Pirates of Caribbean 3(subtitle pending)
Summer 2007
Why it will rock: Keith Richards will portray Captain Jack's father. That alone is worth the price of admission.

Prince of Persia
TBA 2007
Why it will rock: one of my favorite game franchises of all time is being brought to the big screen via Jerry Bruckheimer. This game's story is perfect for a movie, and I can't wait. Go get 'em Jerry.

"Not because it is easy, but because it is hard."

Just as Project Apollo took men to the moon in the 60's and 70's, so will Project Orion. It's been leaked that Orion will be the name of the next project of the United States' manned space program, as well as the name of the vehicle that will take them there, the Crew Exploration Vehicle. This is similar to the naming conventions used in America's first manned-moon missions.

Project Orion. You gotta admit that it sounds cool.

You read it here first, folks.

Doorstep Happy Hour

Tarik and Seth hosted their montly party this past Friday. They have a sweet setup in this warehouse in downtown Houston. They've completely redone the place to be more of a loft apartment/bachelor's pad. Thought I'd share a few of the pics...

A view from the balcony...that's right, balcony. This is the kind of place Trevor and I need during our college years. It's perfect for this kind of stuff...

Turntables were provided. I had to resist the urge.

A lower-level shot. It's kinda blurry, but com'on, it was around 2:00am at this point. (Not really sure what those two dudes are doing on the left side of the screen)

Yes, they also have a firepole to slide down. How cool is that?

Bubbles and foam also made an appearance in the evening(they go all out), but for fear of my new shiny camera, I didn't take any shots.

Officially excited...

Our crib for the week at the Isle of Palms................awesome.

When the Mission Ends, the Party Begins

Well the mission is coming to a close; Discovery is set to undock tomorrow early morning sometime. The NASA folks love excuses to party, and tonight is no exception. After the Orbit 3 shift(which ends around 1:00am), everyone is heading to the Saturn V building(it holds the Saturn V vehicle that was too be used for Apollo 18) to start the celebrations early, and I think I'm going to join them. Should be a good time. Maybe I'll be able to get some good pictures......oh yeh, I forgot....my NEW CAMERA came in!

I obviously can't take a pic of it without using a mirror(that'd be kinda lame), so just go HERE to check it out. This little baby is AWESOME. It's light, it's small, and it has tons of features. Oh, and takes pretty swell pictures as well. It can do all sorts of neato stuff. For example, click HERE to go to a picture I took today(it may take a few seconds to load; it's kinda big) at work; I call it the "drill field" of Johnson Space Center, in reference to my school. Click on it to zoom in and really get a good close up loook. No, I don't have a wide-angle lens on my camera; rather, my camera has a "stitch" mode. I just take pictures across the horizon, and the software on the computer knows what goes where, and it connects the images. Pretty sweet, eh?

I've been taking pictures of everything lately, but I wont really get to have fun until my 2GB SD card comes in next week. At that point, I'll be able to shoot movies and play around with the "burst" mode, which I have already dabbled in slightly(and it ROCKS!!)

Tomorrow will continue the celebration of the end of the Station assembly mission. Technically, yes, I know that the mission won't "officially" end until wheels stop on Discovery when she lands at KSC Monday morning. But after undocking tomorrow morning, the Station folks are DONE, so there is definitely cause to celebrate. Eric and I have rounded up a crew, and we are all set to play some 2v2 beach volleyball around noon tomorrow. Afterwards, we'll prolly head to Eric's pool to relax and chill. Then that night, we're all heading to Rice Village, where there is supposed to be an awesome nightlife on the weekends. It also happens to be yet another great oppurtunity for us to celebrate the end of the mission.

Sox got OWNED tonight. Eyugh. Probably one of the worst pitched games by the Sox(starter and relief pitchers) I have ever seen. It makes me sick. Yanks are now only 1.5 games back.

Conan on NASA

Here's the mission patch from the current shuttle mission, STS-121. Take a good, long look at it. It depicts the space shuttle in it's docking configuration on the halfway-completed International Space Station. The long horizontal piece at the top of the ISS/Shuttle stack is the P6 solar array, and the second longest horizontal piece below it is the truss segment of the Station. All of that is overlayed on the yellow astronaut symobl of the the star and 3 lines...

And here is what Conan O'brien said about the patch the other night on his show:

"It looks like the space shuttle is having sex with a helicopter...and it's all happening under the birth of baby Jesus..."

hahahahahahaha. Brilliant.... just brilliant.

Ok, now for something VERY VERY cool. If you have a minute(or about 8) please please please check out these links:

Right-Aft SRB sep video
Right-Forward SRB sep video

I think you need a version of Windows Media Player to view it. They're videos of the right aft and forward solid rocket booster cameras, all the way from launch to splashdown. Yeh, you read that right. It's the entire video of the launch, from main engine ignition to the moment the SRBs fall into the ocean. It's neat because you see the flight LEAVE the atmosphere then RE-ENTER the atmosphere. Even if you have no interest whatsoever in engineering or space, watch the video. It is fuckin' awesome.

NOTE: If you want to see the shuttle/tank at separation, watch the FIRST video. If you want to see the ocean get closer and closer and closer until splashdown, watch the SECOND video. Or just watch both videos if you're feeling it.

Co-op's Log...Flight Day 4

Just thought I'd give you all an unofficial status update of things up in orbit. The Station and Shuttle are doing just fine. Docking went smoothly, we added another crewman to the ISS(first 3-man crew since 2003), unbirthed the MPLM(Multi-Purpose Logistics Module) and attached it to Node-2, and things are set for the first EVA tomorrow. All looks good.

The highlight of tonight's Orbit 3 shift(my shift) was the passing of the ISS directly overhead Houston around 9:45pm CST. Almost the entire ISS and Shuttle flight control teams left Building 30 and congregated outside to watch the passover. It was pretty cool; nothing I hadn't seen before, but it's still cool. The station/shuttle were amazingly bright and very easy to spot. The station/shuttle stack passed right over MCC, and it one frame you could see both the streaking star(the shuttle and station) and the illuminated American flag protuding prominently atop MCC. I wish I had a camera, as it was a VERY good shot.

And one more thing...I now have a new favorite astronaut(not that I had one to begin with). And as it turns out, she's actually one of the ones that went up on Discovery a few days ago: Stephanie Wilson. Why do I like her? See below:

Notice the cap she is wearing while taking a ride in the Space Shuttle motion simulator.

And another shot of her in the Lab mockup in Building 9, just to reinforce the point(she's from Massachusetts, by the way).

Well it's late here. Too late. Around 3:30. I'm worn out and headed to bed.

"And the Rockets' Red Glare"

A job well done to the Launch Control Team at KSC, as well as to the Ascent Team at JSC. Some slight issues arose, such as minor foam pieces and a mysterious ice object which was originally thought to be a thermal blanket, but nothing seems to be critical. All seems well with Discovery and her crew, so it's time to go to work. Hopefully I'll have some entertaining and/or great pictures for ya from my 2 weeks of mission support. I'll use my new camera for the pics...when it gets here :).

Tank You...Tank You Very Much

Congratulations are in order for David Ortiz, Mark Loretta, Manny Ramirez, and my boy Jonathan Papelbon. They were chosen by the fans(except Papelbon; he was chosen by Ozzie Guillen, the AL manager) to represent Boston in the 77th All-Star game in Pittsburgh next week. Despite the great showing of Red Sox on the AL squad, I can't help but feel like we were snubbed. No Curt Schilling or Josh Beckett on the team!?! Com'on now, Ozzie. I have heard that Francona has talked to Guillen recently in hopes of convincing him that Schiller belongs on the team. Sticking with the All-Star theme, David Ortiz has elected to participate in the homerun derby the day before the mid-summer classic. I hope he tears the cover off the ball.

Slight scare today in the space world. During a checkout of Discover and her related parts last night, a piece of foam fell from a support strut on the External Tank(ET). Here's a high-res shot of the missing area:

That light area is the part of the foam that fell off. To give you an idea of scale, that area of foam loss was about 4 inches wide.

The Mission Management Team(MMT) met twice today, and thanks to some clever engineering they were able to examine the foam loss area without actually crushing the foam or having to bring in an external platform, which would have added another day to the launch. After much review, it was determine that the foam less presented now aerothermo problems, no ice threat, and it didn't shear surrounding foam. In short, Discover is GO for launch tomorrow at 1:38pm CST. Should be exciting, as the weather presents only a 40% chance of delaying the launch tomorrow, according to the weather military dudes over at the cape.

My body is wondering what the HELL I think I'm doing. I sleep shifted last weekend in preparation for the mission. Then we were delayed, and I had to shift back for work this week. Now that there's a good chance to launch tomorrow, I'm having to shift AGAIN tonight. That means staying up until 4:00am after being up at 7:00am this morning for work and getting only about an hour of sleep after work. Eyugh.

Richard has had a tough week this week: England gets ousted from the World Cup in the quarters, Beckham resigns his captaincy, his boy Agassi is defeated at Wimbledon at the hands of phenom capri-wearing Rafael Nadal, Ben Wallace is leaving the Pistons for Chicago, and today he found out that Steve Yzerman is retiring from the NHL. If you don't know who Steve Yzerman is, SHAME ON YOU. To give you an idea of this guy's affect on hockey the past 20+ years, go HERE. Everyone say a private prayer for Richard, haha. I'm sure I'll feel the same when Joe Sakic(who is also #19) retires one day.

One more thing: Sharapova advanced past the 4th round at Wimbledon today :)

Another one-more-thing: Jose Canseco is a fuckin' idiot. And he can't throw a knuckleball worth crap.

There. I'm done.

The Curtain Call...

is used WAY too much by the New York Yankees. They have pretty much erased the effect the Curtain Call has. It means nothing now, because of them. Just watch a Yankee game the next oppurtunity you get. You will notice that it is WAY overdone. Chill out New York...we have monster home runs, clutch hits, and great baserunning on a nightly basis at Fenway, but you don't see us waving our helmet from the dugout steps EVERY time we do those things. It's actually EXPECTED of the Red Sox.

T-12 hours...

So I'm here at the apartment. The party died down at Eric's, and he needed to get to sleep, so I've returned to HQ. I'm trying to sleep-shift as much as possible tonight so I don't have to do much of it tomorrow. That means I need to stay up all the way to 4:30 or 5:00 if possible. That wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't waking up at 9:15 to go watch England/Portugal at Eric's. Sheesh. The things I do for the love of sports.

We celebrated lots of things tonight at Boondoggles then at Kemah:

• Discover is a GO for launch, and this will be our last free night for two weeks. We're all looking forward to working the flight though.
• It was Eric's 26th birthday.
• Colin's return from Germany.
  
• Colin FINALLY proposed to Rachel in Germany last week. He did it while they were sitting on a bench right beside the Rhine River. I'm proud of my boy. (Rachel said "yes" by the way). Her ring is beautiful. Well done, Colin. Well done indeed. They're planning on saying "I do" on July 7, 2007 in Pittsburgh. Yup: 7/7/07. Can you say "road trip"?! :)
  
• My 21st birthday. Yeh, it was a few weeks ago, but the guys never got around to celebrating it with me. I used my new power to buy Colin and Rachel their drinks as a Merry Engagement present.
  
• The Red Sox 12-game win streak, as well as their consecutive errorless streak.
• and something else...but I'm not at liberty to say...yet :)

Thursday's game saving play by our center fielder. Lord knows Damon can't do this...(not sure why the pic is so big)

All systems go. If the weather is looking good tomorrow then the bird will be off the pad...and I'll be watching it all from Mission Control. You're jealous, I know.