Three wry smiles -

Giving readers a lift today- I happened across a number of good news items from NASA (including this link about NASA's administrator Mike Griffin's recent visit to China). For this post I wanted to focus on more pieces that gave me pleasure, although each one is tinged with a bit of irony.

Each of these three stories from MSNBC gave me a wry smile. In this one about reparking the Soyuz, Irene Klotz (10/10/06 - for Reuters) wrote that,

The crew aboard the International Space Station climbed into their Soyuz capsule Tuesday and drove to another parking spot, clearing the berth for a cargo ship set to arrive later this month.
. . . With Tyurin at the controls, the Soyuz capsule backed out of the docking port it had occupied since Tyurin, U.S. astronaut Lopez-Alegria and space tourist Anousheh Ansari arrived on Sept. 20. Ansari returned to Earth eight days later with the previous station commander, Pavel Vinogradov, and flight engineer Jeff Williams aboard another Soyuz capsule.

"Mutually assured cooperation" follows "mutually assured destruction." I still find it ironic that, it is only because of our old nemesis Russia's initiation of "Mir" and their space program's subsequent "rescue" efforts, that NASA has been able to continue with the ISS space program in low earth orbit.

Space blogging - An earlier(9/28/06) piece by Mike Schneider for the AP, captured why Anousheh Ansari's blog from space got the same fun reaction from her readers. To quote,

Although she has a master's degree in engineering and made a fortune in the telecommunications industry, Ansari's blog entries have been free of tech-heavy jargon, exhibiting an enthusiastic, chatty style. She tackled topics that vintage, tough-guy astronauts such as Alan Shepard surely would have shirked from: motion sickness, the clumsiness of weightlessness and personal hygiene.

Ansari always puts the best face on whatever happens. Even negative comments get the thumbs up from her. Who would believe that such an overall positive blog would get any negative commenta at all? Her 10/9 "Back in the world" post contained this intriguing phrase,

. . . I’m back safe and sound in the US and taking care of some personal family medical issues. I have been reading your comments and I wanted to thank you for all your words of support and encouragement. I am not upset about negative comments and I can take criticism. My lack of writing in the past few days has nothing to do with the negative comments but more to do with personal family commitments.

Science hands across the sea - The third story is also by Klotz and also on October 9. She wrote this positive note about continuing international cooperation in space:

When NASA ferries Europe's Columbus scientific research module to the International Space Station next year it may send along a Frenchman to operate it as well.
If the plan is approved, French astronaut Leopold Eyharts would likely would get the nod to begin a series of two- to 2-1/2-month station expedition missions by astronauts from NASA's partner countries, European Space Agency astronaut Hans Schlegel said in an interview.
. . . Europe's microgravity research program includes biology, fluid physics and materials science experiments as well as basic science. The United States has curtailed science investigations aboard its Destiny laboratory module, limiting them to programs that directly support the country's planned lunar expeditions.

This story has two ironic twists. The first is that the French remain involved with the U.S. despite the early rift with the current administration. The second is that NASA has been forced to shelve much of its future scientific work because of budget constraints (12 pg PDF).

Tags: articles blogging current affairs events life news politics foreign relations science France Russia space NASA
My "creative post" today at Southwest Blogger is about making wishes come true.