Apollo 1 remembered

Forty one years ago today the accident occurred. I was nine years old and it was devastating. But the program continued and we got to the Moon. Here is the NASA page on the 40Th anniversary last year here.
Here is a memorial site.

I live in Fullerton and we have three parks named after Grissom, Chaffee and White. You can look up the parks here.
Update: From NASA Watch here. A national day of Remembering will be on Janurary, 29 2009 to remember all three space tradegies.

AlGORE Ice sculpture

From the Fairbanks News Miner here:

Fairbanks — Al Gore can thank the Nobel Committee for honoring him with the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

He can also thank Fairbanks businessman Craig Compeau for what could be the farthest-north likeness of the former vice president: A 5-ton ice sculpture of a “shivering” Gore, created during a recent spell of bitterly cold weather in Alaska and aimed at confronting global-warming theories.

It will stay frozen until the spring thaw, sometime in March. So Al Gore, you are frozen until Spring! Take that Global Warming! LOL!

KHAN!

I also morn the loss of Ricardo Montalban. He will always be KHAN to me. RIP.

"To the last, I will grapple with thee...from Hell's heart, I stab at thee! For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee!"

I am not a Number!

I morn the loss of Patrick McGoohan from the 60's TV show the Prisoner. RIP



HT from Lileks here.

Campaign for Mike!

Ht from Florida Space Report here:

How much would you do to help your husband keep his job? Would you petition the president?That’s what Rebecca Griffin, the wife of NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, did.
Rebecca Griffin is e-mail blasting a "Campaign for Mike" message around, asking friends, family and everyone in between to sign an online petition asking President-elect Barack Obama to "consider keeping Mike Griffin on as NASA administrator."

Go here to sign the petition.

Happy Birthday Spirit and Opportunity

I can't believe its been five years since the landing of the Mars Rovers. Its amazing that they have survived 5 years when their missions were only to last 6 months.
From Steve Squyres of Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y. Squyres is principal investigator for the rover science instruments:

"The journeys have been motivated by science, but have led to something else important. This has turned into humanity's first overland expedition on another planet. When people look back on this period of Mars exploration decades from now, Spirit and Opportunity may be considered most significant not for the science they accomplished, but for the first time we truly went exploring across the surface of Mars."