New Lunar Rover

My cousin David was at the Houston Space Center a few months ago. He was on a bus tour and, coincidentally, the guide saw that someone was testing the new Lunar Rover. He stopped the bus so the people could get a close look at the rover. David sent me some pictures of it. This is what the typical lunar astronaut will be driving when people return to the moon.

Johnson Space Center

The young lady appearing with me in this photo, Sandy, was, literally, the girl next door when I was in my junior and senior years in college. She invited me to visit her and her family on my trip west, and we went to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for a tour. They didn't suit us up for this photo. It's a photoshop image.

This giant swimming pool with mockups of the International Space Station in the water is the neutral buoyancy lab where the astronauts practice doing the jobs they'll have to do in space. They spend lots of time here, and there are scuba divers always present, four divers to each astronaut, to rescue the astronauts if they get into trouble while under water. The control rooms in the upper left of the photo are mockups of the control rooms the astronauts talk to while in space.

This is the real control room for the International Space Station.

This is a real time image that came down from a video camera on the outside of the International Space Station while our tour group was watching from the peanut gallery.

This is the control room where they did the Apollo missions. When they made the movie, Apollo 13, they took lots of photos of this room so they could make their control room set look like this. Unfortunately, there were some plaques about Space Shuttle Missions on the wall, and the movie people duplicated those on the Apollo 13 set even though there was no space shuttle at the time of the Apollo 13 mission.

Slidell Museum--Louisiana

 

 

 

 

Today, I stopped in at the Slidell, Louisiana museum. Slidell is on the other side of Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans. They have their own Mardi Gras parades in Slidell. Their museum has lots of items about the Civil War. The guy who showed me around told me the Civil War had nothing to do with Slavery. He said that they get taught in Slidell that the Civil War was only about States Rights. Presumably, the right of the states to secede. I'm not sure what they wanted to secede about if it wasn't about slavery, but that's what he told me.

Unclaimed Baggage Center, Scottsboro, Alabama

For those of you following this blog who want to know about the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama. Here's my take based on two visits, yesterday and today.

It's exactly what I expected. Unfortunately, they didn't have anything I wanted at a price I wanted to pay. I went there Monday afternoon and this morning. This morning, my cousin David called me up as I was driving into the parking lot so I asked him if I could call him back when I was inside. He said yes, and I did. He checked Amazon for prices on things that looked interesting to me, and to him. The prices at UBC were not much cheaper, and for some items not any cheaper, than he could find for used, and occasionally new, matching items on Amazon.

So that was a four hundred mile detour that didn't result in any interesting purchases. It's possible that the women's clothes and women's shoes would have netted better deals, but I didn't know enough about fashion to be able to figure that out.

Georgia Aquarium

 

 

 

 

I'm visiting Jenna Carpinello who lives near Atlanta. She's one of my daughters' friends from elementary school. She and her son, Joshua, took me to the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta today. They have a very good aquarium here. I recommend it. Tomorrow, I'll go to the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottboro, Alabama.

 

Today, I visited Gretchen, a member of my on line cancer support group. I've typed to the group, and to Gretchen, for a few years now, but today is the first day I've actually met her. She lives in the Sarasota area, and you can see from the background of the photo that today was a very nice day for going out in the yard to enjoy the fresh air. That pond behind us is the home of an alligator. Fortunately for us, he didn't chose to come out to sun himself on Gretchen's lawn.

Birds and Wetlands of Palm Beach County, Florida

 

 

 

Birds and Wetlands of Palm Beach County, Florida

Birds and Wetlands of Palm Beach County, Florida

 

 

 

 

Birds and Wetlands of Palm Beach County, Florida

Birds and Wetlands of Palm Beach County, Florida

 

 

 

 

Birds and Wetlands of Palm Beach County, Florida

Wetlands of Palm Beach County, Florida

 

 

 

 

Wetlands of Palm Beach County, Florida

Art Show Delray Beach

 

 

 

Art Show Delray Beach

Cousin Morty's Development

 

 

 

Today, I'm visiting my cousin, Morty, and his wife, Gladys. The photos are the community center, the outdoor pool, and the lake in their development.

 

 

 

Yesterday, I visited the Astronaut Hall of Fame. They have stuff about the more famous astronauts as expected, but they also have some cool stuff that teaches about science. They have a G-force simulator that gives you four G's, and they have a simulator where you have to land the space shuttle. For what it's worth, I landed it after crashing only once.

They also have a globe that can look like various planets from orbit. I took photos of the globe looking like Earth, Mars, and Jupiter (see above).

Kennedy Space Center

 

 

 

 

Today, I went to the Kennedy Space Center. They had an amusing show based on a Star Trek theme. The top photo is of the two characters from the show, and the next photo is me posing with the characters. The third photo is of a one legged blackbird who was resting on top of someone's car in the parking lot, and the last photo is of the Space Center's Rocket Garden against a sunset sky. Tomorrow, I'll visit the Astronaut Hall of Fame and then will procede south to Delray Beach to visit my cousin, Morty, and his wife, Gladys.