Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 23:35:09 -0700
Subject: NASA Update Day 5: Who Needs Sleep????????
Once again, I'd like to welcome all the new people to the list. These e-mails started out as e-mails to the family in Great Falls. I've been adding names over these past few nights to gently phase the list in. Now I hope it's done. If you know of anybody that wants on this list, please let me know by e-mailing at this address. If you want off (I can't imagine why), you can also e-mail me - I hate getting junk mail myself. Sorry about leaving you new people out these past few times.
Hello from Palo Alto again from the campus of Stanford University on a Friday night. The majority of the academy people and NSF (National Science Foundation) people, who are staying in the French House with us, have gone bar hopping. I decided to stay home - I'm not into the bar scene. Perhaps I'm missing out on the finer things in life. I don't think so. I've got the whole place to myself. I also won't have that horrible feeling of a hangover. I'm trying to come up with an amusing thing to say about that, but it seems like I'm getting nowhere so I'll stop.
Anyway, we got a break from out Principal Investigators (PIs) and research projects today. We also got to go in a little latter (breakfast at Ames at 8:00 rather than 7:30). It takes twenty minutes to get there, which meant we left at 7:40.
After another not-so-bad breakfast, we listened to several presentations. One was a general one on the functions of the space division at Ames. This was given by the chief of that division. The rest of the presentations were given by Ames' researchers.
The next one was on Antartica and how its related to Mars exploration. I guess that the environment in Antartica is fairly similar to the environment on Mars. It has barren desert that is drier than any other in the world. He also talked about cutting into the ice of lakes down there and diving. They sometime have to dive through four of five feet of ice. Quite a task to cut a hole. I guess there is quite a bit of life beneath the surface. This is amazing since only about one percent of the light gets through the ice. This shows that all that life needs to exist is water and that life is not light-dependent. Nor is it temperature dependent. All life needs is liquid water. This opens the door for the possibility of life on other planets, even those that are much colder than the earth and have no air. This had been a theme through out the academy and is part of what Astrobiology studies.
After a lunch break, we had an interesting presentation on how the planets were formed and a whole bunch of other neat stuff.
The final presentation was over chemistry's role in astronomy and how chemistry is needed in some parts of astronomy.
I learned a lot from all four presentations, but it's difficult to summarize. They were each at least an hour long and there was a lot of good material that was covered. I will probably be able to share a great deal with you after I get back so or even now so feel free to ask questions.
We also talked about our group project today. Right now, we have a big decision to make. The academy is arranging for us to make an experiment to go up on the shuttle. The trouble is that the whole package is only a few square centimeters. We're trying to come up with some thing worth while. We also are considering doing something on the KC 135 (?) - the vommit comet. We might do some thing else too. It will probably be one of those.
That's pretty much what we did today. We are also begining to focus on Planetfest, which will be this coming Wed thorugh the 4th or longer. We tour San Fran tomorrow. We have no plans for sunday, but I'm sure we'll find some thing to do.
We're all having a great time. Notice that I keep saying we - we do nothing alone. Having better than the time of my life. Nothing can compare!!! :-)
Sorry about the long message. What can I say? I've been having so much fun and I want to share it with all. 'The Don' loves e-mail. Hopefully future messages won't be this long. I know (hope) you all have things to do, I know I do. Nothing beats writing to the great folks who've been so good to me. Hope Big Sky country is treating all of you well (WA in your case Thompsons).
GO GRIZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don Olinger