Four things conspired to make Monday a great day for me.
1. I’m a complete space freak. Anything space or NASA, I’m all over it. I check on the Mars Rover status at least once a week and I’ve read Steve Squyres’ book. I keep up with shuttle orbiter processing. I’m a member of the Planetary Society and listen to Planetary Radio (an obscenely nerdy weekly radio show, carried on WREK on Sunday mornings). I’ve been running the SETI@Home screensaver number cruncher since the day they launched 8+ years ago (yes I believe in little green men). As a teenager, instead of posters of bikini-clad models and rock bands, I had glossy blowups of Saturn and Earth from space, and a big fat copy of the “Shuttle Operators Manual”. Oh, and I got an aerospace engineering degree from Georgia Tech many years ago, although that didn’t turn out to be much use, just enough to get me some money so I could go back and get a more useful degree.
Sooooanyway, there’s a space shuttle mission about to go up that launched Tuesday. And I’d been dutifully following NASA’s prep for that launch for 2 months: orbiter processing, rollover to VAB, stacking with the tank and SRBs, roll to pad, FRRs and press conferences, all of it. Most of it though the fine folks over at nasaspaceflight.com.
So on Friday night I recalled that I’d heard earlier this year (at a NASA presentation) that they were going to try to feed launch video in HD during the October launch. Hmmm, I wonder what happened to that? Some quick hunting around and …
Omigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigod NASA has launched their HD signal! It’s still an engineering test, and so they haven’t made a public announcement really, but there it is! It’s on the same satellite that carries the existing NASA TV to cable companies. This isn’t the direct-to-home satellite like Dish or DirecTV, this is a backend distribution sat like networks use; it’s C-band and requires a Big Ugly Dish. And sorry, not even close to being available on the net.
So that was Friday night. My immediate thought was of course “I need to see this ASAP” and of course I work for a very well known cable news network, so I knew I had access to the satellite infrastructure that could make it happen. Two days of blackberry emails later, and there I was working into work on a Sunday night to set it up. And it worked! The shuttle launchpad in HD!
So THEN some of the newsroom jocks get wind of this and now suddenly they went live with it on Tuesday morning. The HD version of this very well known cable news network launched a month and a half ago, and this is exactly the kind of material that is completely compelling in HD. So for the late morning launch, they fired up an HD control room, staffed it, etc, just to take advantage of what essentially popped into my head on Friday night. The freaking president of the company knows my name right now, and it is a very big company.
2. The Dalai Lama has been in Atlanta for a week, as part of festivities related to the launching of his official relationship with Emory. The concluding event for “The Visit” was a big gathering at Centennial Olympic Park today, with a stage full of dignitaries and many thousands in the park there to here him speak. It was quite remarkable. I’ve heard him speak before (never in person though) and he really should not be missed. If I find a transcript of the speech I will update this post. It’s truly powerful stuff.
3. We finally have some rain, and forecasts for rain all week. I’m not obsessed with my lawn, but I have put a reasonable amount of effort into it for the past 10 years and it’s painful to watch it die. I’ve promoted healthy root growth through regular elbow grease (and no chemicals) so it can withstand typical drought conditions, but this has pushed it too far. Hopefully even drizzling rain for a few days will help it survive until the drought breaks.
4. How to properly hug a baby*
* I am not a breeder, but I do love playing with other people’s young kids, and this is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.