Lockheed Martin shows test spaceship

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8227136

It has been fascinating watching the progress of this with Obama wanting to cancel the Constellation program and Congress determined to keep as many pieces of it alive as they could manage. For all the wrong reasons in my opinion!

Don't get me wrong, I love watching the space program, but I would love to see NASA focus on the cutting edge stuff like the Nautilus X that I sent you links about a few weeks ago. I find it pretty hard to get excited about what essentially appears to be Apollo Mk2.

An old letter from 1978

My mum recently dug out an old letter she had originally sent to her mother in Perth back in 1978. It gives an interesting insight into my life when I was around 10 years old. I don't remember being 'keen' about piano lessons, but I can still play a couple of the pieces that Gem Buck taught us, so I guess something went in.

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Hi family,

Dad has been having quite a clean up and came across this letter written to my Mum, dated August, 1978. Thought you might be interested in these excerpts:

"I can hear Natalie singing to herself in her room, but she's not complaining yet so I'll continue on here. She is a real delight right now and we feel as if we'd like to "freeze" her and keep her just as she is at 18 months old. She is learning to talk and says quite a lot of words and will try to repeat words we ask her to. She says 'bye-ee', and will often find me where-ever I am, carrying her bag and tell me 'bye-ee', wave and toddle off. She's a real bundle of mischief, more so than all the boys put together and is able to climb up and get into everything. However, for the most part she is very easy going and amuses herself well (even if it is up on my dressing table!)

This week is education week in NSW schools and this morning I have been up to the school to visit Leigh's classroom. I spoke briefly to his teacher and she said that she is delighted with him. I was aware that with his schoolwork he was way ahead and I know from what he brings home that he rarely makes mistakes, but it was good to hear that she is also very happy with his behaviour, so I have come away feeling quite proud of my little boy!

Tomorrow is sports day for the primary school, and on Thursday I have to visit Carey and Wesley's classes. They both brought home very satisfactory reports and while they're not genius standard, they were both average and above average and also very pleasing in the comments on behaviour and social adjustment. Wes has done particularly well with his 'book work' and is in fact quite a book worm (as his mother and grandmother before him).

Did I mention that all 3 boys have been learning music this term? Carey and Wesley are especially keen - I guess maybe Leigh is a little young as yet. One of the ladies from the church is teaching them all. Two of them go together on a Monday morning before school and they take it is turns to have a lesson alone on Wednesday mornings. It's a mad rush to try and get them there by 8a.m., but well worth it we feel. The only problem is that I get awfully sick of hearing that piano practice all the time, with three of them on the go!!"

It was great to find this letter. It was three pages all up mentioning things I have long since forgotten.

Love Mum

Deep divisions simmer in our cultural melting pot

A very interesting article:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/02/18/3142403.htm

I find myself in agreement with much of this article. I remember being at school in the 70's and 80's and gaining the impression that Australia had little if any to offer in terms of culture before the wave of post WWII immigration.

It has definitely fueled my own determination retain the core values of what it means to be Australian.

The extract from Paul Keating's speech is pretty good:

"The first loyalty of all Australians must be to Australia, that they must accept the basic principles of Australian society. These include the Constitution and the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech and religion, English as a national language, equality of the sexes and tolerance".

Wes the space shuttle pilot

From our recent trip to Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

Nautilus-X could be NASA's first manned deep-space explorer

I am very excited about Nautilus-X.

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/02/nautilus-x-coul.php

http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Holderman-Henderson_1-26-11/Holderman_1-26-11.ppt

The PowerPoint is a thing of beauty.

This is the sort of thinking, planning and building that NASA should be doing. This is a proper spaceship!

My friend suggested that we still some way off working out how to overcome the debilitating effects of long term space travel both physically and psychologically.

However, I believe that the centrifuge with artificial gravity will make a big difference. They are hoping to test a version of it on the ISS. With the Mars 500 mission underway in Moscow we are already doing long-term psychological experiments on the type of isolation required for a long range space flight.

I'm just excited that there appears to be some original thinking and planning going on inside NASA.

Last minute Micheal Bublé

Free tickets too!!! Thank you Iain and Sarah - and the NAB.

Tom's first good reverse park