Astronaut Alvin Drew in China, Now at the Space Station

Daniel — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 12:16:49 +0000

In 2009, our family went to China to see a solar eclipse. This was the second solar eclipse we had gone to, the first being in Turkey in 2006, but this time we also took our daughters, Miriam and Tamar with us.

In Wuhan, where we watched the eclipse we were joined by an American astronaut, Alvin Drew. Drew at the time was the US representative to the Russian space program and was stationed in Moscow for a year. He had read about our group in an article in the New York Times and decided to join us.

In this earlier blog post, http://www.ourownlittlecorner.com/2009/07/23/a-solar-eclipse-is-much-more-than-just-a-visual-experience/, I wrote about the overall experience of watching the eclipse and included a picture of Drew with myself and another member of our group Howard Spero.

And here is a picture with Drew, myself, and Miriam and Tamar:

Drew was selected to be a member of the current visit to the Space Station, the last visit, http://www.nasa.gov/.

It was an honor to spend time with him talking about the space program and a thrill to actually have met an astronaut who has now flown in outer space. He even let us put on his special multi-million dollar sun glasses, a great guy.

Now if they would only bring back Firefly with new episodes, http://www.whedon.info/Firefly-Reruns-Join-The-Sci-Fi.html.

What I Learned at NASA Ames

Daniel — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:03:26 +0000

I had the pleasure of meeting a number of the people CSC has in place supporting NASA Ames. Having visited both the NASA JPL and NASA Ames facilities over the last few months, it is exciting to see the great work being done in both locations. It is great to be where it really DOES take rocket science to do the work.

Being where daily conversations deal with the nature of the black hole in the middle of our galaxy or analyzing the incredible photographs from the Mars lander is a thrill.

Having said that it was from one of the CSC technical staff, Chris Keller, that I learned a completely new, and extremely useful, piece of information.

If you are like me and when traveling from time to time forget both where you parked your rental car and in fact what your rental car is, you might, like me, try and find it by pressing the various buttons on the keys for the car with the hope that you will hear noises or see the trunk pop open. In case someone is looking you can pretend that you pressed the wrong key, close the trunk, and shake your head at how you did that – while being thankful that you found the car.

The problem with this approach is you have to be fairly close to the car for it to work.

Keller pointed out that if you hold the keys to your chin, or in my case to my chins, then your body becomes an antenna extending greatly the range of your key buttons. Voila! Long-distance rental car identification.

A great day of discovery.

Tales from the Technoverse » nasa

Astronaut Alvin Drew in China, Now at the Space Station

What I Learned at NASA Ames