2day N Space 1986Challenger Explosion

Truly amazing that 24 years later these words can still send a chill up my spine - "Obviously a major malfunction... We have a report from the Flight Dynamics Officer that the vehicle has exploded". I was in college and had just been let out of historical geology early due to my instructor's laryngitis. Heading straight into the student center, I saw tons of people gathered in the the two lounges that had a tv. I assumed Reagan had declared WAR on Iran (or whoever was acting up in 1986). When I made it around the hall to next lounge I heard the words from Peter Jennings "... and this is when it happened." Or something like that... I stopped dead in my tracks, stunned. I think I watched that footage for hours at home before I finally had to turn it off. My desire to work at NASA never wavered. To this day a wall in my cube/office has all the shuttle stickers since I have worked at NASA. I came along between STS-29 and STS-30 but decided my wall should start with 51-L to always remind me of the bottom line and to keep the safety of "our friends in hight places" in mind! It also stands as a vigil of why we do what we do, slip the surly bonds of Earth and explore. It is in our nature to explore, it defines us, it makes us great! "we must never... stop exploring, stop hoping, or stop discovering. We must press on." -VP George H.W. Bush
Live NBC coverage video while it actually happened (holy cow...)
CBS breaking news video of Challenger disaster with Dan Rather
ABC coverage with Peter Jennings five hours after ( he is emotional and haggard)
NBC Nightly News from 1/28/86 - Tom Brokaw (still painful, but a powerful reminder)
ABC Challenger explosion news coverage (beware - includes some classroom reaction)

Outpost Update - Headed to a Court Near YOU!!!

Apparently the land owner decided to lock out the owner of the Outpost January 15th by changing the locks. He claims he did it because he was concerned thousands of dollars of memorabilia had already been removed. Huh? He seems to think he owns The Outpost Tavern... and he wants to move it and re-open it. How could ANYONE other than the Foster family honestly think they own the contents that they have compiled over 30 years??? The land has nothing to do with the business or the building. I was very disappointed when I went in December and saw most of the memorabilia had already been removed for the fear of people grabbing souvenirs... Oh Thank God she did! Except.... the beloved swinging doors - the ones I had wanted to take my picture with in the last weeks - are presumably still in there. In fact, I was headed there today to have some crawfish! Walter Wright has stolen two weeks worth of farewells from those who loved the Outpost Tavern. Let me steal a line from Color Purple - Walter Wright, nothing you do will succeed until you do right by Stephanie Foster!

If anyone needs someone to break in and steal those doors from the grubby-handed, greedy Walter Wright, SIGN ME UP!!!

Outpost new url
Houston Chronicle article
New Outpost Store

2day N Space 1967Apollo 1 Fire

I prefer to "celebrate" the space memorials individually instead of the cost-saving Day of Remembrance NASA has created. So today, let us reflect on the Apollo 1 crew. No new nuggets or amazing information with this entry - just a few links.

A nice video (unsure of publication date)
Some original TV footage
Launch Complex 34 site
Neat older photos of LC 34
The Plaque photo I used in my collage
Original patch artwork I used in my collage
Apollo 1 Memorial Foundation site

Some transcripts from the investigation, and conclusions
NASM Apollo 1 site
The debate regarding the Russian fire

SSP Commemorative Patch Voting Update

In the last ten days there has been no real change in collectSPACE voting. Again, pretty much the same people voting over and over outweighs any new votes. As for the JSC vote however, patch 7 has gained some popularity without any significant sacrifice to the other finalists.

The first graph illustrates JSC vs collectSPACE voting on January 25th. You can compare this one with the two red and blue ones in the earlier post.


The second graph is a total picture of the voting so far. I added a key with the dates and identified each chart with the logo of the source voting. The collectSPACE voting is fairly close across the board with the exception of patch 4 and patch 10. What I find interesting is most of the select favorites are divided about the same (of course with exception to patch 3 which is the clear favorite.

As for the JSC voting on the second graph, there is more variation and the continued struggle between patch 3 and patch 7 is evident. Other than what seems to be more of a daily flux with the JSC site voters, patch 10 stands out as going in the opposite direction as the collectSPACE voters.

Shuttle Commemorative Patch Vote Update

Looking at the current votes, there has been some minor shifts. I have made an excel spreadsheet to assess some of the differences.

The first graph illustrates the initial JSC (actually internal NASA - website is a JSC based site) voting with the current trend today. The biggest change is that some of the patch 3 votes went to patch 7. These have been the top two vote-getters across both sites and all dates hands down. Patch 8 seemed to lose some of its popularity while the exact opposite is true on collectSpace. Patch 10 lost half of its vote with patch 14 and patch 6 gaining 3 and 4%. The trend I can see there is an immediate wow-factor of patch 7 giving way to the traditional mission completeness of patch 3. Patch 10's waning could be due to the similarity to the STS-107 Columbia patch.

The second graph illustrates the same initial vs. current voting for the collectSpace Fan Poll. Interestingly enough, none of these percentages vary significantly. This leads me to believe the same select few are voting over and over.

The third graph illustrates JSC on-site voting vs. collectSpace fan poll on the initial voting day. Huge difference of opinion here! And quite unexpected that the overwhelming favorite was not the new, out-of-the-box artistic design of patch 7. In fact, patch 3 and its bottom line engineer mentality with the Mission Complete message was favored by the collectSPACE fans. The collectSPACE voters responded measurably better to patch 6 than JSC voters - it was created by one of collectSPACE's major contributors. The other significant difference was the favor of patch 14 on collectSPACE over those at JSC. This particular difference eventually levels out.

The fourth graph illustrates JSC voting vs. collectSpace fan poll on January 15th. The general trend is that everything is leveling out. But patch 3 has become the overwhelming favorite. Patch 10 favor jumped from JSC to collectSPACE - which I think is pretty interesting. Possibly some of the JSC voters fled to patch 14.


Notes on some of the artists and some additional cool submission ideas.

SSP Commerorative Patch Voting

Voting on the internal NASA site and fan voting on Collect Space started yesterday. I just cast my votes and was surprised to see the current tally.... The first column is the internal JSC site voting and the second is the Collect Space fan voting - here it is:

	14 votes=2%	cS 5%
	15 votes=2%	cS 3%
	103 votes=15%	cS 25%
	86 votes=12%	cS 15%
	24 votes=3%	cS 2%
	28 votes=4%	cS 12%
	218 votes=31%	cS 9%
	45 votes=6%	cS 8%
	4 votes=1%	cS 1%
	71 votes=10%	cS 3%
	3 votes=0%	cS less than 1%
	17 votes=2%	cS 1%
	12 votes=2%	cS 3%
	29 votes=4%	cS 10%
	36 votes=5%	cS 2%